The people who produced the half-baked horse opera “Six
Bullets to Hell” (* OUT OF ****) craved the Spaghetti Westerns that stampeded
across Techniscope screens in cinemas during the 1960s and the 1970s. This routine shoot’em up about revenge musters
a few memorable moments as a grief-stricken husband rides out to slaughter the dastards
who raped and murdered his pregnant wife.
Actually, this twelve of December, straight-to-video release imitates the
first part of Giulio Petroni’s “Death Rides a Horse” (1967), co-starring Lee
Van Cleef and John Phillip Law, and the last half of Sergio Leone’s “For A Few
Dollars More” with a town shootout. Not
only have the producers acquired cues from composer Ennio Morricone’s “The Big
Gundown” (1966) soundtrack, but they have also staged their frontier fracas on
the hallowed earth of Almeria, Spain, where Sergio Leone made his landmark
Clint Eastwood “Dollars” trilogy. Clearly,
“Six Bullets to Hell” constituted a labor of love for co-scripters and
co-directors Tanner Beard and Russell Quinn Cummings. As a long-time Spaghetti
western enthusiast, I applaud their lofty ambitions. Indeed, they had their hearts in the right
place, but their heads were stuck somewhere else.
This scrappy simulation of a Spaghetti Western
on a skeletal budget is more often embarrassing for its kitschy quality. Characterization in “Six Bullets to Hell” is confined
to the appearance and wardrobe of each person.
The most memorable is the chief villain who totes a Winchester repeating
rifle in a leather saddle scabbard strapped across his back. The dialogue is undistinguished, too. None of
the cast look like they belong in a period piece. Happily, the corny dubbing smooths out some
performances. One of the major
shortcomings for avid Spaghetti western fans is the lackluster sound effects used
for gunshots. Tanner & Cummings
should have replicated the cacophonous Spaghetti western gunshots instead of
the bland sounds on hand. Practically all
sound in Spaghetti westerns was done during post-production, particularly the thudding
hoofbeats of the horses and the mechanical sounds of revolvers as their hammers
were either cocked or the cylinders twirled like roulette wheels. Lenser Olivier Merckx loves to shoot into the
sun for an artistic flare effect, but these starbursts soon become tedious. He foregoes filters for exterior shots filmed
within a room, so the outside light amounts to an impenetrable glare.
A gang of unsavory desperadoes shows up at a ramshackle ranch in
the middle of nowhere. A pregnant lady, Grace
Rogers (Magda Rodriguez of “The Riddle”), has been left her alone without so
much as a shotgun, while her husband has ridden off to town for supplies. Bobby Durango (Tanner Beard) and his
pistoleros rape and kill Grace for fun. Later, Durango strings up one of his own
men, Nino (Nacho Diáz), who refused to participate in the rape. Imagine the shock that Grace’s husband Billy
Rogers (Crispian Belfrage of “Doc West”) experiences when he returns to the
ranch and finds Nino swinging at the end of a noose. Afterward, Billy discovers his murdered wife
strewn lifelessly in bed. No, the
filmmakers shrink from showing the savagery that Grace must have endured at
their hands. Before they left the ranch,
Durango blasted her in the belly without a qualm, and left her sprawled in a
pool of blood. Naturally, grief overwhelms
Billy when he stares at his dead spouse.
He hauls Nino’s corpse back to town.
Sheriff Morris (Russell Quinn Cummings) takes Nino off his hands, and Billy
finds himself the recipient of bounty on Nino.
Earlier in the action, the filmmakers indulged in a bit of
foreshadowing. Briefly, Sheriff Morris
and his sidekick deputy had discussed Billy’s lethal marksmanship skills with a
gun.
Our hero digs a holstered Colt’s revolver out a hope chest
where he had relegated it after he quit his job as a lawman and decided to settle
down. This moment evokes memories of the
Spanish-lensed western sequel “Return of the Seven” (1966) when Chico pulled
his trusty six-gun out of a chest. Decked
out in black, Billy hits the vengeance trail, while Durango’s unruly gang
disintegrates. They object to the way that he splits their ill-gotten gains. Bobby appropriates half of everything, and
they get to divide the rest. The best
scene occurs when our grim hero confronts one of his wife’s rapists in a saloon
and guns him down in cold blood. Shortly
before the rapist dies at Billy’s hand, he protests that he is not armed. Neither was my wife replies our steely-eyed
hero and then repeatedly fills him full of lead. This is as about as close as Tanner &
Cummings come to depicting the amoral violence of the Spaghetti Western. Another beef that dyed-in-the-wood Spaghetti
fans will have with this movie is the lazy way the gunshot-riddled extras expire. They don’t hurl their hands high up and pirouette
before crashing into a tangled heap.
Instead, they fall down without any flair.
“Six Bullets to Hell” also pays tribute to the original
“Magnificent Seven.” The first time we
see Durango and his dastards, they loot a church and find next to nothing in
the poor box. The priest informs them
that the congregation has stashed the bulk of their savings in a nearby bank. Nevertheless, the bad guys take the few
pennies in the poor box, just as Calvera’s bandits bragged about in the opening
scene of “The Magnificent Seven.” Sadly,
the primary actors don’t look rugged enough to convince us that they are
capable of their heinous acts that they perpetrate. Crispan Belfrage looks like a sad sack version
of a hero. In fact, nobody in this
western can act worth a plug nickel. Some
of the cast don’t know how to handle firearms.
A bare-bones valentine to the genre, “Six Bullets to Hell” makes some of
the worst Spaghetti westerns look like masterpieces. Altogether, as gratifying an homage as it is to
Spaghetti westerns, “Six Bullets to Hell” qualifies as lame from start to
finish.
