$10,000 Blood Money

$10,000 Blood Money (10,000 Dolari Per Un Massacro) (1967)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: Romolo Guerrieri

Starring: Gianni Garko, Claudio Camaso, Loredana Nusciak, Pinuccio Ardia, Adriana Ambesi

From: Zenith Cinematografica/Flora Film

This is one of those films where you don’t want to read the plot description beforehand; OK, the one on Arrow’s streaming site (where I saw the flick last night) is ambiguous enough but the ones on IMDb and even Letterboxd itself give too much away. While there was 1966’s Django and 1987’s Django Strikes Again-yes, there was one official Django sequel which starred Franco Nero; I don’t blame most for not knowing this as it probably wasn’t until a year ago that I discovered this fact-the film sometimes known as 10,000 Dollars for a Massacre is one of many that had a character w/ this name. It happened to be played by Gianni Garko here, best known for his takes on Sartana and I’d never seen him look more like Franco Nero; there was an obvious stylistic choice.

The plot sounds simple enough: a heel named Manuel kidnaps someone’s daughter as a bit of revenge—thus, this person hires Django to get her back. That said, this is more complicated than you’d first be led to believe. Django is someone who only agrees to the bounty after he’s offered… $10,000. There is a relationship with a woman; it’s also a relationship where feelings pivot on a dime more than once, but I can accuse a great Western or two of similar behavior. Unlike those plot descriptions, I won’t spoil the surprises.

There were some colorful characters; this includes Manuel’s father (the old “constantly laughing old outlaw” stereotype I’ve seen in other Spaghetti Westerns) and Django’s photographer friend. There are badass moments and some creative deaths, sure… personally, the biggest highlight was a score that at first sounded like just a riff on Morricone-which it was-before it pivoted into different directions. I really do rate it highly; it happened to be from a woman, Nora Orlandi, of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh fame. There’s never been many female composers, whether classically or in the film world-that is unfortunate.

The movie makes its influences blatant; Loredana Nusciak plays a role not that dissimilar to her appearance in Django; Manuel is played by Claudio Camaso, the younger brother of Gian Maria Volante. Much to my relief, this has enough differences from a archetypical Spaghetti Western (such as being surprisingly subdued) to earn bonus points and thus make me feel that this was pretty good.