Mannaja, l'homme à la hache

Although very much late in the game for an Italian western, (the bulk of which were made between 1965 and 1972) Mannaja (A Man Called Blade) is no slouch. It's actually a good muscular western with lots of violence and dark atmosphere, with the sun blocked out and everything bathed in a fog of dust.

Maurizio Merli plays Blade, a mysterious hatchet wielding bounty hunter with unfinished business to take care of regarding a puritanical mine owner and his psychotic number two, played by John Steiner, who's excellent at portraying nasty weasels.

Also memorable is (the late?) Donal O'Brien, who would later gain infamy as the title character in Doctor Butcher M.D. (Medical Deviate), as a scroungy fugitive who gets his hand cut off by Blade in the first scene and features prominently in the film's finale.

Director Sergio Martino is a master of Italian exploitation and really knows how to deliver the goods, especially in action/adventures. Another of his films I really enjoyed was Slave Of The Cannibal God with Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach.

Also, I really enjoyed the title song even though it was repeated way too often in the course of the film.

The titular character thankfully isn't an ancestor of overrated vampire-hunter Wesley Snipes, but a genuinely old-fashioned and testosterone-laden spaghetti western hero who furiously wanders around the deserts like a one-man-army, hunting down wanted criminals for the rewards on their head. Blade is relentless but fair, he has an imposing charisma and wields hatchets as professionally as he fires shotguns. In short, he's the ideal guy to dedicate another magnificently violent, imaginative and nasty euro-Western to! And, oh yes, Sergio Martino's film can easily compete with the absolute greatest efforts in this sadly extinct sub genre of cult cinema, like Sergio Corbucci's "Django", Sergio Sollima's "The Big Gundown" and perhaps even some of Serio Leoni's lesser known movies. "A Man Called Blade" is a very eventful and exciting film, chock-full of outrageous gun & fistfights, mean & treasonous bandits and wild ambushes. When arriving in the little town of Suttonville to claim the reward on a killer's head, Blade encounters the vicious & corrupt sidekick of a prominent businessman. Blade offers his services to McGowan and Voller, because despite exploiting the local miners, large troops of outlaws continuously steal the silver. Voller wants to get rid of Blade as soon as possible, because he plots to take over the empire, but Blade is tough and has an extra personal score to settle with McGowan. The plot twists perhaps aren't the most original ones ever, but bear in mind "A Man Called Blade" got released during the dying years of spaghetti western cinema. And even though not always original, Martino's film is fast-paced and doesn't feature a single dull moment. The fights are dirty (literally) and the violence is rather graphic, with several cowboys dying from hatches in their foreheads or bullets between the eyes. The outdoor locations are sublime and I absolutely loved the moody theme song that gets repeated during the film's most essential sequences. Other fans seem to disapprove of the music in this film, but I thought it was excellent. Maurizio Merli makes a terrific macho hero. Perhaps not as legendary as Franco Nero or Tomas Milian, but close enough. The film sadly doesn't have a strong female lead, only a sympathetic go-go dancer and the silent daughter of the mayor. The most memorable performance is given by John Steiner as Blade's sadistic opponent Voller. With his ugly face and almost natural aura of arrogance, Steiner gave image of multiple villains in Italian cult films. His role here definitely ranks among the best! Highly recommended.

I absolutely love this film.

The lead actor, Maurizio Merli, is a handsome man and a decent actor cast in the role of the "Good" Bounty Hunter, with Donald O'Brien as the "Ugly" thief/wanted man, and John Steiner as the "Bad" villain. The acting is top-notch as far as Italian Westerns go. The cinematography is beautiful, the editing great, and the direction superb. The sets are great but shrouded in a mysterious fog that lends to the movies surrealism. This film is like a very Artistic Western Graphic-Novel!

There are a few things in the plot that make you scratch your head (what movie DOESN'T suffer this problem?) but overall I would rank this in my Top Ten Westerns so far...here is the list (only culled from films I have seen thus far)

1. The Good The Bad The Ugly 2. Django 3. Mannaja 4. Fistful of Dollars 5. For a Few Dollars More 6. Tombstone 7. Outlaw Josey Wales 8. Unforgiven 9. Pale Rider 10.Silverado 11.High Plains Drifter 12.Hang Em High 13.Once Upon A Time in the West 14.Fistful of Dynamite 15.The Quick and The Dead

If you are a fan of movies that are as much art as film, then you should love Italian cinema!

I found this film to be quite inspirational, actually. The movie is about a man who wields a blade for a weapon in fending off the bad guys while rescuing the girl from the evil villain, Voller (brilliantly played by John Steiner). At the beginning of the film we find our rogue hero Blade (played by Maurizio Merli) chasing after a man through the misty swamps. The man looks behind him frantically several times to try to make out the figure of his pursuer. Suddenly there is a swishing noise in the air as a hatchet blade strikes the man, severing his right hand against a tree. Thus begins the tale, and follows our hero into a virtual ghost town, where "sin and vice are not permitted." He enters a saloon where he and his new companion (the man with the severed hand) receive several shifty-eyed glances. This is when Blade first meets the dastardly Voller and wagers a gamble playing cards, to which of course our hero wins. The filming technique used throughout this scene is truly classic, where some shots show a profile of the villain on one side of the screen, with Blade standing in the background. The character acting is superb. I cannot speak enough about how Steiner personifies the classic old west villain to a "T". His snide mannerisms and long, lean stature lend to his overall character appeal. Throughout this film, there is plenty of splendid gunfighting and even a particularly notable scene in which Blade dukes it out with Voller and three of his henchmen in the mud. Yes, the actor actually does 90% of these stunts (as I later found out watching the director interview on DVD)! The director, Sergio Martino, could not have directed a more well-scripted film, complete with all the elements of a traditional spaghetti western! I give this film 3 out of 4 stars, mainly for its overall character appeal and for the simple fact that it's a 70's flick! 'Nuff said...

This film begins with a bounty hunter who goes by the name "Blade" (Maurizio Merli) riding into the small mining town of Suttonville with a criminal named "Burt Craven" (Donald O'Brien) as his prisoner. Unfortunately, when he gets there he is informed that there is no real sheriff there which makes it impossible for him to claim the bounty. To make things even worse, he is also told that the entire town is essentially owned by the wealthy owner of the local silver mine named "Edward McGowan" (Philippe Leroy) and that nothing gets done without his approval or that of his chief enforcer and bodyguard by the name of "Voller" (John Steiner) . To that end, when Blade volunteers to help Edward McGowan with a problem he is experiencing with some local bandits, Voller doesn't take it too well and this results in a serious rift between Blade and everyone else-and Voller is not a man to take things lightly. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an entertaining "Spaghetti Western" which managed to keep my attention pretty much from start-to-finish. Admittedly, I didn't especially care for a couple of the twists and turns taken and the musical score was a bit odd. But even so I liked this film for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.