Light the Fuse... Sartana Is Coming

There have been quite a lot of "spaghetti" western and taking notes from other succesful ones was not being considered a bad thing. Now one of the stranger things is the dubbing thing. Most of those movies had actors from all over Europe (sometimes all over the world, this has an East meets West vibe) and everyone was talking their own language on set. That means there is not one language track that would satisfy everyone - you'd have German, Italian, English, Spanish and other languages intermingled.

Puritst will not get a track like that as I understand, so you have to be ok with dubbing. I hope I didn't bore you with my explanation, but I think it is important to know. Having said that, this gives you everything you need (gun fights/shootouts) and then some. A neat entry into the Sartana saga ...

Giuliano Carnimeo's "Una Nuvola Di Polvere... Un Grido Di Morte... Arriva Sartana" aka. "Light The Fuse... Sartana Is Coming" is an excellent Spaghetti Western and arguably the best of the Sartana movies with Gianni Garko.

Sartana, the Italian Western's best dressed antihero, is often described as a kind of Spaghetti Western James Bond, which is very reasonable, since does not only have great style, but he uses lots gadgets and tricks . Much alike the fact that many films had 'Django' in their title after Sergio Corbucci's masterpiece "Django" of 1966, Sartana's name was used in quite a bunch of Spaghetti Westerns (not quite as often as Django was used), but none of these films ever came close to the original series with Gianni Garko.

In "Light The Fuse... Sartana Is Coming", Sartana (Garko) is on the hunt for half a million dollars in gold and 2 million dollars of counterfeit money. Sartana is not the only one who is keen on the gold, of course, a gunslinger named Grand Full (Piero Lulli), a beautiful but sneaky widow (Nieves Navarro) and the slightly insane General Monk (José Jaspe) are just three out of many folks who are after the gold.

The acting ins "Light In The Fuse... Sartana Is Coming" is great, especially Gianni Garko delivers a (once again) excellent performance as Sartana. Lovely Nieves Navarro is very convincing as Senora Manassas, a widow who is as crafty as she is beautiful, Spaghetti Western regular Piero Lulli is great as gunslinger Grand Full. The crazy General Monk played by José Jaspe is another great, typical Spaghetti Western character. The supporting cast furthermore contains actors like Bruno Corazzari, whom genre-fans should know for his performances in Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" and Sergio Corbucci's "The Great Silence". Bruno Nicolai's score is excellent and makes the movie even better.

"Light The Fuse... Sartana Is Coming" is what a good Spaghetti Western should be like: A stylish movie with a very good plot, great actors, good gunplay, black humor and an excellent score, superbly photographed in great locations. All of the Sartana movies with Gianni Garko are very cool, fun Spaghetti Westerns, this one is arguably the best of the series. All said, "Light The Fuse... Sartana is Coming" is a great Spaghetti Western, and a must-see for every fan of the genre.

Sartana infiltrates a sadistic frontier prison in order to bust out an inmate accused of stashing half a million dollars in gold. However, getting the inmate out proves to be easier than uncovering the whereabouts of the missing loot, located somewhere in a town full of crooked characters with shady intentions.

Another fast-moving entry in the official Sartana series, starring Gianni Garko, there's a lot of twists and turns, with Sartana seemingly able to read minds, tell the future and see in all directions at once!

There's loads of gun-play and a fairly interesting mystery regarding who exactly has the gold. It's not quite groundbreaking cinema, but it'll do.

One gripe though, there isn't one single likable character in the whole movie, not even Sartana!

Sartana comes around for another case of Wild West crime mystery. This time it's a search for a well-hidden cache of gold (and $2 million in counterfeit money) - and it seems that half the neighborhood is looking for all of it, too - including (but not limited to!) corrupt prison warden, sheriff, a bunch of his deputees, self-proclaimed general and his army for hire, brothers, wives, partners, lovers and friends of deceased gold/money owners, federal agents, false federal agents, elderly gamblers/inventors, gambling house owners and the Apache (well, at least, their cave is involved). As you can probably imagine, with such a ridiculously vast array of characters, the "mystery" gets so muddled that you simply don't care about all the double-, triple- and quadruple-crossings going on all the time. A more talented director and/or writer COULD have been able to pull this thing off (probably by making some plot elements less pronounced than the rest), but as it stands, unfortunately, the whole thing suffers from the lack of consistent pacing - and some order or structure to what's going on.

Though certainly not a masterpiece, the movie is still watchable and holds a certain undeniable entertainment value - and has a lot of shootouts and a really large body count (just think about the sheer number of people competing to get their hands on that gold who are certain to get killed before the final confrontation), complete with Django-like multi-barreled gun massacre the likes of which you probably won't see anywhere else. Also, while perhaps not brilliant, the music - like in many spaghetti westerns - is quite good, and adds a lot of atmosphere to the proceedings.

Strangely, some supporting actors from the previous Sartana movie ("Have a good funeral, my friend - Sartana will pay") - namely, the undertaker (now turned gambler?) and Chinese servant - make appearances here - though it isn't clear if they are supposed to play the same characters they did in the previous installment. And how the hell did Sartana get the Alfie back, what with all the exploding in sheriff's face Alfie did fifteen minutes earlier? Anyway, if you are looking for an easy (if not necessarily very intellectually stimulating) way to spend 90 minutes of your life, give this one a try; perhaps even if you are not a spaghetti western fan - as the whole thing sometimes resembles more a Sherlock Holmes mystery than a typical western.

Now that Netflix are putting on some Italian stuff I found this one in the depth of their catalog.

Pure spaghetti western with the typical macho hero smoking cigares when killing people. Okay, it do reminds you sometimes towards the Clint eastwood westerns but this is on lower profile. A lot of shootings but never a drip of blood, weird.

But hey, the story was good, the extreme close-ups are there and the score is procent western,.

If you don't expect that much you're in for a nice ride.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5.