“Revenge of the Resurrected” Review

 

Revenge of the Resurrected

1972 / Colour / 90 m. / Un dolar de recompensa / Italy / Spain

Starring: Peter Lee Lawrence, Orchidea De Santis, Alfredo Mayo, Carlos Romero Marchent, Andres Mejuto, Eduardo Calvo, Dada Gallotti, Raf Baldassarre, Luis Induni, Emilio Rodriguez

Cinematography: Mario Capriotti

Art Director: Riccardo Domenici

Film Editor: Antonio Gimeno

Original Music: Nora Orlandi 

Written by: Rafael Romero Marchent, Jose Luis Navarro and Fernando Popoli 

Produced by: Gregorio Manzanos

Directed by: Rafael Romero Marchent

 

Reviewed by Lee Broughton

Synopsis:

Sharp-shooting Danny O’Hara (Peter Lee Lawrence) is also a talented artist and his father (Luis Induni) convinces him to try his luck professionally in St. Louis. Alas, bandits attack the stagecoach that the pair are travelling on and old man O’Hara is needlessly slaughtered along with the rest of the passengers. Having only seen the villains from behind (and from a distance), Danny can only identify them via their distinctive fashion and firearm accessories.

Seeking help in the next town that he comes to, Danny is alarmed to discover that sheriff Sullivan (Andres Mejuto) is one of the bandits. After making friends with the sheriff’s daughter, Janet (Orchidea De Santis), and taking a job with the local blacksmith, Porter (Raf Baldassarre), Danny devises an ingenious plan to flush the bad guys out.

Critique:

 Revenge of the Resurrected is a really quite obscure Spaghetti Western that takes much of its initial inspiration from Giulio Petroni’s classic vengeance tale, Death Rides a Horse. In a fairly well executed early scene, Danny is thrown from the stagecoach that he is trying to defend from the bandits. When he finally catches up with the stagecoach — minus his gun — he’s just in time to see the passengers being brutally executed.

He can’t see the murderous villains’ faces but he does spot distinctive elements of their personal clothing and suchlike (a set of spurs, a hatband, a gun’s holster, a gun’s handle and a pair of boots) that he can use to identify them at a later time. Being an artist, he sketches out representations of these items just as soon as he can.

It’s revealed early on that the sheriff is one of the gang when Danny spots a distinctive set of spurs hanging on his office wall. However, by employing inventive camera angles, imaginative blocking and commanding point-of-view shots, director Rafael Romero Marchent and cinematographer Mario Capriotti manage to detail the nefarious activities of the remaining villains without revealing their identities.

This allows Marchent to generate a suitably paranoid and enigma-laden atmosphere — Just who are these cutthroats? Can Danny really trust those townsfolk who appear to be the most trustworthy? Will Janet inadvertently let something slip to her father? Will the drunken Doc Dempsey (Eduardo Calvo) become a liability? Why is the creepy local big shot Lou Stafford (Carlos Romero Marchent) so interested in Danny’s welfare? And so on — which gives the show an impressively disorientating and almost giallo thriller-like feel.

Just as you would expect in a giallo inspired Western, there are red herrings aplenty to be found here. And with all of this confusion hampering Danny’s covert investigations, the gang is free to attempt further violent robberies at a nearby town and at a nearby fort as well as actively pursuing a number of other murderous endeavours.

Whenever a crime is committed, Danny tries to stir things up by secretly placing “wanted” posters around town that accuse prominent local citizens of being gang members. He signs these posters as being from “the Resurrected” but it doesn’t take the gang members long to deduce that Danny is responsible for them and he is soon fighting off a number of assassination attempts.

Strangely enough, the content of this show does bring to mind some of David Lynch’s thematic obsessions at times: Marchent provides well-observed studies of seemingly normal slices of small town life out West but the viewer remains aware that — behind the happy gloss — wicked deeds are being committed by a select group of outwardly respectable citizens.

Revenge of the Resurrected is a fairly low budget affair but Marchent makes the best of his limited resources. Furthermore, the film’s narrative content is just different enough to allow the show to stand out from the crowd and this, along with the spirited performances of the featured cast, enhances the show no end.

The German actor Peter Lee Lawrence (AKA Karl Hirenbach) starred in over fifteen Euro Westerns before his untimely death in 1974. He remains a popular figure amongst Spaghetti Western fans to this day and he’s fine here as the wannabe artist-turned vengeance seeker Danny O’Hara.

O’Hara dresses like a dandy (initially, at least) but is able to match the roughest and dirtiest of villains when it comes to gunplay. The rest of the cast perform well enough too and there are some interesting turns from Sergio Leone regulars Frank Brana and Lorenzo Robledo and genre stalwarts Raf Baldassarre and Carlos Romero Marchent.

The film’s many action scenes are distinguished by the inclusion of some noticeably good stunt work and one of the genre’s leading musical lights, Nora Orlandi, provides some really rousing music that underscores these scenes to good effect. All in all, Revenge of the Resurrected remains a worthwhile and entertaining enough little genre entry.

Rating: Good ++

© Copyright 2012, 2024 Lee Broughton.

[Lee Broughton is the author of The Euro-Western: Reframing Gender, Race and the ‘Other’ in Film (2016) and the editor of Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained (2016) and Reframing Cult Westerns: From The Magnificent Seven to The Hateful Eight (2020).]