“HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.”
(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land).
Sergio Martino’s Mannaja / A Man Called Blade (1977) is about as entertaining a death-rattle as one might hope to encounter, but a terminal gurgle it remains. The Italian Western phenomenon …

“Society”, opines Reinhard Kolldehoff’s gleefully shady lawyer, “has many ways of defending itself: red tape, prison bars and the revolver”. His line serves a dual purpose. On a narrative level, it suggests to the key protagonist Vito Cipriani (Oliver Reed) the futility of resistance against the state apparatus facing him. …

Fade in. A lone bounty hunter occupies centre-frame of a long shot amidst an arid Andalucían desert landscape, his recently-slain human quarry sprawled limply over the saddle of a spare horse. As the camera pulls out to reveal Glenn Garvin waiting in the near foreground, the inevitability of a stylised confrontation …