Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte
Tags: dark, cruelty, murder, western, cult, violence, sadist

Plot synopsis:
An elderly couple on a horse-drawn carriage is attacked by a gang led by Morgan (Kinski). Sartana (Garko) arrives on the scene and kills the robbers except for Morgan who gets away. Soon after,a stagecoach is robbed and the passengers murdered by a Mexican gang, at the order of General Jose Manuel Mendoza (Sancho). However, the gang is ambushed and killed by Lasky (Berger) and his men. Lasky then tells his gang that he will meet them later. As the men are about to open the strongbox from the coach, Lasky kills them all with a Gatling gun. After opening the box, he found it only contained rocks instead of gold. He heads to town to meet Jeff Stewal (Sydney Chaplin) and Alman (Gianni Rizzo), a politician and a banker, to collect his payment as part of an insurance fraud.
After Sartana takes Lasky's money in a card game, Lasky sends Morgan, his now-partner, to kill Sartana but he fails and is killed himself. Lasky then collects a gang and goes after Sartana. A shootout ensues and Sartana kills Lasky's men but allows Lasky to get away. After Lasky blackmails Stewal and Alman, the two inform Mendoza that it was Lasky who killed his men. Mendoza's men capture Lasky and try to make him talk, thinking that he knows where the gold is hidden. Lasky tells him that only Sartana knows the location of the gold.
Meanwhile, Stewal plans to escape with the gold, supposedly hidden in the late mayor's coffin, and Alman's wife, Evelyn (Heidi Fischer). After Sartana tells him that Mendoza is going to dig up the coffin with the gold and keep it all for himself, Stewal goes to check if it is true and is killed by Mendoza's men. Thinking that Mendoza now has the gold, Lasky attacks his residence and kills him and his men with his Gatling gun. Sartana also arrives and the two open the coffin and discover it is filled with rocks instead of gold. The gold has been hidden by Alman, who tells his plan to his wife. Evelyn betrays and kills him and takes Lasky to the gold, hidden in another coffin. Lasky kills Evelyn, but as Sartana arrives the two engage in a duel. Sartana kills Lasky and rides out of town with the coffin full of gold.

Review: Even if it looks like yet another tale about stolen gold, Mexican bandits and switching allegiances, Sartana feels (and is) different.
I gave up trying to follow the plot after a while and just immersed myself in the surreal happenings.Sartana himself is like a crossover between The Man with no Name (the standard by which every spag antihero is measured) and Django, a black-clad amoral anti-hero.
Frank Kramer's SARTANA (1968) has emerged as one of the most interesting examples of the classic era Spaghetti Westerns and yet exists as a sort of exuberant failure, reveling in it's sense of artiness & bad taste at the same time.
Yet it's an important failure, a movie that spawned a recurring character and helped to shape the Spaghetti Western into a genuinely "adult" form of cinematic entertainment.
The film was classified with an "X" certificate in much of Europe when first released and only made it's way to English speaking audiences in a somewhat diminished cut -- and has now been released by indie Spaghetti Western label Wild East Productions on DVD in it's complete form, and demands some re-evaluation.
Here is a pretty much pure example of the Spaghetti Western, made entirely in Italy by an all European cast with no standout Yankee Gringo star turn, unless you count Klaus Kinski's ten minutes or so on screen.
Gianni Garko headlines as Sartana in the second of five screen outings by him as a character named "Sartana" but the first from the loosely related series featuring Sartana as a hero: 1966's $1000 ON THE BLACK depicts Sartana as a crazed, barbaric killer and is not related to the Good Guy Sartana movies ...
or so the thinking goes.Sartana's character in this first Good Guy outing is actually more successfully realized than the movie he inhabits, which tells a sort of labyrinthine plot by various bigwigs in a tumbleweed nowhere to intercept a shipment of gold & screw each other over for their percentages, resulting in murder and mayhem: the usual boring stuff.
Yet he seems to know what everybody in the movie is up to and has a plan to play the different sides against each other & move in once the dust has settled to pick up the pieces for himself like a Hyena, which is how one character aptly describes him.
Sartana is there to preside over the deaths, and make sure everyone gets buried in style.This is done with a minimum of dialog, an emphasis on mood and a staggering body count for a movie of such limited scope.
Garko wears his Sartana personal like a tailored suit, even perfecting a way of turning while gazing up from underneath the brim of a hat that reminds me of watching a cobra moving with a snake charmer.
He also has more in common with James Bond than Clint Eastwood, armed with a small pepper-box type Derringer pistol that behaves more like a movie prop than an actual weapon, and more often then not scheming his way out of a jam or around his adversary's flanks.
He is the epitome of "cool" as a Spaghetti Western anti-hero, and it is easy to see why his performance spawned a series.The film also boasts a first rate A-list supporting cast of genre veterans: the crazed William Berger, Sydney Chaplin, Spaghetti Western legend Fernando Sancho, Andrea Scotti, Sal Borgese, and of course Klaus Kinski.
The later "Sartana" movies directed by Anthony Ascott became increasingly cartoonish but this film has a dark, nasty, almost sadistic side to it that is quite special.
The offbeat musical score by Piero Piccioni is uniquely un-cinematic with an organ as the central instrument instead of the usual Morricone flavored bravado, and most of the outdoor scenes were filmed near a dump outside of Rome.
Or even a horror movie.8/10 for Spaghetti fans, 5/10 for everybody else, and a classic of the genre any way you slice it..
Later occur a murders series starred by a bandit named Lasky(William Berger, unforgettable co-starring in ¨Sabata¨ as the banjo man).
The dark,elegant hero, a freelance gunman, named Sartana(Gianni Garco or John Garco) appears to chase the nasty gunfighter and discover the robberies and killings.The confrontation will be inevitable among the town's despots(Sydney Chaplin, Gianni Rizzo), a cruel murderous( top-notch Klaus Kinski, as always), a Mexican general named Tampico( the great Fernando Sancho in his regular character), Lansky and of course Sartana.The first movie on Sartana starred by Gianni Garco is plenty of action, shootouts, double-crosses, twists and loads of violence and blood.
The movie gets the usual Western issues, such as greedy antiheroes, violent facing off, quick zooms, exaggerated baddies, among them.
The picture is professionally directed by Frank Kramer or Gianfranco Parolini, subsequently he directed another Spaghetti-hero named Sabata with Lee Van Cleef in two entries..
Sartana (played superbly by John Garko) has one of the greatest entrances on screen of all the Spaghetti protagonists.
When accused of looking like a scarecrow, he utters the classic line "I am your pallbearer" before gunning down all the bandits facing him.
A classic moment, with the black clad Sartana setting the scene perfectly for this Gothic tinged western.The story itself is a very complicated affair, and one which I'm not completely sure I followed from beginning to end (I blame the wine consumption).
In simple terms, the story evolves around a stagecoach robbery and murder (with the culprits themselves hijacked and massacred by Lasky - played by the ever brilliant William Berger - and his gang).
Sartana combines the gadgetry of Parolini's later Sabata movies, with the darkness and brutality of Django.
There are classic performances from Garko and Berger together with the familiar faces of Fernando Sancho and Klaus Kinski.The success of Sartana is clearly demonstrated by the string of sequels (and name-checks) that followed.
I am a big fan of Spaghetti Westerns (the good ones, anyway), and was really looking forward to seeing "Sartana."  I loved the film "Django"--I can understand why it was so successful and inspired so many imitation Django-films.
To me, "Sartana" was just an average Spaghetti, with a high body count--mostly resulting from the villains killing each other.
(And I don't know how Berger was able to recruit gang members, the way he was always killing his own men.) The unshaven anti-hero Garko (who bore an uncanny resemblance to James Franciscus in some scenes) was pleasing but unexceptional in the lead role, his only unique feature was his weapon, a tiny four-barrel pepperbox-style pistol--which in reality, with its short barrels and tiny bullets, should have been vastly inferior in range, accuracy and effectiveness when compared to an ordinary six-shooter.
Too many incidents were lifted from the Leone/Eastwood films: the musical watch, the metal plate deflecting a bullet, the eccentric coffin maker.
"Sartana" is a historically important Spaghetti Western because of its success and the number of imitators (in name, at least) that it inspired, but there are many better films within the Spaghetti Western genre..
Gianni Garko (of Body Count) is the mysterious Sartana, out to get some gold that's been scammed by local businessmen in conjunction with an amazingly over the top William Berger (Dial: Help, Maya, Spider Labyrinth and Keoma).
Berger for me plays the best character in the film, a heartless, hyperactive killer who is not shy in double crossing folks, but can intuitively know when to hook up with Sartana too if the situation demands it.Yep, it's one of those films.
Except boobs.Some come for the Garko, who plays Sartana in a laid back, but deadly way, and stay for the Berger, who's anything but laid back here.WHUP!Oh, and seemingly, Klaus Kinski turned up on set one day, stared into the camera a couple of times, and got paid for it!WHUP!Oh, and this film has the loudest 'eating a chicken' foley effects I've heard ever heard ever heard.WHUP!.
Sartana is this badass guy trying to unravel everything he's deadly, he's quiet, he resembles Clint Eastwood, he plays poker like James Bond, has his own special pistol and he has his own unique style of clothing which makes him standout in the desert.
"If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death" (1968), directed by Gianfranco Parolini and starring Gianni Garko, William Berger Fernando Sancho, Sidney Chaplin(!) and Klaus Kinski phoning in a cameo role, has only one great thing going for it, and that's its ridiculously over the top title.
Still, the plot is something like this: Sartana (Garko) gets involved with an insurance swindle run by several dignitaries, who hire a Mexican gang to steal a strong-box, and an American gang, led by Lasky (Berger), to kill the Mexicans.It takes a very long time, too long, to find all this out, and by that point, I ceased to care.
Berger is a good actor, one that fits very well into the greed-fill world of Spaghetti's, but isn't given anything interesting to do and is wasted completely.
Garko has a good opening line ("I am your pallbearer."), but not much else, and doesn't have the same magnetic presence as Clint Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef.The director made "Sartana" and other "Circus" Westerns like this.
They're called "Circus" Westerns because there is so much jumping around and choreographed back-flips that you might be watching a kung-fu movie and not a Spaghetti.
I suspect because Parolini was more interest in making an action film that just happened to be set in the West than creating a Western.
Maybe saying this movie is an insult to the genre is too strong, but when you see progressive and transcendent Spaghetti Westerns like "Black Jack" and "Once Upon a Time in the West" that were made in the same year, you realise how lazy this film is..
The same actor (who got his name "englified", played Sartana, based on a Santana, not the Carlos Santana musician of later fame) in most of this officials outings and in one unofficial one, which unfortunately was not in the Arrow box set I purchased.Now if you feel that I rated this too low and you had much more fun with it, I did not mean to offend you.
While the plot is actually almost incomprehensible, it's fun to watch Sartana and others switch allegiances about every five minutes.
Gianni Garko as Sartana and William Berger as Lasky are just fun to watch.
It's not the best Spaghetti Western I've seen, but I'm glad to finally have a copy.While the movie prominently lists Klaus Kinski in the credits, his screen time totals about 10 minutes..
For the first film in what would come to be the Sartana series, star Gianni Garko wanted a character whose motivation was more than just vengeance.
After turning down script after script, Renato Izzi's take on the character - a man free from sentiment who pits rivals against one another - Sartana was born.What breaks the character away from the mold is both his air of mystery and his love of gadgets, which many attribute to director Gianfranco Parolini (God's Gun) love of James Bond films.
When faced with an entire gang of killers, led by Morgan (Klaus Kinski, Death Smiles at a Murderer), one of them says, "You look just like a scarecrow." Sartana coldly replies, "I am your pallbearer," before ruthlessly killing everyone but the gang's leader.The first few scenes of this movie set up that everyone is looking for coffins filled with gold, from Morgan's gang to a Mexican army led by General Jose Manuel Mendoza (Fernando Sancho, Return of the Blind Dead), who says, "How many times I tell you...
but you can call me General Tampico!" Then there's another group led by Lasky (William Berger, a frequent actor in Jesus Franco films), who uses a gatling gun to wipe out his rivals.
But then Stewal and Alman turn him in to Mendoza, who goes after both Lasky and Sartana.What follows is an elaborate series of double-crosses, with Stewal trying to escape with the gold but being killed by Mendoza to Lasky killing Mendoza and his men and Alman's wife killing him and taking Lasky to the gold before he kills her.
Finally, Lasky and Sartana have a duel, which ends with our hero riding out of town with the coffin filled with gold.This film sets up the character of Sartana quite well - no one is sure why he does what he does, appearing with the sound of a dead man's watch, being able to seemingly disappear at will.
The Spaghetti Western was always well known for it's quirky, colourful characters and anti-heroes, they were more than just your average, gruff cowboy seen in the American western.
He uses a six shooter and Winchester rifle but often favours an easily hid Derringer, he is also very shrewd and creative in outsmarting his enemies and in the first of five films he is played by Spaghetti Western veteran Gianni Garko.The plot of this first film in the series "If you meet Sartana, prey for your death" is like this, a stagecoach carrying a gold shipment from the local bank is attacked by Mexican bandits who kill everybody on board,however,just as the bandits are about to make off with the gold, they themselves are attacked and all of them killed by sadistic outlaw Lasky(WILLIAM BERGER)and his men.
But Lasky in turn kills his own men when they try and steal the gold,however,when he opens the strongbox, he finds it is full of rocks.
Unknown to Lasky, the real gold has been hidden and he is also in league with the town's two corrupt bankers, Jeff Stewal and Al Holman who want the insurance money from the robbery as well as the gold, on top of this, a gang of ruthless Mexican bandits also want the gold, but things are made worse when mysterious gunslinger Sartana(GIANNI GARKO)comes on the scene and is also interested in the whereabouts of the gold.
Everyone involved double crosses each other and the body count gets higher and higher, so who will get the gold...The film is very similar to SABATA(1969)as Sartana dresses in the same way as the character of Sabata and displays the same characteristics and uses the same weapons.
The film has a very body count and the action scenes are brilliantly done.
I loved the way Lasky uses a Machine Gun to dispatch his enemies and I loved the first scene when Sartana shoots 4 guys with his Derringer and then finishes off the other 2 with his Winchester, having only to bring the Rifle down from over his shoulder to shoot out the last two guys, really impressive.
I was also impressed with the shootout between Sartana and Lasky and his men and the shootout at the bandit's hacienda, check out how Sartana rolls over whilst at the same time shooting his enemies in true Spaghetti fashion, also watch as Sartana crashes through a window and shots a few more guys, really cool.
I was extremely impressed with the film's action scenes and thoroughly enjoyed watching them.As I said earlier, the film has a very bondian feel to it in terms of the character of Sartana, who is sort of similar to James Bond.
Just like Bond, Sartana is very sharp witted and makes a lot of smart jibes and remarks, you gotta love his first line at the beginning of the film before he shoots 6 guys, "I am your pallbearer".
I really like the character of Sartana and he's played brilliantly by Gianni Garko, forget George Hilton or anyone else,Garko is the man and he succeeds fully in creating a really cool and likable Spaghetti Western anti-hero, he is a pleasure to watch.
William Berger is also excellent as the double crossing Lasky and a more restrained Klaus Kinski is great as his silent partner, other Spaghetti veteran Fernando Sancho wonderfully plays the brutal bandit leader.
Aside from Sartana though, my favourite character is probably the old man,Dusty,a coffin maker who helps Sartana, he's really funny and has some of the best lines.
He appears in the other Sartana films alongside Garko, he reminds me of Walter Brennan who appeared as the same type of characters in dozens of American westerns.The only thing I didn't like was the soundtrack which in my opinion was very poorly done, the storyline was good but it got a little confused at times as the characters are constantly double crossing each other and at times I didn't know who was double crossing you or why they're doing it.But the first entry in the Sartana series ranks among the best Spaghetti Westerns and I really enjoyed it, I have only seen one other Sartana film, LIGHT THE FUSE,SARTANA IS COMING(1970)and I would say that this film is just as great as the latter and is on a par with it.Fun,enjoyable and highly reccommened.9/10..
A so-so spaghetti western marred by some fairly inert direction by Gianfranco Parolini.
Gianni Garko is Sartana as he runs head on into a town populated with double & triple crossing lowlifes.
Parolini, who would go on to direct the classic SABATA a few years later, shows very little imagination here, save for a few gunfights and clever death trap set by Garko.
Shrewd and lethal ace gunslinger Sartana (a fine and commanding performance by Gianni Garko) goes after the dangerous band of thieves who held up a stagecoach for a fortune in gold.
Sartana engages in a deadly battle of its with the equally crafty and ruthless Lasky (splendidly played to the wicked hilt by William Berger), a total bastard who's willing to do anything necessary (including killing his own men!) to have exclusive dibs on the booty.
Moreover, there's a marvelously grotesque rogues' gallery of no-count villains: the always terrific Fernando Sancho as wicked bandit Jose Manuel Mendoza, Sydney Chaplin as shifty banker Jeff Stewal, Gianni Rizzo as gross fat creep Alman, Heidi Fischer as the fetching, but duplicitous Evelyn, and, in a regrettably brief role, the immortal Klaus Kinski as Lasky's icy henchman Morgan.