Overlooked Movies: Have a Nice Funeral, My Friend, Sartana Will Pay

This movie goes by several variations on the title above, I think.  It's part of a spaghetti western series about Sartana, another man in black, who's not just a skilled gunman but a con man, a gambler, and a guy who can kill you with a playing card.  He's always after money, it seems, and in the town of Indian Creek he plays a banker and the Chinese owner of a gambling hall against each other as they vie for a property they believe to be valuable.  Lots of people die.

Here's the kind of movie this is.  Three guys are going to kill Sartana as he rides through a canyon.  Instead of shooting him, which would be far too easy, they're going to kill him by letting 15 or 20 logs roll down the side of the canyon and crush him.  Somehow they get these logs to the top of the canyon wall, every one of them perfectly round and of perfectly identical size.  They get them stacked and ready to roll when the ropes holding them are cut.  All this would have taken about a month to accomplish, but they get it done in a few minutes, it seems.  We don't know how they do it.  They just do.  And believe it or not, their cunning plan fails.

Gianni Garko is very good as Sartana, and the soundtrack is excellent.  There are a number of good scenes.  The plot mostly makes sense, with a nice little twist at the end.  The movie probably won't convince you to become a spaghetti western fan, but it's good second-rate fare and fun while it lasts.