jethrojohn

I saw a lady say once that the reason she hated so many female characters in media is because they were written by men. I've taken this as a sort of test of whether or not a film has good female characters.

I ask myself, does this film pass the test?

This, sadly, does not, with our heroine in the this one being as dumb as six planks nailed together. At one point, even after seeing all kinds of horror, agreeing to marry the main villain.

That was my main issue with this film. The female characters have no agency or real character. Only existing as victims to be saved. A very "of the time" type of film, annoying since even Hammer's first Dracula had pretty good female leads.

The rest of this production is great. Cushing is brilliant, as always. The performance given by the actress playing the Baron's maid is so wonderfully unhinged that she overshadows the main villain.

Which brings us to another problem. The poor guy playing the villain had some massive shoes to fill, and unfortunately, he doesn't get there.

His lack of acting experience shows. He doesn't have an ounce of the presence or charm of Lee. I can believe Lee would be able to seduce anyone. This guy? Not so much.

This is still a decent film. It's just that it's treatment of female characters has not aged well, and it annoyed me no end to have to suffer their presence.

(Except for the inn keeper's wife! SHE should have been the female lead!)

Watch this for Cushing and the wonderful maid. Just don't expect a classic.

Watching this film is like sleeping through a typical Spaghetti western and only waking up for the gunfights.

In the first 11 minutes, there are about 5 shootouts and about three double-crosses. The hero of the piece in involved in one of those shootouts.

There's no set up or anything. This isn't Django, where the film focuses on him and him alone. His motives may not be clear, but we know he's up to something. There's something magnetic about the character.

Here we have faceless bad guys that Sartana happens to stumble into for some reason. The only reason you know the hero is the hero is because he has a good one liner. Otherwise he's as indistinguishable from the grizzled faces of the entire cast as everyone else.

You won't know for a very long while what ANYONE'S motivation is. Not the hero's. Not the bad guys. Heck, I challenge you to find out who the bad guys even are, because they keep walking on-screen and getting shot dead almost immediately after, and not even by the hero most of the time.

I'm pretty sure they gave the director a budget, a location, and a bunch of actors and said "shoot something", because they certainly weren't working with any script.

They had a vague idea to have a James Bond gadgety gadget hero in the old west, and that was it.

What you're left with is a film where things happen, people get shot, and a hero wanders in and out of frame with a music watch every now and then. You won't know why any of it is going on, and nor will you care, really.