Bury Them Deep (1968)

The reviews I could find on the internet seemed fairly negative about this. I actually mostly enjoyed it, with the proviso that it’s obviously a low-budget, mid-tier spaghetti Western so you do have to look past the obvious limitations.

Craig Hill plays cavalry Captain Norton, who is entrusted with recovering a stolen gold shipment. He’s asked to pick men for this assignment and he picks the convicted, soon-to-be-executed cavalryman “El Chaleco” (Ettore Manni) (a bit of plot so cliched that I can’t actually remember where they took it from). Together the hunt down the gold shipment which was taken by an American gang led by “Billy Gun” (whose relationship to El Chaleco is revealed in a “shocking” revelation). There’s also a rival Mexican gang after the gold.

It’s obviously all fairly predictable and there’s a number of issues. Some of the action scenes are spliced in from other films. There’s a mixture of locations ranging from “quite good” to “the same damp gravel pit three times” (I’m not sure if it’s literally the same pit, but it might as well have been). There’s an extended scene with a snake that’s a little laughable rather than scary, and which ultimately ends unsatisfactory with a rescue from passing strangers.

What lifts it somewhat is the two main characters, that are both well-defined, likeable, and well-played. A lot of these low-budget films live or die on whether you care about the characters and I thought both Hill and Manni did a pretty good job here. It isn’t actually a good film, but if accepted for what it is then it’s perfectly watchable.