Ballad of Death Valley

"Sartana nella valle degli avvoltoi" (English translation: "Sartana in the Valley of Death") AKA "The Ballad of Death Valley" (1970), is one of the hordes of unofficial sequels to "If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death", directed by Gianfranco Parolini, who made the interesting "God's Gun" (1976). This offering is directed by the competent Roberto Mauri, who stages some nice action scenes, and gets the great William Berger to do some cool business with a gun. The supporting cast is fine, and the photography frequently uses some neat angles, but the real problem with the movie is the exteriors. There are repeated shots of people riding across green and moist hills, covered in grass. This is supposed to be set around the Mexican border! The only "desert" scene is the sequence in Death Valley, which looks like it was filmed in a quarry. This aspect really let the film down for me, and it's a shame, as the rest of the movie is quite good.

I found this film quite disappointing. There are some good moments but the pace is pedantic. The storyline involves the usual hunt for hidden gold spaghetti western fare, but was, at times, non-sensical, unless I fell asleep in the middle, which may have happened. The dialogue and acting was quite poor in parts. William Berger's hair colour looked ridiculous and at time he almost looked like a peroxide blonde. The music was quite odd at times and often did not match the mood. The Japanese DVD release version was of surprisingly good quality. Not recommended unless you are a spaghetti western die-hard like me and must see them all.

While "Django" was the most-ripped off name in spaghetti westerns, I think "Sartana" must be in second place. Though the hero of this spaghetti western dresses in black, he is not the fantastic Sartana character John Garko played in several movies. For one thing, he's played by William Berger - pretty appropriate, since this character is an anti-hero. (And he's not even named Sartana!)

The story is pretty confusing, with some bad editing and a lack of explanation in some key scenes (like: where do those explosions on the city street come from?) But the story takes several interesting twists and turns, like how power switches back and forth from one character to another. And it's interesting to see Berger as a kind of hero, after playing the heavy in so many other roles. Movie also has one of the more memorable theme songs - "King For A Day" - even though it doesn't really apply to Berger's character or anyone else!

I liked William Berger in this film and I liked the story. The final gunfight was very exciting. It was something like the one in For a Few Dollars More.

The ending wasn't all that funny, though and I thought the film dragged somewhat in the middle. The jailbreak was good and so was the hunt through death valley. I think many of the same people who were in Sabata were in this film although I am not sure.

The theme song "King for a Day" was very good and fitted the film. All spaghettis should have good music and this one does.

Ice cold outlaw William Berger frees three brothers on the verge of execution in exchange for fifty percent of their unrecovered loot. Unfortunately for him, recovering the money isn't as easy as he'd hoped for, having not accounted for the double-cross the brothers have planned.

What could have been a run-of-the-mill spaghetti western is made more watchable by an interesting performance by Berger, who plays his role with no emotion whatsoever, making the few times he shows any joy or compassion look like the mimicry of a sociopath!

As far as everything else goes, direction and production values are adequate, though it's the gun-play and seeing how the aloof Berger reacts to different situations and challenges that really makes the film fun.