1968 - THE BASTARD or I bastardi

This rather oddball Italian euro crime feature is set in Arizona but the credits acknowledge that the film was shot in New Mexico, whatever.  The plot involves two criminal brothers who are basically robbing and shooting people all over the American Southwest.  One of the brothers  ( Giuliano Gemma) is betrayed by his current girlfriend to the other brother (typically scary actor Klaus Kinski) who steals his suitcase full of jewels and injures him for life.  The film turns into a revenge story from that point on with Giuliano Gemma out to kill his brother Kinski.

There are lots of shootings, car chases and a couple of gorgeous women one played by Margaret Lee.  In addition onetime James Bond leading lady Claudine Auger who was Domino in Thunderball, shows up in this film.  Also in the cast is legendary 40's glamour star Rita Hayworth as the drunken mother of the two brothers.  Hayworth suffered from dementia towards the end of her life but I don't know if that affected her performance in this film, she is supposed to be playing a drunk.

 

The director is a guy named Duccio Tessari an Italian writer/director who worked in the "Spaghetti Western", euro crime, and war movie genres, a versatile fellow.  You can give him credit for moving the story along and making it interesting and watchable.  He has a good eye for staging action scenes and picking locations.  Having two gorgeous women as costars doesn't hurt this film any.  The Bastard is a decent watch if you are into crime films.  I have to say that the film does have a rather odd ending.

 

The film was written by Mario Di Nardo, Ennio de Concini and Duccio Tessari.  The running time is 102 minutes.

1971 - DON'T TURN THE OTHER CHEEK aka LONG LIVE YOUR DEATH

This Spaghetti Western wants to be a light hearted action comedy.  It's got three reasonably entertaining leads.  Lynn Redgrave is an Irish revolutionary in Mexico trying to help the revolution.  Mainstay Italian actor Franco Nero ( really hamming it up) is a con man named Orlowsky who may be a deposed Russian prince.  Eli Wallach is also in the film basically recreating his "Tuco" character from The Good The Bad and The Ugly, although this time his name is Max Lozoya.

This is strictly very undemanding action film making.  The actors do what they can with an uninspired script, but the film just plods along until the viewer finally gets to the big battle scene at the end which is kind of entertaining.  The film clearly had a decent budget, the photography isn't bad but the reality is that this has been done before and probably with a lot more inspiration than this director could muster.  Only an okay time killer at best.

The film was written by Masimo De Rita,Gunter Ebert, Dino Maluri and Joan de Orduna.  That's a lot of writers for such an inconsequential film. 

 The running time is 103 minutes.