This is not really a Sabata film, but often Italian westerns pretended to be sequels just to get unwitting customers to come to see the films*. For example, Franco Nero's "Django" was very successful so practically every Italian film producer brought out a Django film but with a different leading man--and a completely different plot! Here, cashing in on the Sabata craze (small as it was), a non-Sabata film starring Yul Brynner is suddenly a Sabata film thanks to dubbing! In fact, originally, Brynner's character was called 'Indigo Black'. I checked and there were seven Sabata films--only two which are REAL Sabata films with Lee Van Cleef. The rest, like "Adios Sabata" are just rip-offs. So is this a BAD rip-off or a decent and watchable rip-off? Read on to see...
The plot of this film is close to that of a real Sabata film in that although he looks mean and shoots people by the score, this incarnation finds him doing this in order to help the Mexican Civil War of 1867. Now that doesn't mean he won't take a percentage for himself as well! A percentage of what you may ask....GOLD. It seems an evil (but very stylish) Austrian colonel is shipping gold--gold which could be used by the revolutionaries to buy weapons. However, Sabata isn't alone in this quest--he's taking along a fat guy, two VERY strange acrobats and a pretty-boy named Ballentine--who you KNOW is up to no good.
As far as Italian westerns go, this theme is VERY common--though most of the time the hero is helping the anti-Diaz forces of the Mexican Civil War of the 1910s. This one is set much earlier and has to do with getting rid of the imposed leader, Maximillian. Regardless, this one is reasonably entertaining, full of insanely good shots and has a touch of humor. Worth seeing but not a particularly novel film...except when it comes to one of the acrobats. His skill is handling a very large ball bearing kind of like a hacky sack--which he then hurls with his foot at people with deadly accuracy! Ha...worth seeing just to see this guy in action. ball bearing guy
*The same spirit of intellectual dishonesty was also rampant in Asian films after the death of Bruce Lee. Many supposedly new and recently discovered Lee films flooded the market--starring folks such as Bruce Li or consisting of home movies of Lee or outtakes from his films interspersed with a double wearing sunglasses! These films were ALL horrible--whereas a few of the Italian knockoffs were actually watchable. Plus, at least the Italian films had cool music.
