If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968)
I just got a bunch of new spaghetti westerns blurays and starting off with the first Sartana film has opened up a new previously unknown layer of the genre for me. In some ways it is just a copy of things we have seen previously in other spaghetti westerns, but they way everything is combined and distilled into the unique Sartana character makes it something completely new. Sartana has the same fast gunslinger capacity as basically every other western hero and the stoic mute persona of Eastwood, but there is addition of mystique and almost supernatural elements that makes this quite unique.
Compared to the like of Sollima or Corbucci, this doesn’t seem overly interested in political allegories. On the surface at least this is really just several groups of bad people all chasing the same pot of gold, and dozens gets killed in the process as no one is loyal to anyone but themselves. The body count is pretty high, even for spaghetti westerns standards, and with the exception of the last duel, it isn’t the stylish slow showdowns we know from Leone. It is just massacres with little to no warning.
While this was a pretty good 2K restoration, the source material is clearly not in the best of shape as there are plenty of scratches and lines on the film, which just adds a nice dusty atmosphere to the experience. This is proper gritty grindhouse spaghetti westerns and I love it.
Rating: 4