Return Of Sabata

 

Derringer Harbinger

Return Of Sabata
aka 
È tornato Sabata...
hai chiuso un'altra volta!
Italy/France/West Germany 1971
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Minor spoilers. 

“Nine fingered man, four barrell derringer, Sabaaaaaata, he’s the only invincible man in the countryside...” Main title song from Return Of Sabata.

Okay, technically the third film in the Sabata trilogy and, due to that marketing decision, the third and final film in the recent Blu Ray set from the Eureka Masters Of Cinema label... Return Of Sabata sees Lee Van Cleef return in the role for what is actually the only real Sabata sequel (for more on that, see my review of Indio Black, aka Adiós Sabata, right here). And, of course, along with Van Cleef we have Sabata’s trademark gadget, his trick pistol, referred to as a ‘four barrel derringer’ in the main song but, as we all know from the first film (which I reviewed here), it actually also has three additional barrels concealed in the handle, which we also get to see in use again.

And, naturally, a Parolini film means part of his repertory cast such as Aldo Canti performing his usual trampoline tricks and Ignazio Spalla, are on hand to work with Sabata and his new, somewhat untrustworthy ally played by Reiner Schöne. The plot is the usual shenanigans with a corrupt head of a town and various bought elected officials trying to diddle the town with their counterfeit notes while getting all the gold out of the county. Sabata, of course, steps in to try and relieve them of their gold and also help out the townsfolk. And that’s all I’ll say about the plot.

The film itself has been included in a book called The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way) but, honestly, I don’t know why it’s in there and, I have to wonder how many movies the authors have seen if they saw fit to include this one in its ranks. In terms of the three Sabata films (or two if you are a purist), then yeah, it’s the least entertaining of them perhaps... but it is still very watchable and there are some really beautiful sequences in here too.

For instance, the film has a very strong opening pre-credits sequence... probably the best scene in the movie actually, it’s so striking. This film involves various gun men in an enclosed space... a kind of cross between a barn and a fun house... hiding and waiting for Sabata, to take him out. It’s a really wonderful sequence and its very colourful. Amongst the white shirts of the gun men and the red of the blood on them as they each fall victim to Sabata’s guns in elabourate set ups (falling off a level and into a coffin which slides down a beam etc), the lighting is a visually exciting blend of colour washes... greens, violets and reds, which invoke the spirit of Mario Bava perhaps. This set up scene also serves, not only as a rug pull moment, when it turns out everyone’s guns were loaded with some kind of red paint balls, as Sabata has joined a side show troupe... but also serves to set up the logic of a scene near the end where Sabata is shot dead by the bad guy, only to resurrect himself from the grave having loaded the bad guy’s gun with similar paint pellets, once he’s heard the villain’s disclosure of where ‘the gold’ is hidden after his fake death. So it’s a long game Parolini’s playing here with his foreshadowing of one of the end scenes of the movie (the producers and writers of the James Bond films did exactly the same thing with the start and end sequences of The Man With The Golden Gun, of course... reviewed by me here).

There’s some other nice cinematography too, such as a scene where Van Cleef is standing in the middle of the screen ready to draw his gun... the director manages to somehow catch two simultaneous, long strips of lens flare coming from where Van Cleef is standing and thrown off at opposite diagonals from the central character. I’m not quite sure how he managed it and, in general, lens flares in movies have never been my friend... but it does look quite spectacular here, I’d have to admit.

As usual with this director, as well as all the acrobatics, he also works a fair few gadgets into the mix, to go alongside Sabata’s trick derringer. So we have an acrobat using braces stretched from between his feet to fire balls at various guards (with the camera fast zooming in on a target to mimic the journey of the ball bearing as the mark falls over), a blow dart coming from a trick cigar, a magnet cigar to influence the outcome at a roulette table and a guy with a mirror stuck to the inside top of his hat so he can take it off and see who’s approaching from behind.

Now, many people probably don’t realise that Van Cleef has the top of one of his fingers missing. It’s said that he got it taken off while building a play house for his daughter but I don’t think he went out of his way to publicise it. Here, though, Parolini works it into the foreground of the film in three ways. The most obvious, perhaps, being the opening title song from Marcello Giombini’s gorgeous score referring to Sabata as the ‘nine fingered man’. Secondly, it’s mentioned that the injury to the Sabata character was self inflicted, having chewed it off to convalesce in a military hospital in order to get more than a little friendly with a Colonel’s wife for a few months.

Thirdly... and perhaps more interestingly, when it looks like Sabata is about to kill his traitorous, ‘out for himself’ ally right at the end of the movie, instead of killing him he just shoots his trigger finger off, so the other can learn to live with the same disability. It’s a nice but unusual moment, taking a real life but, not that noticeable disability and thrusting it into the limelight, so to speak, like this.

And, yeah, I’ve not got much to add to this one, it has to be said. It may be the least entertaining of the three films but, almost contradicting this, it’s also probably the most lively and the one making the most of the humour, playing fast and loose with the trappings usually associated within the Spaghetti Western. Since the first two Trinity films came out either side of it (the second being released into Italian cinemas just a month after this one), this slow rebellion against the tropes of the genre makes a lot of sense, I guess. Return Of Sabata is definitely worth a look if you liked the first film and, if you’re into the scores on these things, the soundtrack is wonderful.

Adiós Sabata

Cowboys And Indio

Adiós Sabata
aka Indio Black
aka
Indio Black, sai che ti dico:
Sei un gran figlio di...
Italy 1970
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

So the second of Eureka Masters Of Cinema’s new Blu Ray set of the dubbed American prints of The Sabata Trilogy (seriously, why no Italian option on these to give the scores a chance?), is Adiós Sabata, which is the film which makes a mockery of it ever being a trilogy of course. A nice story surrounding the film is that former Sabata star Lee Van Cleef and Yul Brinner, who plays the title character of this film (yeah, I’ll get to that in a minute), just swapped roles and so while Yul Brinner was playing Sabata, Van Cleef was replacing him as Chris in The Magnificent Seven Ride... but the two films are actually a couple of years apart so it’s really not the case. Nice story though.

So, yeah, the reason this film makes a mockery of the idea of a Sabata trilogy is that, well, this is not actually a Sabata movie at all. The film’s original title is Indio Black or, on the Italian release, Indio Black, sai che ti dico: Sei un gran figlio di... and, Indio Black is the central character. And while it’s easy to argue that the characters of Indio Black and Sabata are more or less interchangeable, they don’t use the same gadgets as each other and the tone of the characters is slightly different. Although, gadgets and, of course, acrobatics do play a prominent part in the movie, being as it’s a Parolini film. Also, Ignazio Spalla is back, playing a more cleaned up but, also, very much a similar sidekick called Escudo, of sorts, to Indio. Or to Sabata, if you’re watching it in the English dub, which is problematic only in terms of the great Bruno Nicolai’s truly wonderful score for the film (one of his catchiest and certainly one of his best). Nicolai and Morricone at this time were conducting and sometimes orchestrating each other’s scores (although I believe Morricone denied the orchestration claim) and their music from around this period was very similar in style. So the English dub retains the sweeping score with its trademark whistling but erases the male chorus chanting Indio Black... which is why I lament the loss of the Italian dub from this set.

Okay, the film is set in the specific Mexican revolution of 1867 (as opposed to one of the other Mexican revolutions of this era) and the Austrians are in power. Indio Black... err... Sabata is retained by a client to help out with retrieving some gold from the bad guy Colonel Skimmel, played by Gérard Herter (who some may remember as the Austrian Baron/villain from the incredible movie The Big Gundown (aka La resa dei conti). Indio/Sabata, Escudo, an untrustworthy American painter called Ballantine (played by Dean Reed) and a bunch of Mexican revolutionaries, including a man who can launch ball-bearings from his feet to kill people in acrobatic ways, get caught up in plot and counter plot... as the Colonel is also trying to rip off his own Government and has transported sand rather than gold out to be intercepted by robbers. So lots of shoot outs, double crosses and, as you would expect from the director, a nice array of gadgets.

So the Colonel has a big model galleon on the chest of drawers in the corner of his office and, when he sends his allies who he needs silencing, to open the drawers and take their payment, the miniature cannons on the model fire into them. Since he’s not really playing Sabata, Yul Brinner is kitted out with just a regular derringer and his rifle doesn’t have an extension to shoot long distances... however, he does have a trick rifle. He has a special cigar case which slots into the top and acts as a cartridge feed into he gun for rapid firing/reloading... which is a nice looking thing. Like his character Chris in The Magnificent Seven, not to mention Sabata, he dresses all in black but he’s definitely doing his own thing here, with a big V of his chest showing from the shirt and loads of tassels on the fringe of the arms. Not something Sabata would have worn, I would have thought.

There’s some nice stuff going on with the cinematography and shot design on this one too. Sometimes Parolini will put someone like Brynner in the foreground so just his head and shoulder are on the right of the shot while a full figure of the person he’s having a conversation with (although both are looking directly to camera) is seated and taking up the left of the shot, to push the contrast in size and distance.

There’s a wonderful shot where three paid thugs are sent to collect Sabata from a barn... they enter and the shot shows a screen split by two upright supports of the building, each person framed in one of the three gaps spread across the widescreen aspect ratio. There’s also a great bit where a bunch of barrels and such like, with no ends, are placed at the forefront of the screen and Indio and his friends are walking towards camera but in such a way that they can only be seen in the approach through the circular tube of one of those barrel openings... the shot eventually zooming towards the opening to fill the screen with the view.

Another nice creative piece is the rotating iron cockerel motif used to start a gunfight at the start of the movie... when the cockerel stops, Sabata and the gang who is after him open fire. We see the swivelling cockerel at the foreground of the shot intercut with various pans and zooms over the eyes and faces of the protagonist, antagonists and watching crowd, to build up the suspense. It’s not an unusual device for a spaghetti Western for sure but, it’s well done and makes for a nice sequence.

And that’s about all I have to say on Indio Black... sorry, I mean Adiós Sabata, although I would point you towards Austin Fisher’s excellent 15 minute piece about the film as one of the bonus features, if you want to better understand the political context of the film and what it was trying to do. Politics isn’t my strong point so I won’t attempt to get into it here... I don’t know who this Fisher guy is but he seems like someone who really knows what he’s talking about (which makes a change from some of the extras I’ve seen in recent times, to be honest). Oh, and one last thing, fans of gialli might notice a small appearance in the film by giallo queen Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott) in this as a saloon dancer (and one of Ballantine’s lovers, it’s intimated). But, overall, a fun Western with some nice gadgets and tricks worthy of the director, probably a little more serious than the ‘real’ Sabata films but that’s just Yul Brynner’s inimitable style, it seems to me. A nice print and transfer too, as you would expect from the Eureka Masters Of Cinema label.

Sabata

Lock, Stock &
Seven Smoking Barrels

Sabata
aka
Ehi amico...
c'è Sabata. Hai chiuso!
Italy 1969
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Minor spoilers.

It’s been a while since I last watched the Sabata films... fortunately I was gifted with the new Eureka Masters Of Cinema The Sabata Trilogy Blu Ray set for Christmas*. That being said, anyone who knows the movies will know (or soon come to realise) that, like Sergio Leone’s ‘Man With No Name’ trilogy, the three films don’t form a trilogy at all but, at least in the case of the Sabata movies, the third one, Return Of Sabata, is actually a direct sequel to first movie. And, yeah, I’ll talk about that more when I look at the ‘second’ film, Adios Sabata (aka Indio Black) for this blog.

Okay, after a load of pepla, secret agent moves and the like, Sabata was only around about the third Western directed by Gianfranco Parolini, following on from his Johnny West and Sartana movies. Well, it’s more like an assault on the genre actually because, while he certainly goes out of his way to bring in the popular tropes, he also brings a lot of his own baggage with him and injects it into the movie.

The production designer was Carlo Simi, who worked on many a spaghetti Westerns including, of course, a few for the maestro of the genre, Sergio Leone. Perhaps the biggest element of familiarity for the genre trappings of the film was Parolini’s decision to hire the nine fingered actor Lee Van Cleef (he’d lost the top of one digit while building a playhouse for his daughter) to play the title role. And, yes, his costume in this is very similar, if not identical, to the one he wore playing Colonel Mortimer in the first of his big hits, For A Few Dollars More... opposite Clint Eastwood, for the aforementioned Leone. In the Leone film he played a bounty hunter and, Sabata is not much different to that character except there’s no history between him and the villain of the piece waiting for a surprise reveal in this one... although he does have a history with the secondary lead, William Berger playing the banjo playing character... um... Banjo.

The plot is simple. The evil planners of the town of Daugherty are ripping off the army by stealing money, in a bank robbery shown early on in the film, which sees a lot of soldiers killed. The film’s primary villain, Stengel, played by Franco Ressel, needs the money to buy some land which will at least double in price when the railway comes to buy it from the owner. However, very quickly, the new drifter in town, Sabata, kills many of the robbers and returns the stolen safe to the town. It then becomes a game of the villains trying to get Sabata, who has evidence against them, out of the way and not pay his ransom for silence... while also trying to kill anyone else who knows about their evil doings. But mostly just by trying to kill Sabata in various ways, which the title character is far too smart to fall for, leaving a trail of hired killer corpses in his trail.

There are betrayals, double crossings, surprise reveals, plenty of action, a very satirical look at how the governing bodies try and rip off the little people (hmm... I wonder if the current UK Government have been taking lessons from this movie) and a wonderful score by Marcello Giombini.

Helping Sabata are Ignazio Spalla, as the knife throwing Carrincha and Aldo Canti as the acrobatic Alley Cat (or Indio, depending on which country’s version you watch). And talking of acrobatics... it’s one of the two big things which director Parolini brings to the fight, so to speak. He always had a lot of acrobatics in his movies. And, of course, especially hot off of the various secret agent movies released then, there’s a whole host of gadgets and surprise weapons that Sabata or his enemies use against each other. Indeed, in the US and UK, the movie was promoted with a kind of ‘James Bond in the West’ spin to it, although that really isn’t what this is.

For example... and it’s no surprise due to both some posters and also the obviousness of the fetishistic nature of some of the accoutrements of the main characters, Banjo’s banjo also includes a hidden rifle as part of its make up. What is a surprise are some of Sabata’s gadgets. He has a screw on extended barrel for his Winchester which allows him to shoot much further than an ordinary rifle could... some of the posters heralded him as ‘The Man With The Gunsight Eyes’. But there’s also his tricky Derringer. Not only does it have four barrels in place of the standard single shooters, it also has another three barrels hidden in a drop down piece from the handle, first revealed when Sabata flips his pistol 90 degrees and shoots from the stock, so to speak.

There are also lots of other trick moments which make the movie entertaining, such as a pull thread on the derringer hidden in a bag so that when Sabata pushes the bag to a killer disguised as a priest, it activates it and shoots the villain from the inside of the bag. There’s a nice moment at the end of this sequence too, when Sabata throws a coin across the room to snuff out a candle.

But another thing that makes it watchable is the heart behind some of the characters. Sabata and Banjo, who are mostly allies in the film (to an extent), both knew each other from opposite sides of the civil war. Also, the down on his luck ex-civil war veteran Carrincha bemoans that nobody will take his medal to put up for a gambling stake or to swap for a bottle of whisky. Luckily, the medal saves his life from a stray bullet later in the movie and, for the ‘not dead after all’ reveal for the character, Parolini gives that medal a lot of foreshadowing throughout the film.

Finally, it’s really not a bad looking film technically. Parolini moves the camera about in various spaces with his characters, revealing new details about their environment and their positioning in it as he does so... but he’s not above adding in a quick close up insert before returning to the camera movement from a slightly closer angle, also making use of the zoom lens when required. He also uses the positioning of the camera to reveal Sabata’s trick of appearing in a frame as a painting, before he’s rumbled... the shots hitting a mirror which has been framed perfectly somehow in the villains view by the ‘human canvas’.

And, yeah, that’s me about done on the first Sabata film. It’s a heck of a lot of fun and so rides up there with some of the best of the Spaghetti Westerns, certainly from that late 1960s/early 70s period of the genre. If you like your Westerns then this one is definitely one to take a look at. And I’ll get onto the next ‘unofficial’ entry in the series, also made by the same writer/director, for my next Sabata review.

*Christmas 2021... it takes me a while to get the reviews up sometimes.