I Am Sartana, Your Angel Of Death (1969)

I was not familiar with the Sartana spaghetti westerns until Arrow Video released a boxset, their remastered versions available on Tubi to stream. The first one I watched was I Am Sartana, Your Angel Of Death (1969; Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino), the second in the series, and what a character, dressed in all black […]

The Great Silence (1968)

Spaghetti westerns were a genre that would be programmed on SBS Saturday Cult Movie Night and I remember seeing the end of The Great Silence (1968; Il Grande Silenzio) when I was younger. Recently, the film is referenced as an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, name dropped as one of the filmmaker’s favourite […]

Day Of Anger (1967)

Riz Ortolani’s jazzy, bombastic, memorable score to Day Of Anger (1967; I giorni dell’ira) was used in a key sequence of Tarantino’s Django Unchained and is known from the soundtrack. Sitting down to watch this Lee Van Cleef spaghetti western, there’s also a similar plot to Django with an older, experienced gun fighter Talby (Van […]

Death Rides A Horse (1967)

The spaghetti western, Death Rides A Horse (1967; Da uomo a uomo), starts off with a gold-robbing gang who brutalises and murders a whole family. Except for the sole surviving boy who grows up to be John Phillip Law out for revenge. His path crosses with cowboy Lee Van Cleef, recently released from prison with […]

Django (1966)

The original Django (1966) is a spaghetti western that obviously Tarantino paid tribute in Django Unchained taking the name, the theme song and even having original Django Franco Nero pop up in a cameo. The original Django film is itself a riff (or cash-in copycat) on A Fistful Of Dollars in that it’s based on […]