If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death

"I am your pallbearer."

Today we meet another Spaghetti Western icon. Described by Len Liu as a cross between James Bond and Mandrake the Magician, Gianni Garko's Sartana has more style and wit than most of his compatriots. Five official movies begot innumerable ripoffs, some teaming Sartana with Django and Trinity! His first adventure, If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968), has everything a Spaghetti fan could want - though it might leave the non-converted cold.

See if we can follow this. Sartana (Gianni Garko) arrives on the scene of a stagecoach robbery, wiping out Morgan's (Klaus Kinski) outlaw gang. Another coach gets robbed by General Mendoza's (Fernando Sancho) Mexican bandits, only for Mendoza to be double-crossed by Lansky (William Berger). Lansky's in cahoots with a small-town Mayor (Sydney Chaplin) and banker (Gianni Rizzo) for the stagecoach payroll, but he can't trust his bosses anymore than Morgan or Mendoza. With everyone betraying each other, Sartana patiently waits to swoop in.

What Sartana lacks in sophistication, it compensates with fast-paced fun. Director Gianfranco Parolini places heavy emphasis on Spaghetti nuts-and-bolts: betrayal, greed, violent action. Scarcely five minutes goes by without a shootout or massacre, Parolini staging the gundowns with childish aplomb. Not satisfied with Sartana gunning down five baddies at once? Let Lasky escalate things to genocide levels with a homemade Gatling gun! Parolini somehow topped himself with Sabata (1969), whose outlandish gadgetry puts James West to shame.

Too bad Sartana leaves little room for originality between gunfights. Parolini takes his familiar double cross plot to extremes, with a few too many antagonists vying for the gold. The town elders and General Mendoza get so little screen time, they barely register. With even minor characters like Evelyn (Heidi Fischer) playing their own game, Sartana becomes a predictable exercise in nihilistic attrition.

Like many Spaghettis, Sartana stands or falls on its hero. Gianni Garko is more appealing than the genre's usual laconic antiheroes. He gives Sartana a dry wit to match his improbable quick draw skills, making him more human than, say, the Man With No Name. Nonetheless, Garko keeps Sartana as crafty and devious as everyone around him. Relying on a four barreled derringer with a nifty card-themed cylinder, he's more than a match for the show's myriad villains.

William Berger plays a scene-stealing wildcard: Lasky is the most interesting character through sheer unpredictability. Berger became a genre icon in his own right, appearing in Face to Face, Sabata and Keoma. Fernando Sancho (A Pistol for Ringo) plays another megalomaniac Mexican bandit. Klaus Kinski's wasted in an inconsequential cameo. Gianni Rizzo and Sydney Chaplin play supporting villains while Heidi Fleischer provides some momentarily feminine allure.

Spaghetti Westerns are typically a hard sell, except to aficionados. If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death is agreeable rough-house entertainment, yet it's so slight and derivative I'm hard-pressed to recommend it to casual viewers. Those with a taste for high body counts and treacherous anti-heroes will be more than satisfied.