Death Rides a Horse: Giulio Petroni

As much as I truly love spaghetti Westerns, after a while they start to blend together. Oh, I don't mean the towering masterpieces of the genre like the Dollars Trilogy or The Great Silence (1968). I'm talking about all of the lesser spaghetti Westerns, the ones made by directors like Sergio Sollima, Tonino Valerii, and Enzo G. Castellari. They might not have the professionalism of Leone or the cynicism of Corbucci, but they still get the job done in the end. But they rely much more heavily on cliches and stock characters. Such is the case with Giulio Petroni's Death Rides a Horse. Now, I know that many consider it blasphemy to insult this film. It's a favorite of Quentin Tarantino and was frequently homaged in his films. But that doesn't change the fact that it still is quite generic. You have a standard revenge plot provided by John Phillip Law as Bill Meceita, a young man who witnessed the savage murder of his family at the hands of criminals while still a child. Now that he's grown up, he has set out to bring justice to those men. He tags along with Ryan, a gunfighter played by Lee Van Cleef who just finished a 15 year prison term and is also out for revenge. Even though they travel together, their plotlines are largely separate until the very end, continuing the tradition of spaghetti Westerns that frantically juggle two stories. This was a technique largely seen in Zapata Westerns which dealt with the Mexican Revolution of 1913. Zapata Westerns frequently featured two protagonists: an ignorant Mexican and a European/American who was heavily involved in the revolution. But whereas Zapata Westerns could get away with having two protagonists since it allowed them to explore different sides of their central conflict, in Death Rides a Horse it seems unnecessary. Don't misunderstand me, though. Death Rides a Horse is still a good film. It has a fun mix of stylization and brutal violence. I just wish that it would have stuck with one protagonist and storyline.

7/10