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Sabata (Lee Van Cleef) witnesses a bankrobbery n the little town
Daugherty, & while nobody else seems to be able to find even a trace
of the stolen money, the army payroll of 100.000 Dollars, Sabata has no
problems picking up the trail & returning the money to the army ...
for 5.000 Dollars in reward money.
But for Sabata this is only the beginning: With his friends Carrincha
(Ignazio Spalla), Indio (Aldo Canti) & Banjo (William Berger),
he soon makes some investigations, & finds all clues lead to rich
& arrogant landowner Stengel (Franco Ressel) & his companions
Ferguson (Antonio Gradoli) & judge O'Hara (Gianni Rizzo), & soon
enough Sabata has gathered some evidence, a stationwagon, against
them ... but instead of presenting the evidence to the law, he wants to
sell it to Stengel, for a mere 10.000 $.
Stengel of course tries his best to have Sabata killed, but Sabata has
of course taken precautions, blows up parts of Stengel's house &
raises his price to 20.000 $.
From now on Stengel makes numerous attempts on Sabata's life, using
among other things a ffalse priest (Alan Collins) & an acloholic
marksman (Marco Zuäanelli, but to no avail, since Sabata is prepared for
everything & has hidden weapons simply everywhere on his body ...
Later, Stengel even tries to have Banjo killed, whom he (rightly)
figures to be more than just one of Sabata's sidekicks. But Banjo proves
to be a tough cookie as well, having hidden a gun in the banjo he always
carries around (definitely an influence on Robert Rodriguez' Mariachi-series),
whjich he uses to wipe out several of Stengel's henchmen without even
flinching.
Of course, Stengel eventually figures he might be able to get to Sabata
through Banjo, but Sabata is even prepared for that & defeats Banjo,
if just. He doesn't kill him though, out of friendship one wonders ... or
is there something else ?
Later, Sabata, Carrincha & Indio capture several of Stengel's
henchmen in the mountains by using a landslide, then they attack Stengel's
mansion, using quite an array of firearms & a pocketful of dynamite as
well. Of course the three ofthem have no problems wiping out Stengel's
gang, & Sabata even manages to kill Stengel in a duel, even if Stengel
plays dirty.
The end ?
Not really. Banjo has kept out of it all, sitting on the sides waiting
for one to kill the other, & now that Sabata has won, he challenges
him to a duel ... & the winner gets the reward money on Sabata's head,
20.000 $, paid by judge O'HAra, who managed to weasel out of it all.
& wouldn't you know it, thanks to a dirty trick, Banjo shoots
Sabata dead, then takes his dead body, to bury a worthy opponent ...
But of course Sabata is not really dead, it was all a charade to get
his hands on the money on his own head, which he & Banjo have agreed
to share. But when Banjo tries another dirty trick to steal the money from
Sabata, Sabata stops him & forces him to hand over the money at
gunpoint, sharing only with Carrincha & Indio & leaving him out of
the deal ...
A (Spaghetti-)Western where the hero is every bit as ruthless, greedy
& violent as the array of villains just can't be all bad, especially
if that hero is played by Lee Van Cleef, & able support is given by
William Berger, who, while not actually a villain, is every bit as
ruthless, greedy & violent as the worst of them. & when the heroes
& villains use all sorts of imaginative weaponry like a knife-shooting
walking stick or a gun that shoots from its handle & there are almost
nonstop shootouts, you know you're in for some nice circa 110 minutes of
entertainment (if Spaghetti Westerns as such are at all your cup of tea).
It might not be art or the best Western ever, but it's one fun ride !
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