Sartana's Here... Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin (1970)
An early scene in this film shows a bandit with matches between his toes and he shoots his gun to light the matches. Sartana comes riding in, shoots him and the proceeds to shoot the last match between the now dead bandit’s toes and uses the match to light his cigarette. Later we see someone shooting the leaves of a sunflower as a “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”-thing. Sartana shots dozen of bandits through his boots, his hat and even a piece of bread. Just examples of what kind of playfulness creativity there is applied to this spaghetti western. The creative tilted camerawork continues with some eye popping ideas such as a triple split screen when three bandits are killed in quick succession. The plot is the usual fare of everyone after the same loot of gold, no one can be trusted as everyone double crosses and betrays each others. The plot is a bit complicated and doesn’t really matter. I am really starting to love these Sartana films as they are just drenched with creative stylish ideas. You get a sense that they really just wanted to create something fun, entertaining and with a unique style above all else. It has plenty of humor and gags, but in my opinion it never becomes silly or dumb. Even though it was a bit weird to see George Hilton in the role as Sartana at first, he carries the character well and it is most definitely still very much a Sartana-film. I wish he had done more than one.
Rating: 4