Have A Good Funeral My Friend Sartana Will Pay (1970)

The third and, in my opinion, best of the Sartana series (although that may be partly because it was the one I saw first, much like El Dorado vs Rio Bravo). Although clearly only medium budget (the locations are all Italian I think), it's well made and for once has a reasonably comprehensible plot. This is probably the only Sartana film that I'd consider showing to the uninitiated. The key advantage over the other Sartana films is the coherant plot, with only a few major villians - the corrupt sherrif, the saloon hostess and the banker - recurring throughout and events introduced before they happen rather than just explained after they've happened.

An interesting feature is the use of confederate dollars in the close up, although there's no mention of the civil war. Another noteworthy feature amoung the Sartana series is that Sartana actually gets some lady action this time, after showing no interest in women in the other films. A nice little touch is that, although Sartana tries to use the "leave his at and cloak to look like he's somewhere" trick, it fails to fool his adversary. Less successful bits are the slightly racist Chinese characters and the handheld camera-work which can occassionally be hard to watch. The friendly undertaker is a typical Sartana touch.

The music is good, although slightly generic spaghetti Western music. The X-Rated Kult DVD is pretty good quality throughout, although possibly cut a few seconds short at the end and with an obviously inserted German title card. Although it tries to force German subtitles on the English audio these can be removed fairly easily.