Blood Money: Four Western Classics Vol. 2

There’s more to spaghetti westerns than Leone’s Dollars trilogy.  Even casual fans know that.  But it seems like there’s new release of the “essentials” every year – international versions, extended versions, 4K versions – all wonderful and appreciated.  But there are soooo many more titles that need to be brought to light.  Like those included in Arrow Video’s Blood Money: Four Western Classics Volume 2, which gathers a couple of Django clones, a Magnificent Seven inspired rescue mission and one over-the-top El Topo­-like oddity that will simply blow your mind!

The first of the Django rip-offs out of the gate, $10,000 Blood Money (1967) stars Gianni Garko (doing a serviceable Franco Nero impression) as a bounty hunter whose pursuit of the almighty dollar – and a valuable outlaw – winds up costing him more than he bargained for.  Built around the usual bad deals and double-crosses, director Romolo Guerrieri digs some actual emotion out of his anti-hero (a rarity in the genre) and tops it off with a humdinger of a finale set in a windy abandoned village.

Vengeance is Mine (1967) recasts the same leads this time as feuding step-brothers - one framed for his father’s murder, the other on the run with stolen gold – who join forces to reach the law alive.  Clever and brutal, co-writers Sergio Martino and Ernesto Gastaldi punch this one up with plenty of action while Garko is put through the wringer yet again to deliver some semblance of justice.  It might be predictable, but it’s never boring.

 

1968’s Find a Place to Die uses Jeffery Hunter – yet another past his prime American actor – to good effect as a jaded ex-soldier turned arms dealer who gathers a team of questionable recruits to rescue a woman’s husband trapped in a gold mine.  The finale is a good primer for Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch with dozens gunned down in an extended stand-off, but it’s the quieter moments that give Hunter a chance to bring some personality to the role. 

 

Finally, 1970’s Matalo! (Kill Him) goes for broke with a hyper-stylized, acid trip that sees director Cesare Canevari utilizing every camera trick in the book to tell an essentially dialogue-free story of bandits holed up in a ghost town that hides more secrets than they expect.  Ingeniously shot and unrelentingly violent (think Last Homestead on the Left) this one will stick with you for a long time.  Western regular Lou Castel puts in a quietly unexpected turn as the reluctant hostage turned hero while Corrado Pani goes full “Kinski.”

 

Arrow’s four-disc set features all-new 2K restorations plus commentaries, introductions, featurettes, interviews and a collector’s booklet.  In a world where fans spend hundred every year to upgrade the same films, this set should be all the excuse you need to discover something new.  And it’s worth every damn penny! 

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