Light the Fuse… Sartana Is Coming (1970)
The final installment in the Sartana franchise is memorable for being somewhat of an outlier of the five films, but it doesn’t reach the height of I Am Sartana Your Angel of Death or Sartana’s Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin.
I have come to like the series for the “fun and games”-vibe, accompanied with creative camerawork and stylistic choices. This has some of that, but it starts of in a very dark and cruel tone. Prisoners stuck in open pit prisons under the scalding heat, acid torture and a general depiction of cruelty that I didn’t expect. Sartana also comes across as less sympathetic and charming here, but the film isn’t really a dark and serious western either. It does still has that playful style, and the cruelty is mostly at the beginning as the plot evolves into typical territory with plenty of people after the same massive gold loot. Each group playing each other out, lying to get them to take each other out and the usual clever shenanigans from Sartana. I came to like the film better in the last half, as it got more recognizable as I wasn’t really sure in the beginning what it was aiming for.
The series have always toyed with whether Sartana has supernatural abilities. Hints here and there that goes beyond the usual flawless fast gunslinger skills. That part is ramped up a bit more here and we have an adversary flat out say that he is not human.
A decent end to the official Sartana series, but it will likely mostly be the first three I would want to revisit again.
Rating: 3.5