Death Rides a Horse

To watch this spaghetti western is to understand the inspiration of what makes Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill so much fun to watch. In fact, were you to take this film, change a couple of things around and add martial arts, then you would have Kill Bill. The film opens on a massacre scene in which a young boy witness his parents and older sister murdered by a band of outlaws (fortunately, each of them reveal a distinguishing mark which the boy etches into his memory for later identification). Fifteen year later he becomes a sharp shooting, blue eyed B-movie legend, John Phillip Law, and wants revenge. About this same time, a weathered, mysterious Lee Van Cleef is let out of prison and he also seems to have a vendetta against the same band of outlaws. I guess the two of them should get together. Van Cleef provides a sturdy presence, and Law has an awful "Western" drawl that makes the film all the more enjoyable, however, when it comes to the quick draw, he's very impressive. They go from town to town running into the various outlaws one by one and offing them until they come to the final showdown. To add to the Kill Bill connections, when Law's character sees one of the murders, it quickly goes to a flashback involving a snap-zoom and the boy's identification of that particular villain's distinguishing mark as Uma Thurman did with each of her victims. Plus Tarantino even swiped a piece of Ennio Morricone's score from this film for a scene in vol. 2. This film is a bit too long, but if you are able to lose yourself into this particular kind of bad movie, then you probably won't regret it.