TNL Movie Club - Death Rides a Horse

[arjue]

Death Rides a Horse
aka Da uomo a uomo
1967
Director: Giulio Petroni
IMDB

Plot:

Director Giulio Petroni's all-but-forgotten spaghetti Western pairs Danger: Diabolik hero John Phillip Law with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly villain Lee Van Cleef. As a boy, Bill had watched helplessly as bandits slaughtered his parents. Now, more than a decade later, grown-up gunslinger Bill (Law) scours the Old West for his family's killers, eventually joining up with Ryan (Cleef), a criminal who's also looking for the bandits.

Despite being one of the better Spaghetti Westerns ever made, this one has unjustly flown under the radar, with a measly 1394 votes on imdb.

Its not quite as poetic as a Leone western, but there is a fair amount of social commentary hidden in the subtext of the film. Its plot is very simple and straight, but the characters are a lot of fun still. Lee Van Cleef shines in this movie and has a perfect face for westerns (as seen in DNG's avatar). He is a hard motherfucker who will rape your face. John Phillip Law does fine in his role too, but its hard to accept that such a pretty boy can be such a hard ass. Much like the plot, the direction is blunt and functional, but its still nice to look at.

The score is by Ennio Morricone who also did the scores for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West (as well as seemingly almost every italian movie ever), and I think this is possibly his best work. It's well worth tracking down the soundtrack.

This movie is available on DVD and Netflix streaming, so no excuses.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

I know what I'm watching today! Lee Van Cleef was totally made for westerns.

[JM]

I'll hop on the movie club wagon with this one. I love pasghetti westerns.

[Doc Holliday]

Hey! This movie's on my Morricone soundtrack collection, but I've never seen it! I'll watch it tomorrow night.

[Rumpy]

Lee Van Cleef is a fantastic name.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

It took about 15 seconds to realize that I had tried to watch this before. Four or five years ago when I first started getting into Westerns, I bought one of those 10 or 20 movies on a couple of DVDs from FYE for $12 or something. This was one of the movies. The transfer was so bad that I stopped watching it about five minutes into it. I couldn't see a damn thing.
Unfortunately, the netflix version ain't much better. Took me all day to get through it.

I'd love to be able to see this in a restored version. The graininess, washed out colors, and crackly audio really detract from the movie. I'm far from the Something Has To Happen Every Second Or I Lose Interest guy, but it was difficult to maintain focus.

Looking past all that, I enjoyed the movie. The ending was satisfying. I liked how the amount of bad guys seemed to double from one shot to the next.

[arjue]

Aw, you serious? The version I have is restored beautifully, I just assumed the Netflix version was too. What a shame.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

I see three different versions on Amazon. If any of them are the one you have, let me know. I will buy it.

[Advocate]

I downloaded a perfectly fine version on Demonoid.

[Changeling]

I'm on this tomorrow.