Blessed with a wonderfully layered script by prolific Giallo luminary Ernesto Gastaldi, and a strong, dominant, enigmatic lead actor in sinewy screen icon Lee Van Cleef, a triumphantly rousing score by Sergio Bardotti, vertigo-inducing stunt-work, adrenaline-spiking gun-play, all being expertly corralled by dynamic director Giancarlo Santi into one of the more richly satisfying spaghetti westerns that offers fans an extra generous helping of bang for your 15 odd bucks. Conspicuously shot in the burning desert heat, the painfully arid environment certainly no less a constant and present threat than the callously murderous Saxon clan, the powerful, grossly immoral family headed by the Machiavellian land baron David Saxon (Horst Frank), his preening, pock-marked psychopath son Adam Saxon (Klaus Grünberg), the sinful Saxon's ceaselessly grievous misdeeds slavishly assisted by the brutal, wholly corrupted, gun-happy law man Eli Saxon (Marc Mazza).
Erroneously convicted of a murder he emphatically did not commit, the delectably dashing, fashionably fuzz-faced gunslinger Philip Vermeer (Peter O'Brian) finds that his only hope of succour from the pitiless ministrations of the hangman's noose is the curious intervention of gimlet-eyed, black-duster clad conundrum Sheriff Clayton (Lee Van Cleef) whose obfuscated modus operandi is certainly no less mysterious a prospect than uber-talented screenwriter Gastaldi's rewardingly labyrinthine, expectation-shifting narrative. Giancarlo Santi's masterfully shot 'The Grand Duel' while excitingly steeped in all the bravura, explosive widescreen spectacle that one usually expects of a classic Italian Western also has an additionally mischievous nature that makes this thrilling narrative all the more fascinating, and without belabouring the obvious Lee Van Cleef in on utterly god-like form!
Erroneously convicted of a murder he emphatically did not commit, the delectably dashing, fashionably fuzz-faced gunslinger Philip Vermeer (Peter O'Brian) finds that his only hope of succour from the pitiless ministrations of the hangman's noose is the curious intervention of gimlet-eyed, black-duster clad conundrum Sheriff Clayton (Lee Van Cleef) whose obfuscated modus operandi is certainly no less mysterious a prospect than uber-talented screenwriter Gastaldi's rewardingly labyrinthine, expectation-shifting narrative. Giancarlo Santi's masterfully shot 'The Grand Duel' while excitingly steeped in all the bravura, explosive widescreen spectacle that one usually expects of a classic Italian Western also has an additionally mischievous nature that makes this thrilling narrative all the more fascinating, and without belabouring the obvious Lee Van Cleef in on utterly god-like form!