Content: Dan Hogan’s (Klaus Kinski) gang robbed 100.000 dollars in gold out of the bank of Phoenix. The gangsters try to escape over the mexican border, followed by masses of rangers. So Daisy (Anna Zinneman), Hogan’s ex-girlfriend, has to transport the booty: She is forced to cooperate, because Hogan has kidnapped their little son. The rest of the gang splits up, one plans to reunite at a lone telegraph station. But things don’t work out completely for the bandits: They find their designated leader to Mexico murdered in his hut. At the telegraph station they are awaited by a mysterious stranger (Paolo Casella), introducing himself as John Webb. He offers to bring them safely over the border for the half of their booty. But the gold doesn’t arrive: not a bit of Daisy. The stranger increases the inner tensions by claiming, that one of the gangsters is a traitor. After all Reed (Dino Strano aka “Dean Stratford”), Hogan’s right hand, looses his nerves and dismiss the boss. To crown it all, a stagecoach with its passengers arrives, and later on there are some rangers looking for the right, so that we see the first dead. Finally Daisy and the gold reach the station. Under Webb’s leadership the remaining bandits and two female hostages start for the trail to the mexican border. During the privatious way Webb continuously breeds discord, so that our small tour group diminishs steadily. Finally Webb is able to settle an ald score with Hogan.
| The Gunslinger says: Not what you’ll call a classic SW, but an atmospheric and good film, which gains its tension out of the psychological games of the participants. The stranger, whose puposes are nebulous up to the final, doesn’t participate at the resulting struggles: He initializes them quite clever and benefits of the results, but mostly takes the position of an observing analytic. Paolo Casella is credible cool and apparently unconcerned. Klaus Kinski gives a strong performace too: Hogan oscillates between a kind of vibrating normal state and sudden eruptions of somewhat like calm violence. The camerawork by Franco Villa is tasty. Migliardi’s score once more is exeptional and as his work for Kill him not as typical westernlike: We have a strong harptheme, taking up a motive from the melancholic titletrack. But it's embedded in a rather jazzy context, where you’ve got a vibraphone, a woodwind section or some distorted strings. During the trip through deserted landscapes the music is underlined by the silent howling of the wind.
| Rating: $$$$
| Bodycount: 6 Gringos, 2 Mexicans, 2 Women
| Explicit Brutalities: - Hogan drives the exhausted Eleanor in a hole of quicksand - by using his bullwhip.
| Luv': Finally John and Senta (Patrizia Adiutori), granddaughter of the carrier (Dante Maggio) of the telegraph station, get themselves. But not long to go for the final credits, folx: 2/10
| Gore: 0/10
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| OT:
Prega il Morto e amazza il Vivo
AT:
Shoot the Living and pray for the Dead
Year:
D, S: Giuseppe Vari ("Joseph Warren")
S: Adriano Bolzoni
C: Franco Villa
M: Mario Migliardi
with: Paolo Casella ("Paul Sullivan"), Klaus Kinski, Patrizia Adiutori, Victoria Zinny
 | The evil boy scout: Klaus Kinski
|  | Paolo Casella and Patrizia Adiutori looking into a barrel of
a gun - they don´t even need the binoculars for this
|  | No smoking in vicinity of firearms! (Aldo Barberito)
|  | Klaus Kinski is pushing up the daises
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