User Reviews

Lo ammazzo come un cane... ma lui rideva ancora (Requiem For A Bounty Killer, Death Plays the Flute) is an interesting late Italian western well worthwhile for fans of euro-westerns. Afficiandos of giallo and euro-trash cinema in general may also enjoy this strange little film. Most other viewers will probably conclude that it is simply bad. There is material here that would have made an incredible film, however. It is unfortunate that the limitations of the production - money and talent - did not allow for their realization.

It has the look and feel of the ultra-cheap westerns being made at the end of this film cycle just before it went bust, falling somewhere between the rushed crudeness of W Django (1971) and Fidani's or Crea's bizarre movies. The closest thing that I can think to describe the execution for these movies to are yountube videos or fan flicks.

The best aspect to the movie are some short montage sequences and editing which strips down the violence to an explosive, brief ugliness. For instance, the initial attack on the ranch is an effective montage of rape, murder, and music; fist fights are edited down to the blows, giving them a strange quality that is interesting; flashbacks are well handled; the murders are sudden and vicious, such as the killing of the sheriff's brother by Ransom. All of this stuff is lean and hangs together in an effective way. These sequences stand out in disconformity from the rest of the movie, which is static in comparison. It is easy to see where the director's interest lay.

The story is a remix of the Death Rides a Horse (1967) plot (which in turn is a variant of the For A Few Dollars More plot) in which a man seeking vengeance unknowingly partners with one of the assailants that (usually) massacred his family. The movie was obviously structured around the revenge plot, but it is somewhat incoherent and largely an after-thought. The protagonist Barton (Forest), avenging the murder of his family and rape of his daughter, is largely a non-entity. This movie is about the parallel stories of Kimble "the Whistler" (Bien?), a psychotic gunman dressed up like Django, all in black, and Barton's daughter Suzy (Levi). Lo ammazzo. . . is more similar to the gory slasher giallo movies being made in Italy at the time. Patucchi's score is nothing special, but its elevator music repetitive pensiveness seems closer to giallo than western alla italiana.

Kimble is sexually dysfunctional; he lurks in the dark; his face twitches and he giggle sadistically like a child pulling the legs off a grasshopper. When he stalks and kills his victim, giallo style music (electronic moans and screams) begins and we are given distorted shots of watching eyes.

Suzy moves from being marginal in the movie – the passive attacked object - to becoming central – the ultimate agent of revenge. Her father, in comparison, is slow and inept. While most protagonist in a revenge western move from assailant to assailant, killing them in spectacular fashion, the entire group is killed by either Suzy, her lover, or Kimble. In that, this movie is similar to many of the American horror movies of the time, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The final, excessively drawn out slow motion scene between her and Kimble tie together the real plot in this movie. It is unfortunate that this relationship between them was not made the focus of the film. Together with a larger budget, this would have been a real spaghetti western classic. This is the sort of movie that calls out for a Tarantino-style remake.

From the perspective of the genre, this is a fascinating realization of the bounty hunter as amoral anti-hero. Contrary to their reputation, Italian westerns are in no way "amoral;" in fact, they are sometimes very heavy handed in their morality. The heroes are often sadistic and brutal, but they are placed in the context of a corrupt world ruled by vicious, crude, and destructive men far worse than they are. The usual spaghetti western hero usually ends up killing all the Rojos and Baxter, freeing Marisol and her family to flee. This element was later developed into the leftist "Zapata" westerns, like A Bullet for the General (1965) and The Big Gundown (1967). This movie is far different, in that it revels in the empty viciousness of bounty killer. He is marginally better than his associates, but that is not the focus of this film. The moral center lie in Suzy's character, who is the only one who is really justified to act in this film's world. Unfortunately, neither she not here motivation were as well developed.