Much as I love Ennio Morricone’s theme to this movie (most recently used in the BBC sitcom “Nighty Night”), I didn’t quite know what I’d make of the movie itself, since I recently tried to watch Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy again and found I’d kind of lost my love of Spaghetti Westerns. This movie wholely rekindled the flame, though. It’s goofy in the same manner as A Fistful of Dynamite was (so long since I last saw that, though, I need to get my as-yet unwatched DVD off the shelf, lol), and though you can feel the Sergio Leone presence (be as it may solely because of the input of Henry Fonda and Morricone), there’s also a touch of Sam Peckinpah and something else entirely in Tonino Valerii’s direction. Film is slowed down like Peckinpah, sped up like a silly Buster Keaton flick, and even frozen entirely for an astonishing climactic scene. Morricone’s score, too, is among his more kooky work, sometimes mimicking the music he wrote for Leone, sometimes foreshadowing scores he’s written since, sometimes simply screeching “Ride of the Valkries” as a hundred horses ride out of the dust.

It’s a comfort to know there are lots of these ‘little known’ Spaghetti Westerns out there for me to find. I still don’t think I’ll ever love Leone’s work outside of the Once Upon a Times as I used to, but this genre definitely has a lot of fun to offer.

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