If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death

Frank Kramer's SARTANA (1968) has emerged as one of the most interesting examples of the classic era Spaghetti Westerns and yet exists as a sort of exuberant failure, reveling in it's sense of artiness & bad taste at the same time. Yet it's an important failure, a movie that spawned a recurring character and helped to shape the Spaghetti Western into a genuinely "adult" form of cinematic entertainment. The film was classified with an "X" certificate in much of Europe when first released and only made it's way to English speaking audiences in a somewhat diminished cut -- and has now been released by indie Spaghetti Western label Wild East Productions on DVD in it's complete form, and demands some re-evaluation. When I first encountered this movie I was admittedly caught up in a wave of excitement about the film's look & style. Here is a pretty much pure example of the Spaghetti Western, made entirely in Italy by an all European cast with no standout Yankee Gringo star turn, unless you count Klaus Kinski's ten minutes or so on screen. Gianni Garko headlines as Sartana in the second of five screen outings by him as a character named "Sartana" but the first from the loosely related series featuring Sartana as a hero: 1966's $1000 ON THE BLACK depicts Sartana as a crazed, barbaric killer and is not related to the Good Guy Sartana movies ... or so the thinking goes.

Sartana's character in this first Good Guy outing is actually more successfully realized than the movie he inhabits, which tells a sort of labyrinthine plot by various bigwigs in a tumbleweed nowhere to intercept a shipment of gold & screw each other over for their percentages, resulting in murder and mayhem: the usual boring stuff. What works is Sartana's character fleshed out by Garko: A black garbed, laconic, mysterious gunfighter who appears out of nowhere with motives all his own and no past history (perhaps the ghost of the original Sartana, sent back to atone for his sins on Earth??). Yet he seems to know what everybody in the movie is up to and has a plan to play the different sides against each other & move in once the dust has settled to pick up the pieces for himself like a Hyena, which is how one character aptly describes him. Sartana is there to preside over the deaths, and make sure everyone gets buried in style.

This is done with a minimum of dialog, an emphasis on mood and a staggering body count for a movie of such limited scope. Which plays out very much like an arty, dark-toned cartoon or graphic novel, with Sartana as a sort of Batman like avenger who takes justice into his own hands. Garko wears his Sartana personal like a tailored suit, even perfecting a way of turning while gazing up from underneath the brim of a hat that reminds me of watching a cobra moving with a snake charmer. He also has more in common with James Bond than Clint Eastwood, armed with a small pepper-box type Derringer pistol that behaves more like a movie prop than an actual weapon, and more often then not scheming his way out of a jam or around his adversary's flanks. He is the epitome of "cool" as a Spaghetti Western anti-hero, and it is easy to see why his performance spawned a series.

The film also boasts a first rate A-list supporting cast of genre veterans: the crazed William Berger, Sydney Chaplin, Spaghetti Western legend Fernando Sancho, Andrea Scotti, Sal Borgese, and of course Klaus Kinski. One of the attributes that gives the film a decidedly surrealist bent is Kinski's "performance", which appears to have been filmed over the course of a long weekend without anyone else present on set but Kinski. Watch him in the barbershop scene: He appears to be dialing it in from another dimension, and in all is on-screen for about ten minutes. What a way to make a living. The later "Sartana" movies directed by Anthony Ascott became increasingly cartoonish but this film has a dark, nasty, almost sadistic side to it that is quite special. I would almost refer to it as "mean spirited", and filmed on a shoestring budget that allowed no quarter for artifice. The offbeat musical score by Piero Piccioni is uniquely un-cinematic with an organ as the central instrument instead of the usual Morricone flavored bravado, and most of the outdoor scenes were filmed near a dump outside of Rome. You can see the green yucky chemicals polluting the pond around which one scene is set, which seems appropriate for a ghoulish, overtly violent cartoon. Or even a horror movie.

8/10 for Spaghetti fans, 5/10 for everybody else, and a classic of the genre any way you slice it.

Forget the plot that was usual, this unique genre spaghetti western certainly are their colorful characters, Sartana (Gianni Garko) portraits a soft spoken hero, overtly akin as Clint Eastwood, but highly stylized, handling a sort of cylinder tagged with cards symbols, spinning around, playing poker, winning of course, those enemies as the Mexican General Tampico, who wants for any means who everybody shall call him as real name "DonJosé Manuel Francisco Mendoza Montezuma de La Plata Perez Rodriguez, very usual on realty spanish members, what a name, what character eating the chicken with dirty hands on a few bites only, also the blue eyes Lasky (William Berger) as often a crook and a special guest Klaus Kinski as the skillful dagger man, beauty girls, without forget the funniest older undertaker, the screenwriter and friendly director Gianfranco Parolini states at bonus material that never received a penny for this picture, which he had 30% of the profits, the producer did swear that lost all his money and couldn't pay his share!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25

Sartana (played superbly by John Garko) has one of the greatest entrances on screen of all the Spaghetti protagonists. When accused of looking like a scarecrow, he utters the classic line "I am your pallbearer" before gunning down all the bandits facing him. A classic moment, with the black clad Sartana setting the scene perfectly for this Gothic tinged western.

The story itself is a very complicated affair, and one which I'm not completely sure I followed from beginning to end (I blame the wine consumption). In simple terms, the story evolves around a stagecoach robbery and murder (with the culprits themselves hijacked and massacred by Lasky - played by the ever brilliant William Berger - and his gang). Enter Sartana, in the midst of further double crossing and more double crossing. And cue bloodshed aplenty!

Sartana combines the gadgetry of Parolini's later Sabata movies, with the darkness and brutality of Django. There are classic performances from Garko and Berger together with the familiar faces of Fernando Sancho and Klaus Kinski.

The success of Sartana is clearly demonstrated by the string of sequels (and name-checks) that followed. And rightly so, the character is in equal parts cool, mysterious and deadly. Much like the film. I just wish I understood it better (time to put away the bottle, and rewind the video perhaps).

Crooked bankers plan an insurance swindle and hire a Mexican gang to steal the bank's gold but they also pay Lasky's gang to kill the Mexicans.

Spaghetti westerns can claim some essential classics among their ranks. For a handful of exemplars, and the way that westerns have largely faded as a genre since the 70s, I think it's often overlooked that of all the spaghetti westerns ever made, not all are equal. 'If you meet Sartana... pray for your death' is enjoyable, but I think it's safe to say that it's not one of the best examples of the style. There's a decided bluntness and lack of polish that characterizes the entirety of the picture, not least of all in its editing (brusque and tactless), cinematography, sound design (rather tinny), plot development (far less than fluid and natural), acting (quite overcooked), dubbing, and direction. All the solid bones are here of a concrete narrative, and one that should be compelling in and of itself, yet as it presents to us it feels like much of the fine detail has been sandblasted away, leaving blocky rough edges as one element of the feature ill-fittingly abuts another. This isn't to say that the movie isn't clever at points, but it seems like we're mostly getting the broad strokes, and only the crudest form of the tale as we could be seeing it.

In the fundamentals this is just as suitable as most of its brethren. The production design, art direction, costume design, and filming locations all serve to build a strong look and feel to the proceedings. Action sequences in and of themselves are done well, some better than others while some instances are undercut by curt or overzealous camerawork and editing. All this is well and good, but also only goes so far in securing a picture's favor. And more to the point, again, such quality is set against the wild dearth of subtlety that often strips the plot of coherence as the story advances. I'm not entirely sure that some scenes or beats have meaningful connective threads between them, for they've been worn away by the coarseness. And what is a movie, a western especially, without a distinct, united tale to impart?

'If you meet Sartana... pray for your death' is entertaining, and fairly worthwhile on its own merits. It's also notably flawed, and considerably weaker than many of its contemporaries. Just a little bit more of a delicate hand in any regard would have gone a long way toward improving the title as a whole. Opinions vary and no doubt other folks get much more out of this than I did; I also wonder if I'm not being too kind. One way or another this is a decent way to spend 90 minutes if you come across it, but don't go out of your way by any means.