Texas, Adios (1966)
One of the earlier spaghetti westerns and it shows, as it struggles a bit with pace and how to built an engaging narrative. The acting also left something to be desired. It still does many things right with a revenge plot that has a couple of interesting twists and turns. The main villain is an unique one as he is both absolutely sadistic, killing and torturing people just because he can, but also shows some regret and self-loathing over the kind of person he has become. Franco Nero is serviceable as the man with proper gun skills out for revenge, but his screen presence doesn’t reach the levels of his iconic role in Django.
This was Ferdinando Baldi’s first western, and the Italian style wasn’t fully developed in 1966, so the movie fumbles a bit with how it executes the primary elements for the genre. There are still some leftovers from the American western and the creativity we see in later spaghetti westerns aren’t there yet. The violence is there though, especially in the final act where it gets pretty crazy.
Despite that it is a bit unpolished, I like it for its place in the genre’s history where the spaghetti western elements and approach wasn’t fully developed yet, and still retained some things from the American western.
Rating: 3.5