Sabata

Sabata (1969) belongs to the more playful wing of the spaghetti western, far from Sergio Leone's heavy, dust laden world. Here the guns are closer to toys. A hundred thousand dollars of army money is taken from a bank safe. The robbery was arranged by the town's leading citizens, the judge among them. Sabata recovers the money and does not hand it back: he knows who planned it and starts blackmailing them. That is the character. Sabata is not a good man, he is simply cleverer and better prepared than everyone else. Gianfranco Parolini's films in this vein are called circus westerns and the reason is obvious. The weapons have become mechanical toys. Sabata's pistol produces an extra barrel, there are acrobats in the cast, and the banjo carried by William Berger's character has a rifle inside it. It sits somewhere between James Bond and the western. Lee Van Cleef had come out of the Leone films and become a star in his own right, and this is the first time he is fully at the centre. The odd thing about the trilogy is the middle film: Van Cleef did not appear in it and Yul Brynner took the part, after which Van Cleef returned for the third. It runs 106 minutes. Good for: spaghetti westerns, light genre films, and sixties Italian cinema. Less good for: there is violence, the plot is tangled, and anyone wanting a serious western will not find one.