DEATH RIDES A HORSE

Genres are defined, more or less, as collections of conventions. Horror films do certain things in certain ways using certain means. The reason I enjoy horror films is largely due to the fact that the conventions in play entertain me. I may shake my head and moan, fight my every instinct to reach for the fast forward button and hate myself afterward for having wasted my precious time but, overall, I enjoy watching horror films. They're simply fun. Spaghetti Westerns, on the other hand, are not. I've never enjoyed Westerns of any stripe, color or country of origin. Why not? Because the conventions of the genre simply don't interest me much.


Lee Van Cleef Death Rides a Horse

The standard western goes something like this: A guy is wronged, a guy seeks out those who wronged him, guy manages to off a couple of them before getting himself captured, guy makes it out alive, guy finishes the job, credits roll. This is the standard western and it is no different from the standard action film or, in some cases, horror film. But there's something about these films that has always bugged me and I think it may have to do with characterization. You simply don't find interesting characters in the average western. They're all pretty much the same. Why is that different from horror? It's not, except that I tend to enjoy watching teenagers getting gutted a lot more than I enjoy watching people ride horses and execute balletic leaps and jumps after getting shot. The action within the narrative makes the lack of interesting characters a moot point.


Death Rides a Horse

But I decided to spend some time watching a random group of Spaghetti Westerns this weekend and a few have changed my overall opinion. These films didn't do anything differently, mind you. They just did it better. The first of these films I watched was Giulio Petroni's DEATH RIDES A HORSE, a 1968 effort that starred the powerhouse acting duo of John Phillip Law and Lee Van Cleef. OK, OK, that was an unfair swipe and both men deliver decent performances. Law stars as Ben, a sharp-shooter with a chip on his shoulder. Understandably so, as he witnessed the murder of his entire family at the hands of five masked bandits when he was a child. His whole existence seems to revolve around the idea of taking revenge for their murders. Van Cleef plays Ryan, a man just being released after serving fifteen years in prison. Ben and Ryan are after the same men and a game of one-upsmanship develops between the two as the men simultaneously track down the bastards responsible for their misery.


It's this interplay between the two characters that makes DEATH RIDES A HORSE fun to watch. They are constantly meeting up, swapping plans and then screwing each over by taking the other's horse. The final scenes have them tag-teaming a group of gun-toting crooks during a shoot-out, an ending which makes the film feel like a period buddy cop movie. In traditional spaghetti western fashion, our hero Ben is captured and tortured. Here, he is buried up to his neck in sand and left to fry in the sun. When Ryan finally comes to the rescue, he playfully lets Ben think he will just let him cook for awhile. These moments make the long length of DEATH RIDES A HORSE - at a little shy of two hours, the film is much too long - cruise by. It's an element missing from a lot of the Spaghetti Westerns I've seen and is greatly appreciated here.


Luigi Pistilli Death Rides a Horse

The look of the film is so depressingly flat, however, that I couldn't help but feel disappointed. It's not a pretty film nor is it visually interesting. The opening scenes - a robbery during a driving thunderstorm and the horrible rapes and murders in Ben's family home - had my hopes up. They are the strongest visual moments in the entire film. After they occur, the film falls apart visually. Tarantino lifted two elements from this film for his KILL BILL movies. One is a minor note of interest - a single piece of music - and the other is a big one. As Ben meets each of the men responsible for the murder of his family, we get a tight close-up of his eyes, the murders and rapes being replayed in a red-tinted overlay. Tarantino uses the same effect whenever The Bride meets her prey. Tarantino knows what bits to steal and what bits to leave behind - that's what makes his movies so interesting to watch - and that little visual moment is the most interesting bit in the entire visual vocabulary of DEATH RIDES A HORSE.


John Phillip Law Death Rides a Horse

This is a good film. It won't supplant any of Leone's films from my list of great Spaghetti Westerns but it is highly enjoyable. It's got a good cast full of recognizable faces. Lee Van Cleef is probably the most recognizable to non-genre fans but it was nice to see Law and Luigi Pistilli - both of whom starred in Mario Bava films - in the same movie and both Anthony Dawson and Mario Brega are personal favorites. In the end though, I just wanted more. More what I don't know but I kept feeling that there was just something missing from the film, something that would make it really special. As it stands, it is merely good.


And you know what?


Merely good is good enough for me.


Recommended.