GEORGE HILTON/SPAGHETTI WESTERN DOUBLE FEATURE
Italy - W. Germany | 1968, 1970
Directors:
Giovanni Fago, Giuliano Carnimeo
Starring
George Hilton, Paolo Gozlino
Paul Muller, Walter Barnes
Horst Frank, Loni von Friedl
Color | Not Rated
Full House for the Devil: 88 Min.
The Moment To Kill: 90 Min.
Format: DVD
Double Feature Disc / R0 - NTSC
Wild East Productions
Hold your mouse pointer over an image for a pop-up caption
 
 
Review by
Rod Barnett

Full House:5
Moment:8
: DVD:6
In a perfect world all the Spaghetti Westerns ever made would be available for fans to view in their correct aspect ratio, with multiple language choices and in uncut pristine form. Of course, we don't live in a perfect world so movie fans must make do with what we are given. For fans of European westerns that means suffering with fairly crappy versions of a large percentage of the roughly 200+ examples of our beloved genre if we want to see them at all. Thank goodness for DVD company Wild East. They seem to be intent on releasing every single Euro-western that they can get their hands on and even if they have to charge a premium price for their discs, the effort taken to get solid, complete prints is much appreciated and worth the scratch. This DVD is their thirtieth release, and even if the films in question aren't the best the genre has to offer I'd rather have opportunity to see them than spend my days wondering.
    I'm much more familiar with South American-born George Hilton (real name: Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara) from his roles in a slew of gialli in the 1970s, yet he appeared in quite a few westerns as well. It's a bit of a switch to see him smiling jovially and waving a six-gun instead of lurking around London with a cloud of suspicion over his head, but in both of the movies on this double feature disc he does a good job of showing his screen skills.
    In Full House For the Devil (Uno di piu all'Inferno) Hilton plays Johnny King, a happy-go-lucky gunslinger who injects himself into a deadly situation when his ranch owner friend Pastor Steve refuses to sell out to the local land baron who is intent on grabbing every acre in sight. Angry that this lone holdout stands in his way of controlling the grazing land, ex-military officer Ernest Ward (Gérard Herter) orders his right-hand man George (Paul Muller) to have the fellow killed or run off. After running into King's defiance once, George finds a way to get the job done when the deadly accurate young man is away sleeping with one of his many lady friends. Tossed into jail with a confident criminal named Meredith (Paolo Gozlino), just before he escapes King tags along to get a cut of the money from the next bank job. His one stipulation is that no one uses a gun and that no one gets killed. What a softhearted robber! Once this new method of thievery proves successful, Meredith wants King to stay as part of his gang but Johnny has other plans and the two part ways amicably. When King discovers that his good-humored warnings to leave Pastor Steve’s land alone have gone unheeded, however, he shakes off his naturally idle way of handing life and decides to take a stand.
    It's at this point Full House for the Devil shifts gears from amusing western-comedy to a darker story of careful revenge. It's also one of the film's real problems. I didn't find the humorous sections of the first part of the movie all that fun or funny because the tone keeps fluctuating from fairly serious — with the violent threats against the pastor and Ward's cold-hearted sport of shooting melons off the heads of prisoners — to lightly comedic. Johnny King engaging in a bar fight while dressed in drag is an amusing idea but it never really comes off as funny because the scenes right before and after are serious and ominous. That's not to say there are no good aspects to the movie. I really liked the performances, the score is interesting (if not great) and the story moves along at a good pace, but I was surprised by how unimpressive it is as a whole. When I spotted expert scriptwriter Ernesto Gastaldi's name in the credits I expected something above average. Gastadi is responsible for several brilliant gialli (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Death Walks on High Heels, The Case of the Bloody Iris, etc.) and even some solid westerns (Day of Anger, Vengeance is Mine, Sartana the Gravedigger) but unfortunately Full House For the Devil is just a mid-level, tonally inconsistent film with little to recommend it to anyone other than spaghetti western completists. It’s not a bad film but it's definitely unmemorable.
    The same cannot be said for this DVD's co-feature, The Moment To Kill (Il momento di uccidere). In this one Hilton plays the very cool bounty hunter Lord who, along with his constant companion and guardian angel Bull (Walter Barns), travels the Old West taking down criminals to make a living. Lord and Bull visit an old haunt and discover that the Justice of the Peace is in hiding as an attempt to stay out of the way of local town boss Forrester's hunt for a hidden cache of Confederate gold. The gold was stashed by a dead Southern general in the hopes that the money would be used to resurrect the glorious fight against the North. Forrester and his nasty son Jason (Horst Frank) have captured the general's wheelchair-bound daughter Regina (Loni von Friedl) in the hope she might know where the cache is hidden. Unfortunately, years spent in a Boston hospital have fractured her memory. When Lord and Bull learn the details from the Justice of the Peace they decide to intervene, hooking up with Trent (Giorgio Sammartino), an old family retainer who wants to help find Regina. The clues that everyone have involve poetry the old general read to Regina when she was a child and something she can't seem to remember. Who will find the gold and how? And who is that mysterious man who seems to be pulling Forester's strings and providing information?
    Now this is a damned good spaghetti western! Fast paced, funny, action-packed and always revealing a new wrinkle, The Moment To Kill is a gem that I can't imagine any western fan disliking. It sports every standard element of a Euro-western of the period — a scraggly gunslinger, a dusty landscape, brutal bad guys, a mystery element involving money, and a lovely lady. For good measure it adds a funny (but not stupid) sidekick, pretty good dialog and a sense of real gravitas underneath the friendly banter between Lord and Bull. There is real concern late in the movie when his best friend has been captured and is being tortured by Forrester's men at just the time Lord needs Bull's shotgun backing him up the most. The movie has a number of shoot-outs and most of them are staged in exciting and memorable fashion. Director Giuliano Carmineo (hiding behind the pseudonym "Anthony Ascott") knows how to frame action quite well and is helped immeasurably by some solid editing. He moves the camera around even during heavy gunfights, adding to the tension with every glide around the combatants. His eye for smart misdirection is put to good use several times as well, proving that just because you think you know how things are doesn't mean you can't be surprised by the results.
    Making the film a grin-inducing joy is the fact that in the final third of the running time almost everyone starts double-crossing everyone else in an attempt to end up with the gold. By then Lord isn't sure the money really exists, but he sticks by his unspoken pledge to protect Regina as the bad guys get more desperate. Hilton is good as Lord, showing the humanity under the tough killer exterior; Horst Frank is a blast as the near-psychotic Jason. He seems to take pleasure in most all of the violence and can't even be bothered to mourn the death of a member of his own family. Walter Barns is wonderful as guardian angel Bull, adding a great touch of humor to the proceedings and believability to the fistfights. A story like this hinges on its characters and this film has its share of good ones.
Wild East continues to make my genre-lovin' heart glad with this DVD. The latest volume in their Spaghetti Western Collection, it has both movies in widescreen, complete/uncut versions enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Neither film looks perfect, with both clearly taken from aged, slightly worn prints, but looking much better than similar releases from less careful companies. Both moves are presented with their English soundtracks and both are good. One complaint I must lodge though is that The Moment To Kill starts off properly framed at 2.35:1 but after the opening credits shifts to 16x9-filling 1.85 for some reason. This marginal loss of image to each side is occasionally noticeable and I wonder why this presentation choice was made. This is the only real flaw I see in the DVD but it is strange and unnecessary.
    A few extras are added to the disc to further broaden its appeal for fans... A couple of small photo galleries focusing on each movie are presented and a group of Hilton-centric trailers for various Euro-westerns are accessible too. Overall this is another winner from Wild East. 2/26/11
HOME | REVIEWS | TOP