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"You got to respect the dead." "I don't even respect the living, friend." A new Civil War is the vision, the Southern colonel (Joseph Cotten) has no use for General Lee's surrender, the cause calls for money from a Yankee caravan. (The helter-skelter massacre establishes the atmosphere of squalid torpor cracked by abrupt frenzies.) The Django coffin returns with a difference, the stolen fortune disguised as a hero's corpse requires a grieving widow—the blowsy lush (María Martín) can't rise to the occasion so the lady gambler (Norma Bengell) is plucked out of the saloon as a replacement. The mad rebel is the patriarch of a cutthroat brood, "the best of the bunch" (Julián Mateos) is a relative term. A reptilian insignia, a counterfeit honor. "That wouldn't be very fittin' for the part you're playin' in this little drama." No heroes for Sergio Corbucci at his most pitiless, just greed and insanity devouring each other in the endless wasteland. (Even bandits claim higher morals by scorning the protagonist for shooting a man holding a white flag.) The rites of decency merely get in the way of the mission, a preacher's impromptu requiem threatens to crumble the charade and the noble burial in the Union fort has to be promptly undone during a downpour. Cotten in Confederate uniform evokes Aldrich's The Last Sunset, the violated indigenous maiden is from Ford's Wagon Master. Blind witnesses are casually gunned down while desert rats proclaim the grungy philosophy. "Where do you hail from?" "From under a rock. That's where they say we all begin. Crawlin' out from underneath somethin'." The punchline is the old switcheroo, the river swallows the traitorous banner. With Gino Pernice, Ángel Aranda, Claudio Gora, Aldo Sambrell, Al Mulock, Ennio Girolami, and Benito Stefanelli.
--- Fernando F. Croce |