'Death Rides a Horse' Directed by Giulio Petroni. 115
minutes. 1967. Widescreen (2.35:1 anamorphic). Explosive Media, Germany.
Format: All regions Blu-ray and two PAL Region 2 DVDs.
Four vicious bandits callously abuse and massacre a
family while executing a $200,000 robbery. A small boy survives the attack and
grows into a young man, Bill (John Phillip Law), who is intent on seeking
revenge. He finally gets the lead he’s been waiting for when a recently
released convict, Ryan (Lee Van Cleef), passes through the locality. It soon
becomes clear that the two sharp-shooting gunmen are hunting the same villains
but complications arise when Ryan tells Bill that he doesn’t need his help.
Established Spaghetti Western fans already know that
'Death Rides a Horse' is one of the genre’s best loved films. Reworking
elements of his own 'For a Few Dollars More' script (the flashback-fuelled
vengeance narrative and the uneasy alliance that is eventually forged between
two normally solitary gunmen) and seemingly taking inspiration from 'Day of
Anger' too (the hard-hearted older gunman teaching the cocky young gunslinger a
series of lessons in survival) resulted in scriptwriter Luciano Vincenzoni cooking
up a really engaging, exciting and well-paced storyline for this show. 'Death
Rides a Horse' is also a well-acted film. There’s a great chemistry present
between Van Cleef and Law here and it’s a real shame that they weren’t paired
together in any subsequent genre entries. The duo make a formidable team but
the bad guys that they’re facing here are no slouches either. Sergio Leone
regulars Luigi Pistilli and Mario Brega - along with genre stalwarts like Jose
Torres and Bruno Corazzari - provide expertly executed turns that ensure that
the film is populated with a good range of particularly vindictive bad guys who
are more than capable of giving our anti-heroes a run for their money.
At a technical level this show is right up there with the
Leone films. The film’s costumes and set designs look fantastic and all of its
well-staged action is captured via some superbly executed and supremely stylish
cinematography. Director Giulio Petroni and cinematographer Carlo Carlini put a
really good-looking movie together here. The icing on the cake is Ennio
Morricone’s superlative soundtrack score: it’s one of his most idiosyncratic
scores but it’s surely also one of his best. The good news here is that
Explosive Media’s new 'Death Rides a Horse’ Blu-ray is the best home video
presentation of this film yet. For years American DVDs of this title made use
of old and extremely scrappy panned and scanned masters. A widescreen version
of the film was issued by MGM in the UK but the picture quality of the MGM disc
was a little soft at times and parts of the presentation seemed to suffer from
low bit-rate issues. Then Wild East issued a widescreen version of the film in
America which boasted pretty much excellent picture quality as well as improved
sound quality. But the HD master that
Explosive Media have used for their new release takes the film to an all new
level in terms of picture and audio quality.
Explosive Media’s all regions Blu-ray of 'Death Rides a
Horse’ comes with two PAL region 2 DVDs.
One repeats the film while the other contains a raft of extra
features. The most impressive of these
is ‘Vengeance Rides a Horse’, a 35 minute documentary that features interviews
with Giulio Petroni, John Phillip Law (audio only) and assistant director
Enrique Bergier. This informative
documentary is supported by English subtitles.
Also included here is a trailer reel that features trailers for just
about all of Lee Van Cleef’s Euro Westerns.
Extras:
‘Vengeance Rides a Horse’ documentary, an image gallery,
‘Death Rides a Horse’ trailers, Lee Van Cleef Euro Westerns trailer reel,
trailers for other Explosive Media Western releases and an illustrated booklet
(German text only). As well as featuring
the English dub of the film, this release also sports Italian and German
language tracks that are supported by English subtitles.
© 2014 Copyright Lee Broughton.
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