Sabata

Spaghetti Western with Lee Van Cleef in the mold of Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name trilogy. RELEASED IN 1969 and directed by Gianfranco Parolini, “Sabata” chronicles events in a west Texas town when a black-clad gunfighter named Sabata (Lee Van Cleef) teams-up with an alcoholic ex-soldier named Carrincha (Ignazio Spalla) and an acrobatic Indian (Bruno Ukmar) to thwart the town leaders (Antonio Gradoli & Gianni Rizzo) who want to steal $100,000 from their own bank to purchase land that the encroaching railroad will cross. William Berger plays a minstrel of dubious loyalties while Franco…

He's the man with the gunsight eyes! Sabata is directed by Gianfranco Parolini (AKA: Frank Kramer) and Parolini co-writes the screenplay with Renato Izzo. It stars Lee Van Cleef, William Berger, Ignazio Spalla, Aldo Canti, Franco Ressel and Antonio Gradoli. Music is by Marcello Giombini and the Technicope/technicolor cinematography is by Sadro Mancori. Ace marksman Sabata (Cleef) teams up with a banjo-playing drifter and a Mexican tramp to foil the town leaders of Daugherty, Texas, who want to steal $100,000 from their own bank to buy land that the approaching railroad will cross. The first…

This isn’t so much a spaghetti western as a ravioli one. It’s full of lots of individually wrapped escapades that allow Lee Van Cleef to don his black suit and play a lovely game of cat and mouse with some quite shrewd townsfolk. It all starts when the army deposit $100,000 in the town’s bank. Barely half an hour after it is locked up for the night, the safe is on the back of a wagon heading out into the desert. Unluckily for the thieves, “Sabata” (LVC) stops them in their tracks and rather curiously repatriates the cash with it’s owners. Why? Well he concludes that there is a much more fun…