E Dio disse a Caino... (1970)

... aka: And God Said to Cain...

... aka: Dödsjakten (The Death Hunt)

... aka: Et le vent apporta la violence (And the Wind Brought Violence)

... aka: Fury at Sundown

... aka: Hevneren (The Avenger)

... aka: Revenge at Sundown

... aka: Satan der Rache (Devil of Vengeance)

... aka: Un homme, un cheval, un fusil (A Man, a Horse, a Gun)

Directed by:

"Anthony Dawson" (Antonio Margheriti)

Former army lieutenant Gary Hamilton (Klaus Kinski) has been stuck in a prison labor camp for ten long years. After slaving away breaking rocks with a sledge hammer in a rock quarry for a decade, and trying to avoid the rattlesnakes in the process, Gary finds out he's finally be pardoned, and by the President of the United States, no less! Now it's time to settle back into normal life. Well, kind of. He's got some other stuff to take care of first. Gary stops by a saloon for a drink and refuses the bartender's offer to stick the prison with the tab. "A man must pay for everything," he solemnly states before heading out. 

Stopping by an old trader's place, Gary purchases a rifle, a horse and enough ammunition to gun down about 500 people for ten bucks, which is incidentally the same amount of money I spent on a cold, shitty hamburger earlier today. He then meets cadet Dick Acombar (Antonio Cantafora, a fine looking chap) on a stagecoach ride. Dick is about to enter his final year at West Point and has come home for a visit. He's still trying to decide what to do with his life: Enter into military service or settle down with a wife, start a family and work at his rich father's mining company. Mr. Acombar (Peter Carsten, also one of the producers) has higher aspirations for his boy and wants him to enter politics. I won't spoil anything, but I will say that Dick's woes about the future will be solved by the end of the film.

It turns out Gary was framed for stealing a fortune in gold and cash during a stagecoach robbery (and the killings associated with the theft), wrongly convicted, given a life sentence (overturned by the government, who gave him leniency and a surprise pardon for his prior military service) and now has vengeance on his mind. The evil schemer who ruined his life is none other than papa Acombar. When word gets back to him that Gary's out and planning on paying him a visit, he puts a bounty out on his head. His primary goons are the Santamaria brothers; Miguel ("Lee Burton" / Guido Lollobrigida), Francisco ("Alan Collins" / Luciano Pigozzi) and Jim (Lucio De Santis), though it seems like 99% of the whole town is willing to do his bidding.

While Gary was away, Mr. Acombar stole everything that was his, including his house, his personal belongings and his blonde, beautiful and backstabbing lover, Mary (Marcella Michelangeli), who helped frame Gary by casting doubt on his alibi. He's also essentially taken over the entire town. Anyone who opposed him fell victim to an "accident" and now most of those left are conspirators or too scared to go against him. There are a couple of exceptions, including saloon / brothel owner Rosy (María Luisa Sala), whose husband had been murdered, and Dr. Jonathan (Giuliano Raffaelli), who has known Gary since he was a child. Both are eventual allies.

The best thing going on here is the wonderfully gloomy atmosphere achieved by Margheriti and the production people, who have set the events on the evening a tornado is passing through town so we get lots of swaying, unreliable lighting and constant gusts of strong wind blowing around dust, smoke and pieces of hay. This is clearly where the director's experience with Gothic horror - he'd previously made HORROR CASTLE (1963), Castle of Blood (1964) and THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964); all of those good efforts, too - is evident. So much of the movie takes place in the dark that our hero ends up riding off into the sunrise, not the sunset, at the end!

While this definitely has merit in the visuals and mood, the simplistic and predictable scripting knocks it down a notch. Almost the entire last hour is spent with Kinski lurking in the shadows, occasionally ducking into some catacombs that once served as a Native American burial ground, and shooting people, which grows repetitive and tiresome. There are no wrenches thrown into the works. No real curve balls. Just a straightforward revenge story with a little minor additional conflict thrown in to fill in the gaps. Most of the drama revolves around Acombar and his son, with the latter oblivious to his father's misdeeds but determined to find out what's going on. In this case, the apple fell very far from the tree as son Dick is kind and actually has some decency while the dad is such a bad dude he thinks nothing of gunning down a preacher in a church for refusing to help him.

Margheriti directs with an extraordinary amount of low angle shots and there are also quite a few zooms right into bright blue eyes, which seem to jump off the screen since the entire cast look like they've been slathered with bronzer prior to filming. He also manages to come up with a visually striking climactic scene, set in a burning room filled with candelabras and mirrors, which seems to have been a big influence on the finale of Argento's INFERNO (1980).

Kinski's fine as the emotionless, quiet avenger, but he's been put to better use elsewhere and this isn't one of his more memorable roles. There's no graphic violence, just a tiny bit of blood, and the only non-shooting deaths are a hanging and someone getting crushed by a church bell, a fate fittingly reserved for Euro horror vet Pigozzi. There's also a cheesy theme song called "Rocks, Blood and Sand" sung by Don Powell.

Reportedly, this is an unsanctioned remake - uncredited rip-off if you prefer! - of a movie released just two years earlier called Uno straniero a Paso Bravo / "A Stranger in Paso Bravo" (1968). Directed by Salvatore Rosso and starring Anthony Steffen, that film has identical character names and much of the same plot, though its writers are not credited here; Giovanni Addessi, who also produced the film, and Margheriti are the only two listed as writers. (For the record, I have not seen that film myself and thus cannot verify any of the plagiarism claims.)

Though a box office success in both Germany and Italy, this was never theatrically released in America. It made its VHS debut here in 1986 on the Unicorn Video label. In the UK it was released on video under the title Fury at Sundown in 1984. There have been quite a few DVD releases since then, though these are all of varying quality. Since the film is so dark, you really do need a proper print of it. That occurred in 2021 when Arrow Video finally got it out on Blu-ray in their four film set "Vengeance Trails: 4 Classic Westerns." The other titles included there are Lucio Fulci's Massacre Time (1966), Maurizio Lucidi's My Name is Pecos (1966) and Massimo Dallamano's Bandidos (1967). This set was followed by a second called "Blood Money" from the same company.

★★1/2

I lunghi capelli della morte (1964)

... aka: La larga cabellera de la muerte
... aka: La sorcière sanglante (The Bloody Witch)

Directed by:
"Anthony M. Dawson" (Antonio Margheriti)

Here's one of at least three dozen black-and-white Italian Gothic horrors from the decade when these films were reaching their peak in popularity. Skimming over the non-Anglicized credits, those familiar with this subgenre will notice many familiar names. The director was "Anthony M. Dawson" (Antonio Margheriti), who'd previously made the the enjoyable HORROR CASTLE (1963) with Christopher Lee. It was written by "Julian Berry' / Ernesto Gastaldi, who'd previously co-written Mario Bava's fantastic THE WHIP AND THE BODY (1963; also with Lee), and went on to write dozens of other genre films, and "Robert Bohr" / Tonino Valerii, who'd previously co-written Terror in the Crypt (1963) starring, you guessed it, Mr. Lee once again. The cinematography was by "Richard Thierry" / Riccardo Pallottini, who also shot the aforementioned Horror Castle as well as Margheriti's Castle of Blood (1964) and numerous others. Composer Carlo Rustichelli had scored many of the better films of this type, including Bava's Whip and Kill Baby... Kill! (1966). And perhaps its biggest coup of all, and why the film is still frequently viewed these days, is having Gothic temptress and BLACK SUNDAY (1960) lead Barbara Steele in the lead role. All the stars were aligned perfectly here and, thankfully, this ends up mostly living up to its high pedigree.

Falsely convicted of witchcraft and murder, Adele Karnstein is dragged off to a village square where she's scheduled to be burned alive. Her eldest daughter, Helen Rochefort (Steele), is also suspected of being a witch and has been in hiding, but manages to sneak into a heavily-guarded castle to see Count Humboldt Whalen ("Jean Rafferty" / Giuliano Raffaeli). Helen is convinced her mother is innocent of both witchcraft and of murdering the Count's brother, Franz, and the Count uses his position of power to get Helen into bed with him. Adele is executed anyway, but first places a curse upon the Humboldt family and the entire village before she's killed. The following day, Helen attempts to flee but is intercepted by the Count, who pushes her over the side of a waterfall. Now left all alone, little Elizabeth, the final Karnstein descendant, is shown the secret tomb housing the remains of both Adele and Helen by nursemaid Grumalda ("Laureen Nuyen" / Laura Nucci) and asked to come there every day and and pray.

"At the end of the 15th Century, superstition, cruelty and appalling evils loomed over mankind."

Years pass and a now-grown Elizabeth (Halina Zalewska) is living with in the Humboldt's castle. The aged Count, who's now a miserly drunk, is made uneasy by the girl's presence and thinks she's looking more "witch-like" with her long, black hair and resemblance to Adele as she matures. The Count's son, Kurt Sebastian Whalen (George Ardisson), who's even more lecherous and wicked than his father, reveals that it was he who actually murdered Franz when he found out he was going to be disinherited. Kurt also is determined to marry Elizabeth whether she wants to or not (hint: she doesn't). Elizabeth ends up having no choice in the matter and their romantic honeymoon night consists of him forcing himself upon her and slapping her around while she scowls things like "I hate you!" and "You're repulsive!" While all that's going on, there's a horrible plague striking the village; something that Adele predicted.

During a raging thunderstorm, lightning strikes Helen's grave and, through a time lapse effect, eyeballs and skin start to form on her skeleton as she begins to take shape. While everyone is sitting through a church service, the doors swing open and the beautiful Mary (Steele), a dead ringer for Helen, walks in and collapses. That, combined with the sudden realization that Kurt has been doing a little grave robbing on the side, is too much for the poor, sickly Count to handle and he keels over from a heart attack. Claiming to have been in a carriage accident, Mary is taken back to the Whalen castle to recover, where Kurt promptly falls head over heels in love with her. He's so in love, he's willing to do anything to keep here there, including poisoning a messenger who's simply trying to deliver a message on Mary's behalf.

Kurt and Mary soon begin having an affair (punishable by death in those days) and eventually plot to do away with Elizabeth. They drug her, take her downstairs into the family crypt, put her inside a tomb and seal it shut. Once they feel she's been down there long enough to suffocate, they bring her body back upstairs, tuck her into bed and then go to their rooms. The next day, the adulterous duo are shocked to see that Grumalda and Von Klager ("Robert Rains" / Umberto Raho), a priest who also lives in the castle, are interacting with Elizabeth and claiming to see and talk to her, though Kurt can find her nowhere. He grows increasingly more paranoid and starts going mad, something the surprise ending remedies quite nicely.

This certainly treads of very familiar ground, which could be either good or a bad thing depending on your tastes. It's bad if you're not a fan to slower-paced films that rely heavily on atmosphere, but it's good if you're a fan of moody, measured b/w Gothic tales as this one has pretty much everything you could possibly hope for. There's dense, high contrast and atmospheric black-and-white photography, genuine suspense in spots, a late 15th Century period setting brought to life through appropriate costumes, props, fine art direction and sets and a thundering and commanding score, plus the usual awesome castle complete with crumbling crypts, a cool little hedge maze and cobweb-covered secret passageways behind fireplaces. We get candlelit strolls through dark corridors and dungeons, plenty of duplicitous / scheming characters to keep things interesting, ghosts, ghouls and more. As per her usual, Steele is mesmerizing in her role and the rest of the cast (lousy English dub aside) also do fine. While the film does slow to a crawl a few times, there's a satisfying ending that eventually brings the story full circle that's worth waiting for.

To my knowledge this was never released theatrically in the U.S., though it was English dubbed and released in the UK. The full uncut version runs around 95 minutes and even features a brief topless scene for "continental" release, which is sometimes attributed to Steele but is clearly a body double. Lots of shoddy prints for this one have been released on DVD over the years thanks to its public domain status but there's also a restored 2014 Blu ray release from Raro Video. It includes the option of watching the film either with the English dubbing track or in Italian with English subtitles, plus includes lots of good extras.

★★★