Cowards Don't Pray (1968)

This is a medium-budget Spaghetti Western, and is very ambitious in terms of the script, which contains much melodrama – often a good thing in the second-tier Spaghetti Westerns. Gianni Garko plays Brian, who returns home from the civil war and shortly afterwards finds his wife (presumably, it's never actually shown) killed, his house burnt down and himself shot and left for dead. He's rescued by Daniel, played by Ivan Rassimov, whose brother Robert has been captured and held for ransom. Initially they team up, but later Brian becomes increasingly unhinged—haunted by flashbacks to the murder of his wife—and turns to lawlessness and killing, while Daniel becomes a Sheriff of a local town. Inevitably they come into conflict.

The script attempts to deal with two main issues: Brian's descent into violence due to his traumatic experiences and the conflicted loyalties of Daniel, Robert, and Brian's new girlfriend between their friend and their desire to uphold the law. The latter is done pretty effectively, and makes the second half of the film quite enjoyable. The former seems to be done a bit abruptly and with a few jumps in plot and makes the first half of the film slightly ropey.

Unfortunately, for all the ambition of the script, it doesn't quite come together. In a large part I think this was due to the English dubbing, which isn't great (both in terms of the dialogue and the acting). There's a section of the film in the middle that was obviously cut from the English release, where Daniel is setting himself up as Sheriff and showing his evenhandedness that is presented in Italian with English subtitles, and this part plays much better, although it's not clear to me whether it's because the dialogue is actually better, or because the badness is less obvious in Italian. The other flaw is that the plot is a bit jumpy—especially at the start—with important points just "happening" with no real build up or motivation. A part of this is the three(!) occasions when people who really should know better agree to ridiculously arranged duels: for example Brian is caught seducing a baddie's woman and the baddie decides to kill him (and is in a position to), Brian suggests they have a duel in the dark with only lit cigars showing the location of the opponent, and the baddie agrees.

For a mid-budget Spaghetti Western the film is very well shot. There's interesting close-ups of guns and spurs, shots through chairs, and good use of changing focus during conversations. At other times the shots are roughly done and unsteady, much like in Django. It probably isn't entirely original, but generally works well and shows some thought has been put into it. The locations are also pretty good too: the sections in Almeria often use fresh angles and so avoid the tendency to look like too many other Spaghetti westerns, and Brian's flight through the plains at the end is also notable in my mind. Occasionally, the Spanish and Italian locations don't quite seem to match up though: see the two pictures at the side of a chase through the desert arriving at an obviously Italian river (again, towards the end).

The Koch Media DVD (part of their Italowestern collection) is a bit mixed, with some parts of it looking absolutely perfect and some parts coming from an obviously quite damaged print. I'm prepared to believe this was unavoidable. Given the English dub is inferior to the Italian dub, it's a shame that a complete set of English subtitles weren't available for the Italian dub.

In summary, it's a very interesting Spaghetti Western, for what it tries to do, but not really completely successful. I think it's well worth watching, but it's slightly hard to rate.

Ps. I'm not 100% sure of the date – it looks to be either '68 or '69, but different sources give it differently.

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