D: Alberto Cardone. P: Armando Morandi. W: Mario Gariazzo, Alberto Cardone, Armando Morandi. Ph: Aldo Greci. M: Michele Lacerenza. St: Peter Martell [Pietro Martellanza] (Joe Williams), Glenn Saxson (Evans), Manuel Serrano (Pedro la Muerte), Liz Barrett [Luisa Baratto] (Lana), Daniela Giordano (Paquita)
Ninety-sixty-eight
was a good year for Euro-westerns. It produced a string of classics – Once Upon a Time in the West, The Great Silence, A Professional Gun – and several fan favourites – If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death,
The Ruthless Four, Today It’s Me, Tomorrow You... The
factory was running at full capacity, spitting out more than 80 titles at rapid-fire
pace – director Cardone alone cranked out three. It shouldn’t be surprising
that in those circumstances, quality control was somewhat lacking.
The Long Day of the Massacre is a case in point. It has all the
hallmarks of a production churned out to meet demand, with as little money,
energy and imagination expended as possible. The potential of the story is not
realised, the characters are flimsy, the atmosphere flat. It is not a terrible film, but it is a listless one.
It is suggestive that Cardone’s best westerns, the gloriously overwrought Blood at Sundown and Seven Dollars to Kill, were made in
tandem with producer Mario Siciliano, whose own debut as a director of
westerns, Cowards Don’t Pray, placed
its characters on a similarly tragic trajectory. Cardone made solid entries
without Siciliano but, where The Wrath of
God and Kidnapping could boast the
former’s patented tormented heroes and expressionistic visuals, this solo
effort, much of it shot day for night, could have been directed by anybody. Anybody,
that is, who was in a hurry to get it in the can and move on.
The
story centres on Joe Williams, a trigger-happy sheriff whose mounting tally of
corpses makes him a target for both the local judge, who fires him, and a band
of cut-throats led by Pedro la Muerte, who try repeatedly to kill him. Changing
tactics, they pin a murder on him, making him an outlaw, and then try to enlist
him, which comes to nought. When Joe interrupts the gang mid-bank raid and
rides off with the loot, the chase is on, with breaks for captures, fights and
escapes, for the remainder of the running time.
The
tension between hired guns, whether appointed or freelance, and meek or liberal
townsfolk formed the basis of some fascinating character studies in Fifties
westerns, but there is no psychological insight to be gained here. Taken to
task for excessive force, Joe slugs the judge, an act that may have been
intended as an ironic rejoinder, and carries on regardless. He doesn’t seem to
get a particular kick out of killing – no more than any other genre protagonist
– so the point feels like a red herring. The script never makes it clear what
motivates him: does he really intend to keep the stolen money, or is it just a
ruse to infiltrate the gang? Nobody seems to care, least of all Martell, who sleepwalks
through a role that was better suited (and that includes the costume) to Cardone’s
one-time muse, Anthony Steffen, the master of monolithic understatement.
Even
the customary cat-and-mouse games between hero and bandits lack sadistic gusto.
Pedro is a pretty pathetic villain. (And Serrano, while adequate, doesn’t have Fernando
Sancho’s instinctive sense of theatre.) He continually plays the wrong hand,
and it is his girlfriend, the sultry Paquita, who has the brains and the looks. Perhaps this was intended
as a satirical comment on macho incompetence, but it seems unlikely. Paquita’s
interventions hint at what might have been. With Joe refusing to talk and the
gang strangely reticent to torture him, it is she who has the bright but
blatantly obvious idea of roughing up his woman, ripping her dress and throwing
Joe an exquisitely mischievous glance. The moment passes, however, and the
kinky frisson swiftly fizzles.
What
really hurts the film is the sluggish pace. Incidental scenes are stretched beyond
their natural limits – riders careering through canyons (this may as well have
been stock footage by this point), a minor character washing his feet, Joe
wriggling and squirming for at leave five minutes to loosen his bonds. On three
occasions there are pointless fights that fail to progress what little plot
there is. And that, of course, explains the padding. Cardone had an equally
sparse narrative to work with in The
Wrath of God but compensated with neatly staged set pieces and inventive
camerawork. Perhaps his heart just wasn’t in it this time.
Like
many other second-rate spaghetti westerns, this was trampled in the stampede of
competing productions. There are minor points of interest but Cardone’s
talents, like those of Martell, Giordano and Saxson, who is wasted in a trivial
role, were better showcased elsewhere. Kevin Grant
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