"TEXAS CHAINSAW 3-D" (2013)

Hollywood loves to teach old dogs new tricks.  Christopher Nolan re-imagined the “Batman” franchise, and Batman will never be that good again.  George Lucas rebooted “Star Wars.”  Now, Disney is preparing a new “Star Wars” trilogy, not to mention a reboot of “The Lone Ranger.”  The people who made the new entry in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise are trying to teach an old chainsaw new tricks.   Numerically, “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” (** OUT OF ****) qualifies as the sixth sequel to Tobe Hooper’s landmark slaughterhouse saga “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) that alarmed audiences with only half as much blood and twice as much storytelling.  Squeamish people should still avoid this bloodthirsty idiocy.  You get to see a grown man cut in two by a chainsaw-wielding maniac.  This same stout lad saws off feet at the ankles as casually as you would clip your fingernails.  He thrusts living people onto meat hooks and stores half-dead dames in freezers.  Yes, he wears a mask of a dead man's face. 

Basically, “Takers” director John Luessenhop and “Conspiracy” scribes Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan, along with freshman scenarist Kirsten Elms, have abolished four decades worth of sequels, prequels and remakes.  You don’t need to have seen Tobe Hooper’s follow-up “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” (1986) with Dennis Hopper to enjoy “Texas Chainsaw 3-D.”  Neither should you worry about Jeff Burr’s “Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) with Viggo Mortensen.  Or for that matter Kim Henkel’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994) with Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey.  For what it’s worth, Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel created “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” characters.  Let’s not forget “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (2003) that toplined lovely Jessica Biel or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” (2006) featuring “The Fast and the Furious” dame Jordana Brewster. Indeed, Luessenhop and his writers ask us to consider “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” as the new official sequel to the 1974 film.

Sounds like somebody got their chainsaws tangled up.  Not surprisingly, the opening credits occur against excerpts from the Hooper original.  Some actors and actresses reprise their roles, notably Gunnar Hansen, who once played Leatherface but portrays Boss Sawyer, and Marilyn Burns, cast Sally Hardesty in the original.  The filmmakers beg our indulgence when it comes to a realistic timetable, too.  This “sequel” doesn’t take place until 18 to 25 years later in the 1990s. Nevertheless, "Texas Chainsaw 3-D" looks contemporary.  Talk about stretching time out!   Luessenhop and company make a huge leap of faith.  In the process, they give us something far more horrifying than just another gore-soaked sequel.  “Texas Chainsaw 3” amounts to a revisionist sequel!  In the 1950s, for example, Hollywood rehabilitated Indian savages and converted them noble and sympathetic warriors wronged by society.  Essentially, “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” treats the murderous Leatherface character with the same compassion that westerns conferred on Indians in movies like “Broken Arrow,” “Apache,” and “Run of the Arrow.”  One scene near the end of “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” presents a tableaux with Leatherface and his only surviving relative that reminded me of George and Lenny from the classic 1939 movie “Of Mice and Men.”  This John Steinbeck movie concerned a mentally challenged brute and his intelligent guardian.  Horror has a new identity!

Altered time-lines or not, our heroine, Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario of “The Babysitters”), carves up meat at a meat packing factory.  Little does she know what runs in the family.  When she isn’t at work, Heather spends quality time with her African-American lover, Ryan (Tremaine "Trey Songz" Neverson), who isn’t above cheating on her.  In fact, he cheats on her with her own best friend.  Bombshell of a babe Nikki ( Tania Raymonde of“Wild Cherry”), has no fear of being caught by Heather and does everything but flaunt their affair in front of her.  Moreover, Nikki has her own boyfriend, Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sánchez of “American History X”), who preoccupies himself with his culinary skills.  This quartet cruises off to Newt, Texas, in a van after Heather learns she has received an inheritance from a long, lost relative who she didn’t know she had.  Along the way to Newt, the quartet pick up a hitchhiker in the rain, Darryl (Shaun Sipos of “Rampage”), who has a secret case of sticky fingers that comes back to doom him.  When they arrive at the house on Homestead Road, grandma's lawyer, Farnsworth (Richard Riehle of “Office Space”) meets them, but declines to accompany them after they proceed through the gates onto the premises.

Heather is still reeling from the revelation that the couple who raised her weren’t her biological parents.  The father rescued her from the clutches of a dying woman when the Sawyers were gunned down by vigilantes and their home burned to the ground.  Anyway, the realtor hands Heather a letter and advises her to read it.  Naturally, Heather ignores the letter when her friends and she discover that this is no ordinary house but a palatial mansion with many rooms.  Curiosity leads to carnage when the man in the basement, none other than Leatherface (Dan Yeager of “Metal Heads”) himself, comes up to investigate and begins carving flesh.  He cuts his way through a number of people before he realizes that blood is thicker than chainsaws.  Heather grovels at his mercy as she was herself about to be slaughtered by the evil town mayor who precipitated an orgy of violence that brought her back to her destiny.

The switching chainsaws plot of “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” is imaginative stuff but this doesn’t happen until half-way through the mayhem.  Nevertheless, before the villain is rehabilitated, several people have joined the ranks of the dead.  The best scene—again out of any chronological time-line—has a curious deputy sheriff walking through the mansion following the smeared trail of blood with his wrists crossed.  He holds a pistol in one fist and an iPhone in the other, documenting his progress through the house down into the cellar where he encounters bodies carved up in all shapes.  Luessenhop generates a moderate amount of suspense and buckets of blood and gore, but “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” cannot cut it as the classic that the original was.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON" (1941)

Warner Brothers tampered considerably with American history in "Big Trail" director Raoul Walsh's first-rate western "They Died with Their Boots On," (**** OUT OF ****)a somewhat inaccurate but wholly exhilarating biography of cavalry officer George Armstrong Custer. The film chronicles Custer from the moment that he arrives at West Point Academy until the Indians massacre him at the Little Big Horn. This is one of Errol Flynn's signature roles and one of Raoul Walsh's greatest epics. Walsh and Flynn teamed in quite often afterward, and "They Died with Their Boots On" reunited Olivia de Havilland as Flynn's romantic interest for the last time. They appeared as a couple in seven previous films. This 140-minute, black & white oater is nothing short of brilliant with dynamic action sequences, humorous romantic scenes, and stern dramatic confrontations between our hero and his adversaries. One of the notorious errors involves Colonel Philip Sheridan who is shown as the commandant at West Point before the Civil War. Indeed, Sheridan was a lieutenant at this point. In fact, the commandant was Robert E. Lee as the earlier Flynn film "Santa Fe Trail" showed. Another historical lapse concerns Lieutenant General Whitfield Scott; Scott was not the commander of Union troops throughout the Civil War. Warner Brothers presented Custer as a drinker (probably because Flynn had a reputation for drinking), but in real life Custer neither drank nor smoked. Nevertheless, these as well as other historical goofs do not detract from a truly splendid film.

"They Died with Their Boots On" opens with Custer riding into West Point Military Academy arrayed in a fancy dress uniform with an African-American carrying his luggage and tending his dogs. After the sergeant of the guard realizes that he has turned out a honor guard for a future plebe instead of a high-ranking foreign general, the sergeant turns Custer over to a ranking cadet Ned Sharp (Arthur Kennedy of "City for Conquest") to take charge of him. Sharp plays a practical job on Custer by installing him in the quarters of Major Romulus Taipe (Stanley Ridges of "Task Force") who promptly runs Custer out. Naturally, the volatile Custer attacks Sharp in a public brawl. General Phil Sheridan (John Litel of "The Sons of Katie Elder") is prepared to dismiss Custer from West Point for conduct unbecoming. As it turns out, Sheridan cannot expel Custer because Custer has not enrolled. Once he enrolls, Custer establishes a mediocre academic reputation with alacrity to fight and accumulate demerits galore. When the American Civil War erupts, West Point graduates cadets who have not completed their education and rushes them into combat. One of the last cadets hustled off to war is Custer. Avid as he is to get into the fight, Custer encounters his future wife, Elizabeth 'Libby' Bacon (Olivia de Havilland of "Santa Fe Trail"), and they pledge themselves to each other, despite Mr. Bacon (Gene Lockhart of "Carousel") who detests the sight of Custer. It seems that Bacon ran across Custer at a saloon and insulted one of Custer's friends and our hero reprimanded Bacon.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Custer desperately seeks a transfer to a regiment, but Major Taipe has him cooling his heels. Custer befriends rotund Lieutenant General Winfield Scott (Sidney Greenstreet of "The Maltese Falcon") and they share an appetite for creamed Bermuda onions that becomes one of Custer's characteristics. Not only does Scott see to it that Taipe assigns Custer to the Second Cavalry, but also Custer appropriates Taipe's horse to get to his command. During the Battle of Bull Run, 21 July 1861, Custer disobeys orders from none other than Sharp, strikes his superior officer and holds a bridge so the infantry can cross it. Wounded in the shoulder and sent to the hospital, Custer receives a medal rather than a court-martial. When Confederate General Jeb Stuart threatens the Union Army at the Battle of Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, Scott is shocked by the chance that the South may triumph. When a brigadier general cannot be found, Scott goads Taipe into promoting the first available officer. A mistake is made and Custer is promoted. Incredulous at first, Custer embraces the moment and cracks Stuart's advance. After the war, Custer idles down and starts boozing it up with the boys at the local saloons. Sharp shows up as a crooked railroad promoter and with his father they try to enlist Custer to serve as the president of their railway so that they can obtain funds. Eventually, Libby intercedes on his behalf with General Sheridan, who was in command of the army, and gets him back on active duty as the commander of the 7th Cavalry. When he takes command, Custer finds the 7th cavalry a drunken lot and is not surprised that Sharp commands the liquor at the fort. Meanwhile, Custer has his first run in with Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn of "The Guns of Navarone") and takes him into custody. Of course, Crazy Horse escapes, becomes Custer's adversary, and they fight.

Once Custer has quelled Crazy Horse and the Indians, Sharp with Taipe as a government agent conspire to destroy a peace treaty with the Sioux and other Indian nations. They also see to it that Custer is brought up on charges for striking Taipe in a saloon brawl. On his way to Washington, Custer discovers the perfidy of Sharp and Taipe who have drummed up a gold strike in the sacred Black Hills. Settlers rampage in and the Indians hit the warpath. Custer sacrifices himself and his 600 men at the Little Big Horn in a slam-bang showdown against six-thousand redskins. "Stagecoach" lenser Bert Glennon captures both the grit and the glory. The long shot of the 7th Cavalry leaving the fort at dawn is spectacular. As an added premonition of Custer's imminent demise, Libby faints after he leaves their quarters for the Little Big Horn. "They Died with Their Boots On" benefits from a top-notch Max Steiner score that incorporates the regimental tune "Gary Owen."

FILM REVIEW OF ''HALLOWEEN" (2007)

You’ll have to look long and hard to find a remake more reverential to its source material than director Rob Zombie’s version of the 1978 John Carpenter classic “Halloween.” Before Zombie took on the daunting task of making “Halloween,” he had two fairly decent but horribly depraved epic under his belt with “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects.” I preferred “Corpses” over “Rejects,” and I didn’t have high hopes to the blasphemy that he would visit on the first Michael Myers outing. Surprising, Zombie’s take on Carpenter’s “Halloween” is just about the best remake that anybody could have dreamed. “Halloween” (**** out of ****)doesn’t even look like it was helmed by the same guy who made either “Corpses” or “Rejects.” Sure, Zombie made some heavyweight changes to the story, but everything comes together without a hitch. Despite all of the freaky problems that Zombi recounts on the commentary track to the unrated & uncut “Halloween,” this remake should make John Carpenter feel great and anybody who like the original “Halloween” should have a soft spot for Zombi’s remake that he not only directed but also wrote. The casting choices for the new “Halloween” are right on the money, too.

The original “Halloween” contained a brief prologue about murderous Michael Myers, but Zombie devotes almost 40 minutes to setting up the action that takes place some 15-years after Michael breaks out of person. Actually, apart from the extended prologue that scrutinizes Michael’s early years, Zombie doesn’t make any radical departures from the John Carpenter & Debra Hill screenplay. As the story unfolds, we find ourselves in a battlefield of a household with Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombi of “The Devil’s Rejects”) preparing breakfast for young 10-year old Michael (Daeg Faerch of Dark Mirror”), her second husband Ronnie White (William Forsythe of “Once Upon A Time in America”), her teenage daughter Judith (Hanna Hall of “Forrest Gump”), and her infant daughter Laurie. Ronnie is a foul-mouthed reprobate who cannot give his stripper wife a hard enough time and he has nothing but contempt for young Michael who he constantly refers to as a faggot. Although Zombi doesn’t go into details, Michael slices up his pet rat in the first scene before Deborah dispatches Judith to bring him downstairs for breakfast. If the merciless barrages of profanity that Ronnie launches at him are not enough, Michael has to endure ridicule from school bully Wesley Rhoades (Daryl Sabara of “Spy Kids”) who shows him a newspaper strip joint clipping about his mother and makes several sickening comments about her to his face. This fracas in the boys’ restroom attracts the attention of school principal Chambers (Richard Lynch of Cyborg 3”) and Chambers later discovers a dead cat in a plastic bag in young Michael’s locker.

An angry Deborah comes to the school at Chamber’s request and refuses to believe that her angelic son could be a sadistic little brat who tortures helpless animals. Later, Michael stalks the slimy Rhoades and attacks him the woods with a big stick and beats him to death. Back at home, Michael wants to go trick or treating, but nobody wants to take him. Mom has to strip at the joint and Judith wants to make out with her boyfriend. Again, Michael must suffer through another profane barrage from the evil Ronnie. Eventually, Ronnie runs out of steam and falls asleep in his recliner. Zombi does a splendid job of showing young Michael’s dejection as he sits outside the house and watches other trick or treat while his mother has to strip to support her family. Zombi uses the pop tune “Love Hurts.” Michael snaps, goes back inside, duct-tapes Ronnie to his recliner and slashes his throat. Meantime, Judith’s boyfriend shows her his Halloween mask, which is a replica of the one from the original “Halloween.” Later, Michael stabs the boyfriend to death and finishes off his sister. Naturally, Deborah is devastated when she comes home. Earlier, at Michael’s school, a psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell of “If”) had been called in by Chambers.

Michael is sent to a mental asylum where he endures hours of interviews with a sympathetic Loomis, but Michael gradually retreats behind the masks that he makes rather than discuss his life. Deborah gives up all hope and commits suicide while watching home movies of Michael. At this point, about 40 minutes has elapsed and Zombi has done a simply brilliant job of providing Michael’s back story. Fifteen years elapses and Loomis has to throw in the towel where Michael is concerned but not before he authors a book about the evil that is Michael. The next time we see Michael, he has grown into a powerful, seven-foot man. Mind you, in the hands of anybody else, this sudden transformation into a walking redwood tree would be hilarious, but it actually works for Zombi. Michael (Taylor Mane of “Troy”) escapes after a couple of crazy redneck attendants invade his room with a catatonic female inmate and brutally rape her while calling virginal Michael a faggot. Michael snaps again. He kills both of them and then massacres everybody else, though we never see him kill the female patient. Any sympathy that we might have conjured up for Michael vanishes when he kills the one orderly, Ismael Cruz (Danny Trejo of “Con-Air”), by drowning him. Michael sets out to track down Baby Boo who has grown up to become Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton of “Sleepover”) who lives with her foster parents, Cynthia Strode (Dee Wallace of “10”) and Mason Strode (Pat Skipper), back in Haddonfield.

The asylum alerts Dr. Loomis about Michael’s escape and he heads to Haddonfield to alert Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif of “Dune”) who doesn’t believe a word. At this point, Zombi makes some minor changes, but basically replicates Carpenter’s “Halloween,” even with the scene involving the boyfriend wearing the white sheet like a ghost as he has sex with Brackett’s daughter. Meanwhile, Laurie has no idea that she is being stalked until all hell breaks loose and Michael comes after her. Before he embarks on his second killing spree, Michael recovers the mask from his old home and takes his mom’s cemetery tombstone. He catches Laurie’s friend but he doesn’t kill her in a refreshing change of pace. The last 20 minutes are simply tour-de-force with Michael stalking Laurie and Loomis hot on their trail. The cast is superb, even in the minor roles with “Monkees” star Micky Dolenz playing a gun salesman and Sybil Danning as the asylum nurse that young Michael slaughters with a fork. A number of other good thespians flesh out the cast in minor roles with effective performances. Look for Sid Haig and Bill Moseley in cameo along with Udo Kier and Clint Howard. The music is pretty much the same and you can see excerpts from Howard Hawks “The Thing” and Bela Lugosi from “White Zombie.” One of the ironic scenes occurs after Michael returns to Haddonfield and he gets to watch the ending of “The Thing,” the same movie that he started watching on the night he snapped and went on a murder spree. Here he invades another house and watches the scene without a word while a little girl sits in front of him watching the movie without a clue that hulking Michael stands within an arm’s reach of her. Rob Zombie’s remake of “Halloween” is nothing short of brilliant and he deserves to have praised heaped on him. He shows incredible restraint in duplicating Carpenter’s legendary chiller and looks as if he were deliberately soft pedaling what could easily have been a savage yarn.

FILM REVIEW OF ''A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS'' (ITALIAN-1964)

Sergio Leone’s “Per un pugno di dollari” (***1/2 out of ****) ranks not only as a landmark horse opera in the history of the western but also in evolution of the spaghetti western. Hollywood had been churning out westerns since “The Great Train Robbery” in 1903, and the Italians had been cloning those westerns before Leone revolutionized them with this Clint Eastwood epic. Indeed, mainly on the plains of Spain, Leone would reinvent the western and make it more violent than it had been until Sam Peckinpah broke new ground with his controversial 1969 western “The Wild Bunch.” “Per un pugno di dollari” altered everything and forged a new hero who was for all practical purposes an anti-hero. Joe (Clint Eastwood) shoots first in a duel, wears stubble on his jaws, and seems motivated largely by money. At one point, he behaves like a guardian angel, but for the most part, he is in it for what he can get out of it. Leone had to pare this sagebrusher down to its quintessential components because of a shoestring budget. Nevertheless, despite its financial shortcomings, this Italian-German-Spanish co-production looks fantastic in its 2.35.1 letterbox format and the Spanish and Roman locale double more or less invisibly to the simple but exciting plot. Most die-hand “Dollar” fans know that Leone and producers Arrigo Colombo and Giorgio Papi had to settle a copyright infringement suit with Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” before they could release the film outside of Italy. Leone maintained that eighteenth Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni’s play “A Servant with Two Masters” inspired “Per un pugno di dollari,” but the courts ruled in Kurosawa’s favor.

The action unfolds as our anti-heroic protagonist rides up to a well located near two white-washed, single-storied dwellings in the middle of a parched desert. While he quenches his thirst, Joe watches as an ugly, gigantic Mexican gunman, Chico (Mario Brega of “Death Rides A Horse”), bangs off shots at the heels of a tiny boy, Jesus (Nino Del Arco), and chases him between the two houses. When Chico reaches the other house, he brutalizes the father, Julián (Daniel Martin of “The Last Tomahawk”), for letting the lad run loose. Little Jesus was only trying to see his mother, Marisol (Marianne Koch of “Clint, the Nevada's Loner”), who has been abducted by the gunmen for their boss. This unforgettable opening scene represents the first instance that we’re watching a different kind of western. Spaghetti westerns were notoriously violent yet seldom as sanguine as Sam Peckinpah’s oaters. The chief reason “A Fistful of Dollars” is not three times as bloody is that Leone was working on a low-budget and couldn’t afford such luxuries. Joe watches all of this transpire with mild curiosity. Unlike an American western hero, he doesn’t intervene, at least until later.

Joe rides into the arid hamlet of San Miguel near the Mexican border on his mule and a corpse astride a horse with the sign ‘Adios, Amigo’ passes him. No sooner has Joe gotten into town than four trigger-happy cowboys spook his mule with their gunfire. Joe grabs an overhanging pole and swings crucifixion style on it as Silvanito (José Calvo of “Twice a Judas”) steps out of his tavern to watch. Silvanito prepares food and drink for him and talks about San Miguel and its reputation for death. "Never saw a town as dead as this one," Joe observes. He explains that the town has two bosses, the Rojos and the Baxters. Joe surveys San Miguel from the second-story balcony. Silvanito explains the presence of all the gunmen in town. "They've enlisted all the scum that hangs around both sides of the frontier and they pay in dollars." Joe concocts a plan after Silvanito tells him that the Rojos are stronger than the Baxters. He ambles back down the street and kills all four of them. What differs here is that Joe draws first and faster and kills them all. The entire shoot-out is captured in a long shot with Joe fanning his revolver in the foreground.

Afterward, Joe plays both ends against the middle. The Rojos, lead by Gian Maria Volontè as Ramón Rojo, sell liquor to the Indians, while with the Baxters, led by Consuelo Baxter (Margarita Lozano), are "big gun merchants." Their respective houses face each other at either end of the street. Ramón wields a Winchester repeating rifle with devastating accuracy and always shoots for the heart. He boasts that “When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with the rifle wins.” Initially, Ramón is not in town when Joe goes to work for his older brother Don Miguel Rojo (Antonio Prieto of “The Sword of Zorro”) and moves in with their gunmen until he hears Ramón’s murderous younger brother Esteban (Sieghardt Rupp of “The Killer Likes Candy”) talk about killing him and retrieving the money. Meanwhile, a Mexican calvary escort passes through San Miguel with a mysterious wagon. Joe tries to peek into the stagecoach and finds a six-shooter pointed at his face.

Joe and Silvanito follow the Mexican cavalry to the river. "It's like playing cowboys and Indians," the tavern owner remarks. The Mexican Army escort arrives at their rendezvous with the U.S. Calvary at the Rio Bravo. The Mexicans have brought gold to pay for guns. They are in for a rude awakening. The Americans have been killed, and coyote-faced Ramón and his men are impersonating them. Ramón wipes out the Mexican soldiers to the last man with a machine gun. The machine gun is all wrong for the time period as well as the fact that it houses no ammunition drum on it to feed it bullets. Ramón displays his accuracy with a Winchester when one lone Mexican tries to escape on horseback and he knocks him out of the saddle with one shot. When Ramón returns from the massacre, he meets Joe. Curiously, Joe decides to hand back what is left of the money that Don Miguel gave him. "I don't like to take money unless I feel I've earned it," Joe explains. This is unusual for a Spaghetti western where refunds weren't standard. Ramón scares Joe off because he wants to call a truce with the Baxters. When Ramón asks Joe if he doesn't prefer peace to violence, Joe shrugs and replies that he has little knowledge of peace. After Joe leaves, Don Miguel reiterates his respect for the American. "At shooting a pistol no one can touch him." Ramón remains suspicious about Joe: "When someone with that face works with his gun, you may counton two things. He's fast on the trigger, but he's also intelligent."

Later, Joe returns to the scene of the massacre and appropriates two Mexican bodies and deposits them in the local graveyard. He earns $500 from each the Rojos and the Baxters when he tells them about the surviving soldiers. While the two clans are shooting at each in the graveyard, Joe finds Ramón’s gold and runs into Marisol. He punches her in the face quite by accident and then hands her over to the Baxters who engineer a trade for their son.

Sergio Leone displays a splendid flair for visuals as well as storytelling in “A Fistful of Dollars.” Ramón qualifies as the best kind of villain because he is dangerous, but Ramón’s pride at “aiming for the heart” is what leads to his destruction. Ennio Morricone’s distinctive music sets “A Fistful of Dollars” apart from all Spaghetti westerns and established new conventions for the genre. Clint Eastwood plays the anti-heroic Joe with glacial calm and Gian Maria Volontè is simply brilliant as Ramón. A number of people collaborated on the screenplay, among them Sergio Leone, Fernando Di Leo of “Wipe Out!,” Duccio Tessari of “A Pistol for Ringo,” Víctor Andrés Catena of “Three Sergeants of Bengal,” Jaime Comas Gil of “Danger! Death Ray," and even Clint Eastwood. Despite all these scribes, “A Fistful of Dollars” boasts several memorable lines.

"A Fistful of Dollars" is not without flaws. Of course,Ramón should have put a bullet in Joe's head instead of repeatedly shooting him in the heart in the final duel. Clearly, however, the villain must have his own flaws and Ramón's incredulity at his failure to kill Joe with his first shots undermined him. Chico should have smashed up Joe's right hand--his gun hand--instead of stomping on his left hand. Curiously, nobody ever gets the gold that Ramón stole from the Mexicans and concealed in his warehouse. Did the Baxters have to pour out of the front door of their headquarters during the massacre? Couldn't they have exited by the back doors. Presumably, the low budget prevented this alternative from being staged. Esteban could have shot Joe down from ambush when Joe empties his gun before the final duel with Ramón.