And God Said To Cain (1970)

The slight problem with spaghetti westerns is that there's a fairly finite list of good ones, and once you get beyond that it can all get very hit-and-miss, very quickly. Among the informed, "And God Said to Cain" is known to be amongst the good ones; however, I hadn't seen it yet and thus discovering it was a positive delight.

Klaus Kinski has a major role for a change - his appearances often tend to be a token one scene job - as Gary Hamilton, a man unjustly sentenced to 10 years imprisonment who is unexpectedly pardoned and who returns to the town where he once lived to seek revenge on those who framed him. His primary adversary, Acombar, is now living in Hamilton's old house with Hamilton's old girl. An interesting twist that that Acombar's son knows nothing of the events, and the meal where Acombar pretends everything is fine while all around the town his men are being (noisily) murdered is particularly enjoyable. The plot really is that slight: the majority of the film is spent watching Hamilton slowly assassinate his adversaries. The budget is obviously low, however it is very stylishly filmed and looks excellent throughout.

The film reminded me of two other Spaghetti Westerns: The Return of Ringo, and The Guns of Ave Maria. Much like in the Return of Ringo, the hero arrives in town to seek revenge on the man who's taken over the town and stolen his wife. However, in this case his wife hasn't stayed faithful (and is in fact complicit in his imprisonment), and the hero doesn't care about helping the town, only about his personal revenge. The Guns of Ave Maria is a looser connection, and really just to do with the sustained melodrama, and the finale in a burning house.

The version I watched was on Youtube, and looked pretty good for what it was (widescreen, decent print), although it obviously has some compression due to Youtube.