If You Meet Sartana... Pray For Your Death

If You Meet Sartana... Pray for Your Death (Se Incontri Sartana Prega Per La Tua Morte) (1968)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Gianfranco Parolini

Starring: Gianni Garko, William Berger, Sydney Chaplin, Fernando Sancho, Klaus Kinski

From: Paris Etolie Films/Parnass Film

This month I finally saw the first movie in the Sartana series, starring Gianni Garko. Like with I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin, it was viewed on the Arrow streaming site; the print does look real good. It is a standard Spaghetti Western with the various trademarks: a badass hero who can do some improbable things, a few memorable one-liners, double and triple crosses, a poker scene, sparsely populated towns, people chasing after gold, a Gatling gun, etc. It's just that this is more convoluted than the rest; that includes A Fistful of Dollars, which this was heavily “inspired” by. It was amusing to me that this also stole the musical pocketwatch idea from For a Few Dollars More.

At least I was still entertained even if the story tied itself into Gordian knots at times. At least Garko was fun in the role (between grinning, uttering some badass lines and using his concealed small poster that he hides on his wrist as if he was Travis Bickle) & the bad guys were memorable... including real life bad guy Klaus Kinski. However, my favorite character was Dusty, the old and diminutive town undertaker who has a distinctive look and offered a few moments of levity in otherwise a grim tale.