Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre (1967)

[Neville]

A very early (and non-legitimate) sequel to Django. Here Django (played by Sartana's Gianni Garko) is a bounty hunter that decides to go after Manuel, a local Mexican bandit. What makes the movie unique is that despite Manuel's ruthlessness, Django is not very keen to the idea of killing him for the ramson, and he even ends up befriending him for a good deal of the film.

Not among my top-tier Spaghetti Westerns, but it is entertaining enough, and has some neat ideas, such as blurring even more than usual the lines between good / evil legal / ilegal and a great opening scene that takes place on a beach. Gianni Garko also makes a good Django, although don't be mistaken, his character has nothing to do with Sergio Corbucci's anti-hero.

[Scott]

Looks like a good find. Only found one review at imdb.com. Here a nice website about the movie and I believe the music is also on the page.

Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre

[Yaddo 42]

I am jealous of this streak of euro-westerns you have going. There are so many good ones I want to see, and forgotten ones I'd like to see for myself, that I am willing to sit through really dull ones like "The Proud and the Damned" and underwhelming ones with potential like the spaghetti western version of "Zorro" from about 1975. Never even heard of this one.

Have you seen any of the German ones like the Old Shatterhand films? I know they are based on a series of German pulp western novels or stories and I read there is (or was) even a Shatterhand theme park in Germany.

[Neville]

You probably mean the German films previous to "A fistful of dollars", which many people (Leone himself, in some interviews) says they're based on Karl May's pulps. No, I haven't seen any of them. They're probably too obscure to be found outside Germany.

[Yaddo 42]

Those are the ones. A book I've got mentions May and his Winnetou stories. The Treasure of Silver Lake, Winnetou the Warrior, Last of the Renegades, and Among Vultures are the only titles mentioned. But I knew former Tarzan actor Lex Barker was in a few, plus I had seen him in some of the Dr. Mabuse crime films from the 60s, and knew he worked in Europe a lot when his career cooled in the US.

On a totally different tack, I read an article several years ago about the rediscovery of many East German films from the 50s til the mid 70s. Among the 600-800 film the East German government financed were about two dozen westerns. The Indians won in every film according to the article. Those are films I'd like to see just for the curiosity factor and to see what the take would be of a culture even more removed from (and ideologically opposed to) the Old West and the popular myths that helped shape the American identity and image.

[Neville]

When I was a kid I had this comic book album packed with Karl May adaptations. I can't barely remember them, but I do remember that one was a western and the other was set in the 1900s North Africa. I'm almost sure May was to Germans what Salgari is to most Europeans. He MUST have been widely popular, because his IMD profile shows around 40 entries, and it ranges from the 1920s to these days.

[Yaddo 42]

Germans seemed to have had quite an appetite for pulp and genre stories, books, movies, comics at one time. Beside the western stuff already mentioned there were all those Edgar Wallace film adaptations, Dr. Mabuse books and films (but those were more upscale early on), plus from what I've read the Perry Rhodan scifi-adventures from after WWII were a huge long-running industry for a while. I tried to read an English adaptation of the first one when I found a bunch of them at a used bookstore years ago. I failed to see the appeal and quit less than half way through, I was hoping for fun escapist guilty pleasure brain candy, but just got badly written dull empty filler, maybe it was the translation.

[Scott]

Saw a couple of the Winnetou films on the Western Channel. Not quite Spaghetti Western, but unique Westerns for sure.

[Neville]

I always mention, when I discuss European westerns with my friends, that sometimes I'm not sure how many of the differences with Hollywood westerns come from a different cultural background and how many are the result of being just s**tty films.

Let's say it's part of their attractive ;-)

[Yaddo 42]

I cann see that, I've seen my share of bad Euro-westerns, which makes it a little more enjoyable when you find a good one that may be lesser known or forgotten. I know when I talk to people with more mainstream tastes, I have to explain to them that "spaghetti western" means more than just Sergio Leone and the Hill/Spencer Trinity films. Trying to broaden the topic to Euro-westerns is even worse.

[Neville]

Yeah, that's true. Part of the problem is that these sub-genre had tepid reviews on its time, it was seen as the lamest explotation business ever, and when time passed only Sergio Leone was finally acknowledged as a good filmmaker. And I wonder if it would have been the case had he never done "Once Upon a Time in America". The rest of the filmmakers are just dead and buried for the mainstream audiences and critics. Before I decided I wanted to watch more SW, I hadn't even heard before of the likes of Corbucci, Sollima or Valerii.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Just to add to what everybody else has posted, not only did Lex Barker appear in several Karl May westerns, but so did British actor Stewart Granger, who played the title character in 1965's "Old Surehand," which was based on a Karl May western.

And, actually, I enjoyed the 1975 version of "Zorro," if for no other reason, then the climatic swordfight between Alain Delon and Stanley Baker, which has to rate as one of the 10 best swordfights I've ever seen in a film.

[Neville]

There are some Spanish movies featuring "El Zorro" and his low cost, poor man substitute, "El Coyote". I wonder if I could find any of these... and if they're really worth the effort.

[Scott]

[Yaddo 42]

I agreee the final swordfight was good, and the sets for that part of the film were really good. But a lot of the film was just flat, plus that "Yeah, Zorro's Back" song is annoying, not "Hooray for Santy Claus" annoying, but still.

Then again I did see a copy for sale pretty cheap at a recond store selling used DVDs, maybe....