LA LUNGUA CAVALCADA DELLA VENDETTA, Italian western, with Richard Harrison

[Nzoog Wahlrfhehen]

La lungua cavalcada della vendetta (1972)

Written and directed by Tanio Boccia

I went into this one blindly, with no background knowledge of the film, and was pleasantly surprised. This is one of the late westerns starring Richard Harrison, made in the early seventies and, in this case, done with the participation of two Italian veterans born in the teens and with many peplums to their credit. The story itself is a variation on the serial revenge motif. Having got wind that a woman has just completed the sale of her ranch, a group of bandits waylay, rob, rape and kill her. Before they leave, one of them, a former employee of the victim, guiltily drapes his poncho over the corpse. When her brother, played by Harrison, returns from the Civil War and learns what has happened and who has done it, he proceeds to eliminate each one of the culprits, one by one, and leaving a piece of the poncho on each cadaver. Very Spaghetti Western-like.

Modest stuff, perhaps, but done with obvious professionalism. When working according to pre-established patterns, filmmakers sometimes had to both follow the generic marks and, at the same try, try to bring some variety to them. What’s initially striking is that the final revenge takes place first, followed by a long flashback that constitutes the body of the film. This might seem merely precious, an unnecessary attempt to “be different” but it was, in all probability, done so that the film could start straight with an action scene prior to what may have deemed a long exposition. Director Tanio Boccia, moreover, may have become aware of the pitfalls of lapsing into repetition with the one-by-one serial-vengeance motif, so one of the last revenges is elided over, cutting straight from the preliminaries to the arrival in town of a corpse on horseback, bearing yet another piece of the poncho.

Visually, the film abounds in spacious long shots, and deep focus shots, and Boccia and DP Carlo Esposito enhance what interest the story has by keeping it unintrusively well-framed throughout, bringing some interesting lighting to the outdoors scene of the bandits’ campsite hideout, and deftly arranging the actors and the natural and artificial elements of the available sets, as in the shot of Harrison climbing a flight of stairs with the lines created by the wallboards at one edge of the frame.

Harrison himself, by the way, also helps, a much more flexible actor that he was in the sixties. As for the rest of the cast, Rik Battaglia is just one badman among many; one of his underlings (of the aforementioned poncho) overacts; a second-billed Anita Ekberg turns up for a cameo in the last third, and genre regular Furio Meniconi has been encumbered with the curious pseudonym “Men Fury”.

[LOP2]

Enjoyed this one much than I thought I would do, one of the better Harrison westerns of the 70's.

[shootgringoshoot]

Im still looking for a video tape of this movie