Vengeance

Another matzoh ball-topped spag western featuring Lee Van Cleef and a very young Leif Garrett (before he became a teenage heart throb), who also "teamed" up in God's Gun which I have given a low rating, but this one rates even lower for worse acting, action and production. Tom Thurston (Leif Garrett) witnesses the brutal murder of his parents and the abduction of his elder sister by a mostly Mexican band of outlaws led by white man McClain (Van Cleef) who is the most un-western looking villain in a Western movie; with his greasy long hair, ornate headband and single earring, he looks like he wandered out of Woodstock Festival into a movie set by mistake and decided to stay there. On the spur of the moment, Tom is hellbent on revenge, pursuing the gang surreptitiously and surprisingly manages to whittle down their numbers in various ways, without being caught. And that's just the beginning of a long list of errors I can spot, in continuity and logic and others. And that's not even mentioning the passel of no-account lowlifes that try to rob the gold prospector Isaac (Jim Brown) of his hard-gained treasure, who are in my opinion the most moronic and incompetent bad guys I've ever come across in film. The climax and ending are simply unbelievable they're almost surreal. Watch the film and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Seek this one out if you are looking for a different kind of Lee Van Cleef "spaghetti-type western". Definitely on a par with his lesser westerns like "Death Rides a Horse", but inferior to "The Big Gundown", this revenge story has quite a few unusual aspects. The surviving massacred family member is a young boy, who proves quite resourceful in his vendetta against Van Cleef and his gang. Lee is definitely not a sympathetic character, and his evil presence is perhaps only surpassed by "Angel Eyes" in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". The quality of the DVD is inferior, with the sound badly out of sync. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this unique "pseudo-spaghetti western". - MERK

Young Leif Garrett watches helplessly while his parents are murdered and his sister taken by a savage band of grimy cutthroats led by Van Cleef, who looks like a hippie with full facial growth, earring, long hair, and headband (probably holding the hair extensions in place), and Robert Morley. (best remembered for waking up next to a horse head in The Godfather)

Garrett tracks the bandits and begins to slay them one by one before teaming up with gold miner Jim Brown to finish them off.

Not a spaghetti western, this was an Isreali production made in Isreal by Golan-Globus, who did a better job (Van Cleef too) with God's Gun.

Most people agree that Lee Van Cleef's career in westerns ended with a whimper, but I thought it was okay. Too bad that in the following twelve years nobody got him back in the saddle with a six-shooter. It would have been great having seen Lee Van Cleef on a horse in the action packed eighties.

Released in 1977 and directed by Joseph Manduke, "Kid Vengeance" (retitled simply "Vengeance") is a Matzo Ball oater starring Leif Garrett as an adolescent who witnesses his mother's raping followed by his parent's murder at the hands of a bandit gang in the Southwest desert. He teams up with a miner (Jim Brown) to enact vengeance and get his sister back (Glynnis O'Connor). Lee Van Cleef plays the outlaw leader.

This was shot before another Hebraic Western with Van Cleef and Garrett, 1976's "God's Gun," but released afterward. These turned out to be the last two Westerns for Van Cleef. "Kid Vengeance" is better than "God's Gun" simply because it's gritty realistic whereas the latter has an uneven semi-camp/parody tone. In any case, Garrett was about 14 during filming and O'Connor was 20-21 whereas Van Cleef looks like he wandered off the set of "Woodstock" with his headband, although they were no doubt used in the Old West. The plot may be hackneyed, but the cast is great. Unfortunately, the movie's strictly one-dimensional in tone and utterly desolate in location; and therefore a mite tedious. Still, it's worth checking out if you like the cast and 60s-70's Westerns.

The film runs 90 minutes and was shot in Israel.

GRADE: C+

I know nothing of Lief Garrett's modern day goings on, but I'll tell you this: he can sure pick a grim film to star in! Not only was he great in Devil Times Five (aka Peopletoys), he's also good in this, as a kid out to get revenge on the low down scum who killed his parents! The leader of this gang? Lee Van Cleef, all bald and knife-brandishing.

Garrett fairly works his way through the evil gang, using snakes, scorpions, nooses, rocks and arrows in what amounts to almost a slasher-like Western. I didn't even think he needed the help of Jim Brown, but when Big Jim starts throwing dynamite at everyone, you're kind of signing up a winner right there! Big Jim also brings along his band of brothers he's been fighting with, just to complicate things up a bit.

This is your typical dark late-era Spaghetti Western, violent and pretty unrelenting, with a fairly high body count. Made in Isreal so I guess the term 'Spaghetti' might not be appropriate.