Adios Sabata (1970)

“He’ll never be mistaken for Yul Brynner, he’s not bald and his head doesn’t glimmer.”

I’m not the biggest fan of the Sabata series – however this is barely part of the series: it was originally made under with the hero’s name taken from the Italian title “Indio Black”, and only dubbed to Sabata in English at a fairly late stage. Yul Brynner takes over the Lee Van Cleef title role, slightly ironically since Lee Van Cleef was busy with a Magnificent Seven sequel. Unlike the other films in the series it’s more of a Mexican revolution film (although not actually set in the Mexican revolution), with Sabata trying to help some revolutionaries steel gold to fight Emperor Maximilian.

I really enjoyed the first half-hour or so of the film. It sets up some interesting characters and has some classy “novelty” moments, for example an execution using the cannons of a model shop, and Sabata playing an out of tune saloon piano as part of the soundtrack. After that it gets a little bogged down in plot twists and betrayals that don’t really go anywhere. The action is well-made and enjoyable but the plot is stretched a little thin and the characters don’t hugely develop once they’re introduced. It also suffers a bit from the usual problem with “omnipotent” characters such as Sabata (and Sartana) – they seem to anticipate every problem that’s about to comes their way and so there’s never any real peril and the audience knows that any danger will be resolved by something set up off-screen earlier.

With that said, if simply viewed as a fairly mindless action film it is enjoyable, and probably my favourite of the series (most likely because it wasn’t really meant to be part of the series, so some of the aspects I don’t like are played down).