SARTANA: MY SECOND FAVORITE SPAGHETTI WESTERN SERIES

As Frontierado fast approaches – Friday, August 7th this year – Balladeer’s Blog is here with another seasonal post. The Frontierado holiday is about the myth of the old west, not the grinding reality.

SARTANA: For the record, the Sartana movies starring Gianni Garko as the gambler-gunslinger are my favorites. His personality is a bit lighter than that of my top favorite Spaghetti Western gunslinger – Franco Nero in the original 1960s Django and its only official sequel, Django Strikes Again. 

      In addition, Sartana’s films generally stay away from negative emotions like the original Django carried around with him. Sartana’s world is filled mostly with gunmen as cold-blooded and professional as himself. They deserve to be killed and Sartana recognizes that he deserves it, too, it’s just that he proves harder to kill than his enemies ever do. 

      The Sartana movies start out pretty grounded (for Spaghetti Westerns) but as the franchise goes along the installments grow closer to Robert Conrad’s Wild, Wild West series and our hero’s trick guns almost equal James Bond’s gadgets. Sartana himself stops just short of being a swashbuckler as he boldly tweaks his enemies with more and more audacity.   

      In this post I will first review the movies in which Gianni Garko played this unusual hero, then George Hilton’s “official” Sartana sequel, then touch on a few of the oddities. Like Django, Sartana inspired many, many “unofficial” sequels – several of which bear the name of the character in the title but not in the actual movie.   

IF YOU MEET SARTANA … PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH (1968) – Sartana shadows a gold shipment being handled by stagecoach across the desert in one of the most distinctive Spaghetti Western entrances this side of Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. From there, the double-crosses fly like shrapnel among the main characters.

Lasky (William Berger) and his outlaw gang ultimately succeed in robbing the shipment, but our snuff-sniffing villain slaughters his gang members when betrayal seems to be in the air. The only one he lets live is his buddy Morgan (THE Klaus Kinski) and the pair decide to try adding to their haul by blackmailing the banker and other supposedly “respectable” citizens who wanted the gold stolen.

Sartana is in the thick of the scheming and the killing, while taking time out for a card game when he can. The plot twists pile up to the point where some critics call them out, but c’mon! They’re part of the fun! Besides, the main attractions of Euro-Westerns like this are the style and the execution, not niceties like story consistency.

Sydney Chaplin also appears in this memorable debut for the Sartana series.

I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH (1969) – Director Anthony Ascott (real name Giuliano Carnimeo) took over this series and made himself as synonymous with it as star Gianni Garko. In fact, for this installment he credited Garko with coming up with several of Sartana’s clever maneuvers.

Someone frames Sartana for a massive bank robbery, which puts a steep price on our hero’s head – dead or alive. While endeavoring to find the real thief and clear his name, Sartana faces death around every corner and on every inch of the desert.

He’s targeted by a veritable army of bounty hunters and by scoundrels who think he committed the bank robbery and want him to cut them in on the proceeds. Klaus Kinski is back but plays a different character. Frank Wolff also stars.

I always recommend this second flick in the franchise for newbies so they can get the full taste of what the Sartana movies are like. 

HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL, MY FRIEND … SARTANA WILL PAY (1970) – Our gunslinger is on hand to witness the massacre of Joe Benson (Attilio Dottessio) and his fellow prospectors. When the killers try to add Sartana to their butcher’s bill he manages to wipe out all of them. 

Not savvying why the slaughter took place, our main character asks a few questions about it in the nearby town, inadvertently making himself the next target of the mysterious villains, including the town banker. The bullets fly and bodies pile up while Sartana takes on all comers and tries to get to the bottom of things.

The sultry madam (Helga Line) of the town brothel and the sexy niece (Daniela Giordano) of the late Joe Benson are among the suspects who might be pulling the strings behind it all.

LIGHT THE FUSE … SARTANA IS COMING (1971) – This was the last time that Gianni Garko would play Sartana, sad to say. I enjoy it because the Garko-Ascott combination was still dynamite but non-fans may be disappointed.

Sartana cleverly gets himself thrown into a prison because one of the few men he respects – gambler-gunslinger Grand Full – got word to him that he needed to confide in him. Grand tells our hero how he was framed for murder after burying a fortune in gold and offers Sartana half if he helps him clear his name so he can spend the money without a price on his head.

Sartana and Grand Full bust out of the prison and head for the town where the murder took place. Life is cheap there and lies are even cheaper. The town boss, his sheriff lackey and the sheriff’s beautiful wife are among the people who may have framed Grand and they all want to locate his hidden gold.

It’s fairly obvious that Sartana’s “friend” really did commit the murder and now wants him dead to avoid splitting the gold. Naturally, Sartana comes out on top and heads off into retirement with the half-million dollars in gold. 

SARTANA MISCELLANEA

BLOOD AT SUNDOWN (1967) – Gianni Garko played a bad guy named Sartana in this lesser Euro-Western but his performance sold the studio powers that be on making a series devoted to a heroic version of the character. The villainous Sartana of this flick is unsympathetic, but stylish.

SARTANA’S HERE … TRADE YOUR PISTOL FOR A COFFIN (1970 in Europe, 1972 in the U.S.) – Gianni Garko was unavailable for this Sartana project, so George Hilton played the character for this one time. The title’s great, but Hilton’s no Garko.

The plot involves our title character recovering what he thinks is stolen gold, but the bags are actually full of sand. And thus Sartana is thrown into violent schemes involving a dishonest town banker and a gang of Mexican bandits.

Our hero at first battles, then allies himself with another Spaghetti Western film series character – Sabata. Unfortunately, he’s not played by Lee Van Cleef this time around, but by Charles Southwood. Yep, we get to see Sartana and Sabata side by side but NOT played by the actors who defined those two characters.

Plus, there’s a bit of a gimmick gun overload this time in my opinion. You may feel differently of course. The good news is we still get Ascott directing.

THE DJANGO AND SARTANA “TRILOGY”

DJANGO DEFIES SARTANA (1970) – This film matched up Django (Tony Kendall) with the second- most neglected hero of Spaghetti Westerns, the gambler/ gunfighter named Sartana (George Ardisson). Django’s brother Steve (apparently their parents exhausted all their creativity on Django’s name) is framed for a bank robbery and lynched.

When it looks like the notorious Sartana was the real bank robber Django sets out on his trail. The two cinematic titans clash in the tradition of Dracula vs Frankenstein and King Kong vs Godzilla. After realizing they’ve been had the two join forces to bring down the real culprits.

DJANGO AND SARTANA ARE COMING … IT’S THE END (1970) – – Black Burt (yes, Black Burt) and his gang kidnap Anne, the daughter of a wealthy rancher. Django and Sartana team up to deal with the situation, with Django after the bounty on the heads of Black Burt and his gang while Sartana is more interested in Anne herself. She has no idea how lucky she is that it’s the gambler/ gunfighter who has fallen for her and not the bounty hunter since it seems people beloved by Django always wind up getting killed … sometimes twice. 

ONE DAMNED DAY AT DAWN … DJANGO MEETS SARTANA (1971) -Believe it or not that isn’t anywhere near to being the strangest title in Spaghetti Western history. In the future I’ll examine JUST weird titles for Eurowesterns as well as JUST the Sartana movies. For now this flick once again teams up Django and Sartana, this time against an evil town boss and a gang of Mexican bandits who are jointly running a lucrative gun- trafficking scheme. 

COMING SOON: DJANGO AND SARTANA MEET ZENDAYA! – Well, probably not. But I wouldn’t be surprised!