Retro Review: THE COMPLETE SARTANA (1968-1970)

IF YOU MEET SARTANA...PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH
(Italy/West Germany - 1968)

Directed by Frank Kramer (Gianfranco Parolini). Written by Renato Izzo, Gianfranco Parolini and Werner Hauff. Cast: John Garko (Gianni Garko), William Berger, Sydney Chaplin, Klaus Kinski, Fernando Sancho, Gianni Rizzo, Andrew Scott (Andrea Scotti), Carlo Tamberlani, Franco Pesce, Heidi Fisher, Maria Pia Conte, Sal Borgese. (Unrated, 96 mins)

In the wake of Sergio Leone's groundbreaking trilogy of spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood, the copycats came so fast and furious that it had to be impossible for audiences to keep up. Giuliano Gemma starred in a pair of RINGO films, Franco Nero had the title role in Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO (1966), Tony Anthony played "The Stranger" in three films beginning in 1968, and Gianni Garko staked his claim to spaghetti fame as Sartana in a series that also kicked off in 1968. These official films spawned countless imitation Django, Ringo, and Sartana films, often with the characters crossing paths, but the five "official" SARTANA films have just been restored and released in a deluxe, extras-packed Blu-ray set from Arrow, because physical media is dead.

Never given theatrical releases in America, the Sartana films had some of the more playfully humorous titles in the genre, and things kick off with IF YOU MEET SARTANA...PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH. It's an incredibly convoluted but always enjoyable series of double-crosses and shifting alliances, as Garko's Sartana, who's more of a debonair wiseass than most of his genre brethren (Arrow's accompanying booklet with an essay by Roberto Curti likens Sartana to a western 007, and it's an apt comparison), involves himself in a mishap-filled pursuit of a chest of gold that no less than four separate sets of bad guys are attempting to obtain. There's outlaw Lasky (William Berger), a duplicitous bastard who mows down his own gang with a Gatling gun in order to keep it all to himself, only to find that the chest is filled with rocks; bandit and self-appointed "general" Mendoza, aka "Tampico" (Fernando Sancho, the genre's erstwhile "Frito Bandito," again cast radically against type as "Fernando Sancho"); corrupt bankers Stewall (Sydney Chaplin, son of Charlie) and Hallman (Gianni Rizzo), who hired Mendoza to steal the gold in the first place while they stashed it away in the casket of the recently-deceased mayor as part of an insurance scam; and Morgan (Klaus Kinski), another outlaw who's unconnected to the gold until an impromptu and ill-fated partnership with Lasky pulls him in.

The familiar spaghetti tropes are all over the place and would establish the SARTANA formula seen in the four sequels:  a shipment of gold buried in casket (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY), Sartana finding an unlikely ally in Dusty (Franco Pesce), the town's elderly, cantankerous undertaker (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS), and Sartana's calling card of a chiming pocket watch (FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE), just to name a few. Sartana also relies on some gadgety weapons that director/co-writer Gianfranco Parolini (aka "Frank Kramer") would use in his soon-to-come SABATA trilogy with Lee Van Cleef (in the first and third films) and Yul Brynner (in the second). The more political "Zapata" spaghetti westerns were starting to gain traction in Italy, and by 1968, the first SARTANA came too far into the craze to really do anything new. Still, Garko is a pretty badass hero and the film benefits from its many colorful--and frequently stupid--villains, though Kinski fans may be disappointed in his relatively restrained performance and limited screen time, as he's offed about 40 minutes in.

I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH
(Italy - 1969)

Directed by Anthony Ascott (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo Dell'Aquila. Cast: John Garko (Gianni Garko), Frank Wolff, Klaus Kinski, Ettore Manni, Gordon Mitchell, Sal Borgese, Renato Baldini, Jose M. Torres, Rick Boyd (Federico Boido), John Bartha, Franco Pesce, Franco Ukmar, Samson Burke. (Unrated, 103 mins)

Gianfranco Parolini went on to make SABATA in 1969, prompting the hiring of Giuliano Carnimeo, who would direct the remainder of the SARTANA series under variants of his most frequent Americanized pseudonym "Anthony Ascott" (he'd go by "Jules Harrison" for his 1983 post-nuke EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000). I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH is sort-of a hybrid western/detective story, with a Sartana impostor orchestrating an elaborate, Joker-esque bank robbery involving a fake corpse and several henchmen wearing uniforms identical to those of bank security.The word is out that Sartana (Gianni Garko) is a wanted man and he's soon pursued by law enforcement as well as various bounty hunters, including a wily poker shark named Hot Dead (Klaus Kinski, having a little more to do than in the previous film but still underutilized). Sartana teams up with grubby sidekick Buddy Ben (Frank Wolff) to clear his name, find the fake Sartana, and figure out why his estranged friend and wanted outlaw Bill Cochran (Federico Boido) was posing as the corpse, and the trail leads quick-draw gunman and milk-drinking casino proprietor Baxter Red (Ettore Manni). Given his name, it should come as no surprise that Baxter Red is a red herring, but there's quite a few over the course of the film, with so many characters--including Sal Borgese as an on-the-take sheriff, Renato Baldini as a corrupt judge, and Gordon Mitchell as another bounty hunter--seeming to have it in for Sartana. Things pick up in time for its SCOOBY-DOO-meets-CLUE ending, but I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH is a sluggishly-paced sequel that's not nearly as enjoyable as IF YOU MEET SARTANA...PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH. Garko is still fun in the lead, Wolff has some amusing moments as Almost Tuco, and Carnimeo carries on the motif of Sartana being seemingly impervious to bullets, but the story just dawdles and takes forever to get to where it's going, and some of the music cues (a recurring harpsichord riff on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," a doofus being introduced to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel") only contribute to the uneven tone of the film.

SARTANA'S HERE...TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN
(Italy - 1970)

Directed by Antony Ascot (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Tito Carpi. Cast: George Hilton, Charles Southwood, Erika Blanc, Piero Lulli, Linda Sini, Nello Pazzafini, Carlo Gaddi, Aldo Barberito, Marco Zuanelli, Lou Kamante (Luciano Rossi), Rick Boyd (Federico Boido), Gigi Bonos, John Bartha, Antonio Casale, Furio Meniconi (Unrated, 92 mins)

The next three SARTANA sequels came in rapid succession, so rapid in fact that there's some dispute over their proper order. Based on its release date in its native Italy, the third in the series (and the third in the Arrow set) is SARTANA'S HERE...TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN. These final three films hit Italian theaters over a four-month period from September to December 1970. Giuliano Carnimeo directed all three back-to-back, though Gianni Garko would sit out SARTANA'S HERE. His one-and-done replacement and the George Lazenby of the official SARTANA series was George Hilton, who would soon become a regular presence in the gialli of Sergio Martino, often teaming with the stunning Edwige Fenech. Hilton is a fine Sartana, though to use another Bond comparison, his Sartana could be deemed the Roger Moore-ish interpretation compared to Garko's Sean Connery. Hilton almost seems to be winking and smirking at times, especially when he's introduced throwing a canteen in the air and shooting it so it rains down and douses a lit fuse that's about to blow up some dynamite. The story is yet another baffling series of scheming double-crosses and backstabbing involving gold, this time from the mine of Appaloosa town boss Spencer (Piero Lulli), who's paying a group of Mexican bandits led by Mantas (Nello Pazzafini in the Fernando Sancho role) to rob his own shipments so he can horde the gold for himself. It's never quite clear what Spencer's ultimate plan is, but it doesn't really matter. SARTANA'S HERE...TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN is fast-moving and Hilton fits in nicely with the slightly lighter but still generally serious tone, with an added quirk in that Sartana seems to have an obsession with boiled eggs. He ends up disguising himself as a Mexican peasant (a tactic used by Giuliano Gemma's Ringo in THE RETURN OF RINGO) to blend in Appaloosa and figure out how to play the sides against one another. Things are complicated even more with the arrival of dapper, white-suited, poetry-reading gunslinger Sabbath (Charles Southwood, best known as Winchester Jack in Mario Bava's spaghetti western ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK), with whom Sartana may or may not form a Leone-esque unholy alliance. A big improvement over the lackluster I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH, but Hilton moved on and Garko returned for the next film, which was in Italian theaters just two months later.

HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL, MY FRIEND...SARTANA WILL PAY
(Italy - 1970)

Directed by Anthony Ascott (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Giovanni Simonelli and Roberto Gianviti. Cast: Gianni Garko, Antonio Vilar, Daniela Giordano, Ivano Staccioli, Franco Ressel, George Wang, Helga Line, Luis Induni, Franco Pesce, Rick Boyd (Federico Boido), Jean Pierre Clarain, Roberto Dell'Acqua, Rocco Lerro, Aldo Berti, Attilio Dottesio. (Unrated, 93 mins)

After a brief sabbatical during which he starred as a gunslinger named "Santana" in a spaghetti western that was magically transformed into SARTANA KILLS THEM ALL thanks to dubbing, Gianni Garko returns to the SARTANA series with HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL, MY FRIEND...SARTANA WILL PAY, and it looks like he had some time embrace his inner EASY RIDER by letting his hair grow and sprouting a porn stache and sideburns. Storywise, this is more of the same, with Sartana getting involved in some shady real estate and property disputes, starting when Joe Benson (Attilio Dottesio) is killed by hired guns (who are in turn killed by Sartana, who pays for their funerals, hence the title), with the assumption that his land will be taken over by town banker Hoffmann (Antonio Vilar), whose mustache-twirling villainy should be obvious the moment he introduces himself as a banker. Hoffman is in cahoots with the sheriff (Luis Induni) and saloon girl Mary (Helga Line) to make a killing on Benson's land with the rumors that there's a secret stash of gold (of course), but they didn't realize he left everything to his niece Abigail (Daniela Giordano). Sartana teams up with Abigail--for revenge and romantic purposes--and engineers the requisite series of double crosses, which also involve Chinese gambling house owner and problematic 2018 trending Vulture piece waiting to happen Lee Tse Tung (George Wang), who's introduced being pulled through town in a rickshaw by bowler-hatted manservant, frequently bangs a gong, and never misses an opportunity to drop a "Confucius say..." bon mot. Once Hoffmann realizes Sartana is on to his scheme, he starts a rumor that cheating gambling house dealer Piggot (Franco Ressel) was killed by Sartana, which leads to the dead man's four vengeful outlaw brothers coming to town.

As usual, there's generous helpings of the kind of goofy humor and occasional sight gags that portend the Terence Hill/Bud Spencer westerns that would be shortly coming down the pike, and three films into his SARTANA stretch, director Giuliano Carnimeo finds his groove, and in collaboration with cinematographer Stelvio Massi, really step up his game when it comes to Leone-esque frame compositions and a few split diopter shots of the sort that would become synonymous with Brian De Palma a few years down the road. It's also got a rousing score by frequent Ennio Morricone collaborator Bruno Nicolai, and this, following the direction that George Hilton took the character, probably represents Garko's loosest portrayal of Sartana yet, especially when he pulls an ace out of his pocket and flings it across the room to extinguish a candle during his seduction of Abigail, a move that's pure 007 in spirit. But the story is still confusing as hell, which seems to be the norm for the SARTANA westerns, so you more or less have to just roll with it and assume everyone you see onscreen has ulterior motives that will become more preposterous as the film proceeds.

LIGHT THE FUSE...SARTANA IS COMING
(Italy/Spain - 1970)

Directed by Anthony Ascot (Giuliano Carnimeo). Written by Eduardo M. Brochero, Tito Carpi and Ernesto Gastaldi. Cast: Gianni Garko, Susan Scott (Nieves Navarro), Massimo Serato, Piero Lulli, Jose Jaspe, Bruno Corazzari, Clay Slegger, Frank Brana, Franco Pesce, Sal Borgese, Giuseppe Castellano, Lino Coletta, Raffaele Di Mario, Fernando Bilbao, Beatrice Pellegrino, Gennarino Pappagali, Luis Induni, Renato Baldini, Mara Krupp, Dan van Husen. (Unrated, 100 mins)

By the end of 1970, the SARTANA sequels were coming so fast and furious that it probably would've grown difficult to tell them apart if LIGHT THE FUSE...SARTANA IS COMING didn't mark the end of the official series. Though they continued working together in other westerns, it's a shame that star Gianni Garko and director Giuliano Carnimeo stopped here, as LIGHT THE FUSE is the best of the pentalogy. In a shocking turn of events, the story deals with endless double crosses and the pursuit of a stash of gold, this time with Garko's Sartana getting himself thrown into a prison overseen by corrupt marshal Manassas Jim (Massimo Serato) in order to orchestrate a jailbreak with inmate Grand Full (Piero Lulli), who Manassas Jim believes killed his younger brother and made off with the gold. Also killed that skirmish--recounted RASHOMON-style by numerous characters throughout--was a friend of Sartana's. Shifting alliances abound, as Sartana cuts deals at various points with Grand Full, Manassas Jim, Gen. Monk (Jose Jaspe in the Fernando Sancho "Frito Bandito" role), and femme fatale Belle (Nieves Navarro), while trusting only elderly Plon Plon (Franco Pesce), who of course is killed, making Sartana's pursuit of the gold personal. Not quite as difficult to follow in its labyrinthine plot construction as its predecessors, LIGHT THE FUSE earns its status as the best SARTANA late in the game when Sartana single-handedly mows down Monk's army by MacGyvering a church pipe organ into a giant Gatling gun and multi-purpose firearm and "playing" it in a showdown in the middle of the dusty town in a display of grandiosity that would make Rick Wakeman jealous. It's one of the most insane and inspired moments in the entire spaghetti canon, and helps close out the SARTANA series on a high note.

Retro Review: DEVILFISH (1984)

DEVILFISH
aka MONSTER SHARK
(Italy/France - 1984; US release 1986)

Directed by John Old Jr (Lamberto Bava). Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Frank Walker (Vincenzo Mannino), Dardano Sacchetti and Herve Piccini. Cast: Michael Sopkiw, Valentine Monnier, John Garko (Gianni Garko), William Berger, Dagmar Lassander, Iris Peynado, Lawrence Morgant, Cinthia Stewart (Cinzia de Ponti), Paul Branco, Dino Conti, Darla N. Warner, Goffredo Unger. (Unrated, 94 mins)

With its Key West locations and Florida setting at "Seaquarium," it's likely that DEVILFISH (aka MONSTER SHARK) was meant to be a low-rent Italian ripoff of JAWS 3-D. Showcasing one of the most amateurishly cheap-looking monsters this side Roger Corman's IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, DEVILFISH is a flat-out terrible movie and completely deserving of its MST3K skewering back in the day, but it has its undeniable charms for Eurocult aficionados. Considering how shoddy and stupid the film is, there's a surprising amount of top Italian genre talent for the time. It's directed by Lamberto Bava (under the pseudonym "John Old Jr," a shout-out to his father Mario's alias on 1963's THE WHIP AND THE BODY), after his impressive early films MACABRE (1980) and A BLADE IN THE DARK (1982) and just a year before establishing himself as a major name in Italian horror with 1985's Dario Argento-produced DEMONS (DEVILFISH apparently made it into a handful of US theaters courtesy of Cinema Shares in 1986 before its VHS release by Vidmark Entertainment). It's co-written by Eurocult stalwart and frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Dardano Sacchetti (CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD), from a story co-conceived by Luigi Cozzi (STARCRASH) and Sergio Martino (TORSO). Bruno Mattei (STRIKE COMMANDO) was an assistant director, and the score is by Fabio Frizzi under the pseudonym "Antony Barrymore." Nobody is having their best day here, but it may be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. It's hard to believe that Cozzi, Martino, Sacchetti, and Bava all had a hand in some of the illogical idiocy that unfolds in DEVILFISH. It's the kind of movie where people trying to find the location of a deadly creature that's part-octopus and part-prehistoric fish decide to take advantage of their downtime by going for a leisurely swim in the very area they're canvassing. It's the kind of movie where the sheriff is told that the creature can reproduce more of itself from its own severed flesh, and decides the best solution is to grab a shotgun and try to blow it into a million pieces. It's the kind of movie where a covert project to secretly develop a killer sea monster is stealthily codenamed "Sea Killer." It's the kind of movie where Bava tries to pull off some dazzling camera moves and ends up with an unexpected cameo by one of the lead actor's balls.

There's an unusual amount of exposition, intrigue, and soap opera histrionics, most of it just for the apparent sake of killing time and keeping the laughable creature offscreen as long as possible. A body is pulled out of the ocean with its legs bitten off, and cranky Sheriff Gordon (Gianni Garko) doesn't think it's an accident. Meanwhile, Seaquarium marine biologist Bob Hogan (Dino Conti) and dolphin trainer Stella Dickens (Valentine Monnier) get sonar readings and imagery indicating a large creature of some sort lurking in the deep waters. They get help from local electrician and equipment supplier Peter (Michael Sopkiw, who starred with Monnier in 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK and would reteam with Bava for BLASTFIGHTER) and outside oceanography expert Dr. Janet Bates (Darla N. Warner) and begin tracking down the aquatic monster, revealed to be man-made crossbreed of an octopus with the DNA of an extinct sea creature from the age of dinosaurs.

But before we get to any of that, there's Peter's flirtation with Stella, much to the chagrin of his employee and friend-with-benefits Sandra (Iris Peynado); there's a research institute where Dr. Davis Barker (one-and-done Piers Morgan lookalike Lawrence Morgant, possibly a pseudonym for an Italian or maybe a local Florida actor; either way, he's dubbed by the venerable Ted Rusoff), who's having a clandestine affair with Sonja (Dagmar Lassander), the wife of his boss Prof. Donald West (William Berger); and Florinda (Cinzia de Ponti), a disgruntled West research assistant who knows of Davis and Sonja's affair and is threatening to tell the press about illegal experiments at the lab before she's killed by Miller (Paul Branco), a local lumbering lug who's been hired by someone to silence her, resulting in one of the most ridiculous "kamikaze disrobings" (© Leonard Maltin) this side of Kelly Lynch in Michael Cimino's DESPERATE HOURS. It's also not enough that he kills her, but he also dumps the body in a full bathtub, then tosses a plugged-in hair dryer into the water. Between the chintzy special effects, the dumbass story machinations, the idiotic characters, and Morgant (with some help from Rusoff) having one of the most overwrought death scenes ever, it's easy to see the MST3K appeal.

Code Red just released DEVILFISH on Blu-ray under the title MONSTER SHARK (because physical media is dead), and it looks great in its proper aspect ratio and its HD upgrade, but the commentary is yet another embarrassing shitshow typical of Code Red head Bill Olsen. Sopkiw (who left the movie business after his fourth film, 1985's MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY) is on hand, along with DIY cult filmmaker Damon Packard, and to the surprise of no one, it's mostly useless and filled with erroneous information that shows that no research was done by either moderator prior to the recording. Sopkiw seems nice enough (nicer and more cooperative than he was with Nathaniel Thompson on the BLASTFIGHTER Blu) but he doesn't know much about movies, doesn't seem to like movies, and his memory is foggy on a lot of things, while Olsen (seen with Sopkiw in an intro before the movie and wearing his "Banana Man" costume, which he still seems to think people find amusing) almost instantly lapses into his usual schtick of mispronouncing Italian names a minute into the movie and fixating on inconsequential matters (he seems really perturbed that Sergio Martino didn't "die-rect" the movie and keeps bringing it up, despite Sopkiw repeatedly telling him that he didn't even know Martino came up with the story). Neither Olsen nor Packard have any idea who anyone in the supporting cast is. They think Iris Peynado is "Cynthia du Ponti" (Sopkiw doesn't remember Peynado's name and agrees with them), then they think Cinzia de Ponti is Dagmar Lassander. They think William Berger is Italian and his name was a pseudonym (nope--born in Austria, birth name Wilhelm Berger). Packard thinks Mario Bava directed SUSPIRIA (he does correct himself with "Oh, that was Argento," which is appreciated, but the proper thing to do after such a gaffe would be to just get up and leave). They ask Sopkiw if he dubbed himself, which he obviously didn't, then Packard seems surprised to learn that actors in multi-country co-productions were often speaking different languages on set before being revoiced in post. I'm sorry, but if you're moderating a commentary track for a specific film, there's an assumption on the part of the listener that you know something about the subject at hand. I bought the Blu-ray. I shouldn't be correcting these guys in my head as they go. Dagmar Lassander has been in a ton of Eurocult movies. They should know who she is. I realize this is only DEVILFISH we're talking about here, but can we get our shit together, fellas? Is that asking too much?  If only there was some kind of website on the Internet that served as a sort-of database of movies or maybe even an easy-to-navigate search engine that could've been consulted for research on the film you're fucking talking about...