The heat of summer is getting nasty. You can’t take two steps outside without feeling like the moisture is being sucked out of your skin. The sun seems twice as huge. What are you to do on a steamy night? You should watch a few Spaghetti Westerns. Why don’t I recommend a Hollywood Western? The cowboy films of John Wayne were shot in dry heat. When the Italian crews went to Spain or a frontier-ish part of Italy, the sweat on the actors looked natural. You can feel a part of the action on the screen. Blood Money – Four Western Classics Vol. 2 continues the work of Vengeance Trails: Four Western Classics. The boxset contains four Wild West films about bounties and gold that are bound to please fans of the shoot ’em ups on the frontier.
$10,000 Blood Money (1967 – 97:25) opens with Django (If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death‘s Gianni Garko) sleeping on a beach with what appears to be a pal. Turns out this person is Django’s latest capture and he’s dead. He can’t lose the body since he needs to collect the bounty. While crossing the desert, Django crosses paths with Manuel Vasquez (A Bay of Blood‘s Claudio Camaso). While the Mexican bandit has a price on his head, Django believes it’s going to go up and he’ll wait on his investment to mature. Manuel’s bounty goes up quick after his gang storm a rich man’s ranch and kidnap his daughter. The wealthy man wants Django to rescue his daughter and kill Manuel. The price isn’t close to the $10,000 Django wants so he stays in bed. During a crooked Poker game, Django and Manuel have a bonding moment involving the card cheat. Manuel wants his new friend to be part of a gold heist. Django goes along only discover having no moral compass will only destroy his future plans. Now he’s wants to take out Manuel without worrying about the monetary reward. Italian producers cranked out dozens of by the numbers unofficial Django movies, $10,000 Blood Money is more than a quick cash grab at the box office. What’s interesting is that a year after playing Django this film, Garko would create his own iconic western hero with the Sartana movies. Garko and Camaso play worthy opponents. You want to see these two face off one more time. Luckily you can.
Vengeance is Mine (1967 – 95 minutes) brings Garko and Camaso back to the screen. This time they play brothers except they’re not that close. Johnny Forrest (Garko) is a bounty hunter who takes out four wanted men at a remote church. He’s such a badass that he put their wanted posters on four coffins and filled them up. He called his shots like Babe Ruth. When he brings their bodies into town, Johnny notices a familiar face on a wanted poster. It’s his brother Clint (Camaso). Turns out there was a major family crisis when Clint uncovered that Johnny’s real dad isn’t his dad. Even though Dad insists he loves both his sons, things get nasty. This confrontation ends up with Johnny spending 10 years in prison. Now he has a chance to get revenge on his brother and collect the reward. This is not going to be a happy family reunion. Complicating a simple revenge tale is his mother’s dying wish was that Johnny bring Clint to justice and not take advantage of the Dead option of the Wanted Poster. Clint offers Johnny a cut of the loot he heisted with his former gang. Johnny seems set to force his brother to suffer in prison like he did. This is an interesting twist on the good brother-bad brother story. The bad brother is a criminal which is normal. The good brother is usually a priest or a cop, but Johnny is a legal killer who has a chance to end their sibling rivalry in hot lead. They switched up the formula without messing up the chemistry between Garko and Camaso. You can watch $10,000 Blood Money and Vengeance is Mine as a double feature and not feel like you’re watching the same movie twice.
Find a Place to Die (1968 – 89 minutes) stars Jeffrey Hunter who you probably best remember as Captain Pike in the original Star Trek series. He also was a Hollywood Western star with the John Ford classic The Searchers with John Wayne. When his career got bumpy after the end of the studio system, Hunter found himself in Italy and back in the saddle. The film opens with Paul Martin (Django Kill‘s Piero Lulli) and his wife Lisa (The Last Mercenary‘s Pascale Petit) being attacked at their gold mine by a group of Mexican bandits. Paul comes up with a plan that defeats the bandits, but it leaves him trapped. Lisa has to go to a nearby town to try to find men to rescue him before it’s too late. Joe Collins (Hunter) puts together a team for the mission. Seems Joe didn’t do a great job at background checks since a few of his first responders seems to want a lot more in return than gratitude from Paul. This is a rather tight story. Most of this can be attributed to the fact that they ripped off the plot from Garden of Evil starring Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, Cameron Mitchell and Susan Hayward. Unlike Akira Kurosawa who went after Sergio Leone upon discovering A Fistful of Dollars was an unauthorized remake of Yojimbo, nobody at Fox seemed to have brought legal action against the producers of Find A Place To Die.
Matalo! (Kill Him) (1970 – 94 minutes) seems to be what happens when an underground movie breaks out on a Spaghetti Western town. Right off the bat, you can see director Cesare Canevari getting arty as the camera keeps the convict being led to the gallows out of focus while odd people in things in the crowd get the sharpness. Before the noose can finish him off, a Mexican gang rushes in to rescue him. Once he has freedom, he turns on his rescuers and hooks up with his real gang members. After the reunion, they get busy and pull off a major stagecoach heist. And that’s when the backstabbing between “friends” begins as the weirdness continues. How weird does it get? The cowboys dress in outfits that seem to hint that they’re into hippie fashions including paisley jackets, fringe vests and headbands. They hide out at the traditional Wild West town that has a freaky feel. The final showdown involves the use of boomerangs on the dusty streets. As strange as that sounds, the unique weapon works. The film features a psychedelic soundtrack to tie up the weirdness. It’d be easy to claim that Matalo! was influenced by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo except both films seemed to have been made around the same time with El Topo being shot in Mexico. While El Topo has built a cult following over the years, finally having a proper presentation should get people freaking out over Matalo! You’ll want to see what kind of outlaw brings a boomerang to a gun fight.
Blood Money – Four Western Classics Vol. 2 digs a little bit deeper into the Spaghetti Western genre. These are not the titles that get mentioned in an introduction, but they’re extremely entertaining. The four films here bonded by the theme of a getting a fat payday either by collecting a bounty or stealing a large amount of gold. This thematic union makes you feel like you’re watching a film festival and not four randomly grabbed movies from the era. This is the perfect collection of Italian westerns for a hot and humid summer night.
The video is 2.35:1 anamorphic for $10,000 Blood Money and Vengeance Is Mine. The other two are 1.85:1 anamorphic. All four films have 2K restorations off the original camera negative. They bring out the gritty charms of a Spaghetti Western. The audio has the original Italian and English tracks in LPCM mono. Either version sounds great. Both tracks were created in post production. All four movies are subtitled in English.
Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by author and critic Howard Hughes
Fold-out double-sided poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranck.
$10,000 BLOOD MONEY
Audio commentary by author and film historian Lee Broughton goes into the English names used in the film. Broughton is a big fan of the film. He gets into Garko’s Sartana time. He lets us know about Claudio Camaso’s career too.
A Shaman in the West (10:05) has critic Fabio Melelli introduce the film. He feels it is a semi-sequel to Django with Gianni Garko as the bounty hunter character. He gives quite a bit of background on the cast and crew. He gets into a landmark scene that I won’t reveal. He points out that director Romolo Guerrieri likes to have seagulls in his films.
Tears of Django (21:58) is newly edited featurette with archival interviews with director Romolo Guerrieri and actor Gianni Garko recently edited into this piece. The two get into the film. Romolo talks about working for a year shooting a war film in the Soviet Union and learning how to work with actors. He gets into how he became Rod Gilbert for English and change his last name for Italian distribution. Garko enjoyed working with Romolo because the director was calm and kind on the set. There was talk about getting the bounty hunter character to get emotional in a critical scene.
The Producer Who Didn’t Like Western Movies (14:18) has producer Mino Loy admit he didn’t like the genre. But they took advantage of the marketplace and the standing sets in Spain. He gets into changing the cast and crew to American names to help sell the films in the international market.
How the West Was Won (19:21) is a recent interview with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. This is one of the major screenwriters in the ’60s and ’70s including Torso and Suspicious Death of a Minor. He started in the sword and scandal era and kept working at a high rate during the hardcore cop film heyday. He discusses what it was like during the time when the Italian cinema was in overdrive. He gets into his relationship with director Sergio Martino and producer Luciano Martino.
Theatrical trailer (3:26) lets you know something happens in the rain.
Image Gallery includes more than twenty stills of posters from around the world, lobby cards and a sales kit with newspaper advertising cut outs.
VENGEANCE IS MINE
Audio Commentary by critics Adrian J. Smith and David Flint gets into the organ part of the score. They are fans of Nora Orlandi’s score. They give the various alternate titles around the globe. They point out Giovanni Fago’s more artsy moments that go beyond the usual western set ups.
Crime and Punishment (13:05) is an introduction by critic Fabio Melelli. He brings up that even though the movie has the same cast as $10,000 Blood Money, director Giovanni Fago was a bit more auteur in his approach than the more traditional Romolo Guerrieri. We learn about how Claudio Camaso had a short career and life. He lets us know about Italy’s ugliest actor.
Cain and Abel (25:03) edits together archival interviews with actor Gianni Garko and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. The screenwriter talks about how he started in the business working on a Western. But producers didn’t want to do Westerns until Sergio Leone hit it big with Fist Full of Dollars. After he created Sartana, they went to court to fight rival films ripping off the character. He talks about how the title Vengeance is Mine came from the producers. He went with the Cain and Abel variation. He appreciated how poetic Fago was in the first half of the film. Garko had worked with Fago on a TV miniseries. He recounts how TV productions actually recorded actors’ voices unlike feature films. Garko hit is off with Claudio Camaso during their films together. He has a great train story about the two of them travelling to Almeria, Spain. Camaso died in 1977.
In Conversation with Nora Orlandi (15:34) is a recently edited archival interview with composer of the soundtrack. She talks about the deadlines for providing music to movies. She often brought in multiple themes for a director to choose from during editing. She plays a bit of piano during her interview.
Movie After Movie (16:42) has producer Mino Loy admit he didn’t have formal training like other film school folks. He got into 16mm and began to make documentaries. There was a market for films featuring Italian art. He talks about as a producer using casting to secure advances from theater chains. There could also be loan sharks involved in film financing.
Italian Theatrical Trailer (3:14) shows off the more artsy shots of the film first before getting to the gunfighting action.
Image Gallery is nearly two dozen stills of posters, lobby cards (it was called Django der Bastard in West Germany) and press kitss.
FIND A PLACE TO DIE
Audio Commentary by author and critic Howard Hughes gives plenty of details on the production. He talks about Jeffrey Hunter being in John Ford’s The Searchers really made this a special film. We learn where some of the locations can be found in Italy.
Venus and the Cowboys (11:45) is Fabio Melelli’s introduction. He points out that there’s a bit of a mystery as to who is the real director of the film. Both actresses write that Hugo Fregonese and not Giuliano Carnimeo was the director. Melelli believes it was Hugo’s work. The film was made completely in Italy on the outskirts of Rome. He gets into the career of Jeffrey Hunter and how he ended up in Italy after a big Hollywood career. He would die after a special effects accident in a film after this one.
Sons of Leone (18:10) is a freshly edited archival interview with director Giuliano Carnimeo. He talks about his time at film school. He gets into how Sergio Leone really opened up the demand for Italian westerns. There’s a lot of talk about working with Gianna Garko on the various Sartana films. Carnimeo passed away in 2016.
Traditional Figure (31:17) is an in-depth appreciation of the soundtrack and its composer, Gianni Ferrio, by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon. We get the history of Ferrio’s musical education as he gets into jazz of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He eventually makes connections in the film business by being able to compose, arrange and conduct sessions. He gets into Ferrio’s love of counter point in his scores. We get a rundown on so many of the films from Ferrio’s career.
Image Gallery has nearly three dozen pictures of posters, lobby cards (it was sold as a Ringo movie in West Germany) and a press kit with newspaper advertising.
MATALO! (KILL HIM)
Audio Commentary by critics Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson. They enjoy the score to the film since it matches the wild nature of the movie. They explain the Leslie Effect. They do a fine job guiding us through the psychedelic western.
The Movie That Lived Twice (16:09) is an introduction from Fabio Melelli that covers how the story was originally used in Kill The Wicked! Director Cesare Canevari had no clue that he was given a plot like the other film. But Kill The Wicked! didn’t feel so hippie-ish or have a boomerang.
A Milanese Story (44:42) is an in-depth interview with filmmaker Davide Pulici about the career of Matalo! director Cesare Canevari. He met the filmmaker in 1997. He guides us through the various films made by the director. He points out that Canevari stuck close to Milan when making a majority of his films. He described his pal as eccentric. His last major film was The Gestapo’s Last Orgy. Cesare Canevari passed away in 2012.
Untold Icon (39:28) gets deep into composer, Mario Migliardi, by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon. Migliardi doesn’t have too much know about him beyond his prolific musical works. He was all about the organ and electronic music in his scores. Lovely Jon once more gives us a sense about the man behind the music. He likes the wild nature of Matalo! and Migliardi’s score.
Theatrical trailer (3:32) opens with the dust devil and the strange focus on the hanging scene. It hints this won’t be the same as the other westerns that played at the theater over the last few years.
Image Gallery has 15 photos of posters, lobby cards, press release and press kit.
Arrow Video presents Blood Money – Four Western Classics Vol. 2. Directed by Romolo Guerrieri, Giovanni Fago, Giuliano Carnimeo & Cesare Canevari. Starring Gianni Garko, Claudio Camaso, Pascale Petit, Jeffery Archer & Lou Castel. Boxset Contents: 4 movies on 4 Blu-ray discs. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: July 25, 2023.
