Customer Reviews

Payment in Blood & Red Blood & Yellow Gold

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a spaghetti western fan then make it a goal to own this grand double feature DVD. This double feature could easily be Wild East's strongest double feature release (though The Forgotten Pistolero / The Unholy Four DVD comes a close second).

What you get here are two solid spaghetti westerns. Are they as good as...let's say...The Good the Bad and the Ugly? Hell no but they are good solid entertaining and violent spags that will keep any fan of the genre glued to the television.

The first film Payment in Blood stars Edd Byrnes as federal agent going undercover to stop a psychotic Southern Colonel from tearing across the country searching for treasure. Edd Byrnes has a little too much "boyish charm" for me to really like as a spaghetti western star but the film itself makes up for his lack as tough commanding lead. The best thing about the film is it's a Enzo G. Castellari film (under his Americanized pseudonym E.G. Rowland). If you don't know his name then here's a quick lesson: He is one of the best directors to come out of Italy directing classic Spaghetti Westerns like Keoma and Kill Them All and Come Back Alone along with Euro Crime films like High Crime, The Big Racket, and Street Law. This man is an Italian director God and his name alone makes sure your going to have an entertaining film.

The second film Red Blood, Yellow Gold is the weaker of the two but not by much. Here we get Edd Byrnes, George Hilton and George Martin all starring in the same film! That's enough stars for 3 spaghetti westerns! That plot has some similar elements of The Dirty Dozen. Three soldiers on death row are given an assignment to take on some vicious Confederates who have some stolen gold.

Wild East does a fabulous job as the films look better than they are ever going to look in beautiful anamorphic widescreen! There is also an interview with star Edd Byrnes. Wild East has come along way. I have heard they have poor customer service and have released a few defective DVDs in the past but they seem to have come a long way. I hope these DVDs sell good to keep the company afloat, especially since the economy is in the toilet and small DVD companies might have to bite the big bullet.

What can I say, Haven't met an Italian or Euro Western that didn't have some redeaming Quality. Soundtrack, Actors, Gritty Style, or just the fact that they are about as far from the Hollywood norm as you can get, You'll find something to enjoy! So do yourself a favor and Enjoy!

Probably the most worthwhile part of this DVD is the interview with Edd Byrnes on his canyon property in California. He has aged beyond his boyish good looks -- as have we all -- but his memories are sharp and often poignant. He mentions meeting many ex-pat actors in Italy and Spain, usually males beyond their prime soaking up a little Italian currency by appearing in the many spaghetti westerns. It is a little sad to hear about his last conversation with Raf Vallone who knew, evidently, that his tenure on this planet was drawing to a close. Stewart Granger sounds as though he could be personable as long as he did not drink too much; then he wanted to eliminate some dialogue spoken by Brynes in THE SECRET INVASION and usually insisted, according to Byrnes, on having the last word in every scene. This is quite interesting information that we might not learn anywhere else. Byrnes also points out how his co-star from Argentina in RED BLOOD AND YELLOW GOLD -- George Hilton -- liked to appear close to the camera in his scenes with the others. Looking at screen names of macho dudes like George Hilton and Terrence Hill (German/Italian) who appeared in these pasta oaters makes us want to smile at how some of them had to have their monikers Ellis-Islanded for the international market -- something that Byrnes, John Ireland, Lee Van Cleef, Guy Madison, Eli Wallach, and Jack Palance didn't, for obvious reasons, have to worry about.

Of the two films in this double-feature package, I have to prefer PAYMENT IN BLOOD. Cinematic art is it not, but the widescreen print and Technicolor images remain quite sharp and clean. This is the only film of the two that I saw in a theatre when it first appeared in the States -- in a drive-in, actually. I remember being both amused and impressed with the camera shots through the fingers of one of the villains as he pretends to be napping on a fence -- or the reflections of Guy Madison in a glass while he is dining and making sinister remarks to the Byrnes character. Shades of Sydney J. Furie in THE IPCRESS FILE. Speaking of Guy Madison -- this handsome actor is remembered from his days portraying the pretty-boy good guy in THE CHARGE AT FEATHER RIVER (originally released in 3-D) and portraying the good-guy commander of a military outpost, billed under Victor Mature as the rough-hewn frontiersman in THE LAST FRONTIER (or SAVAGE WILDERNESS). Here he is a vicious leader of a cut-throat (literally in the case of one of them) marauders who barely hides his vengeful spirit under the veneer of a gentleman.

An amusing sequence appears early in PAYMENT IN BLOOD when we are being introduced to the motley crew of marauders. One villain named Mesa (yes, it is that kind of film) is handy with his spurs. When he is trying to rape a young woman and another man intervenes, he jumps up, clings to a metal bar, and swings upward with a spur in order to cut the throat of the attempted rescuer. Why this metal bar just happened to be available for his use is not explained. Was this metal bar installed as part of a building code for hotels in the west?

In RED BLOOD AND YELLOW GOLD, Byrnes' voice is dubbed into a horribly overdone southern accent, and it remains distracting throughout the film. In PAYMENT ON BLOOD, he, at least, sounds like his former 77 SUNSET STRIP self. Since Byrnes was a gymnastic expert, he was able to perform his own stunts. In a couple of scenes, he tries to look like Clint Eastwood with the cigar in his mouth and the occasional squint. Eastwood, however, at least wore a hat most of the time. What gives with Byrnes not wearing a hat except in the sequence in which he first appears just in time to rescue one of the marauders from being executed by a Union firing squad? Does he need to show his late-fifties pompadour throughout this post-Civil War adventure? At least we can be thankful that he does not whip out his former trademark -- his comb. Anyone else still remember the hit single "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb"? Once when I was visiting what had then been called Film Row in St. Louis (where all the offices of the local film distributors were located), some young ladies on a strike line starting singing this song when I innocently passed them by. I guess I should have been flattered that they saw some vague resemblance between me and the 77 SUNSET STRIP star.

Anyway, despite these quibbles, Byrnes is still a likable actor who plays a likable-enough character -- even if he doesn't look tough enough to stand up to the testosterone-sweating members of Blake's army of murderers who want to flaunt their displeasure at having lost the Civil War as they pursue a strongbox full of useless Confederate paper money. At least he doesn't have to play second banana to the gigantic and horribly wooden Clint Walker as he did in YELLOWSTONE KELLY. The final shoot-out in a Native American cemetery is appropriate enough for the film's theme, and the villainous ensemble get their just desserts after they have just about wiped out the entire town in an ambush sequence that seems to exist just for the sake of more carnage.

Speaking of shoot-'em up carnage -- I have a question that no one had yet been able to answer. Why do the guns in these Italian westerns -- rifles or pistols -- always have a whistling echo to them when they are fired? I have never heard this in American westerns, yet these whistling guns seem to appear in all the Euro-westerns. This is not a complaint. I am just curious. Why? Do all of these films use the same post-production sound artists?

If one is willing to suspend disbelief, then one might find PAYMENT IN BLOOD to be one of the better pasta westerns available -- nowhere near THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST but certainly near the top of the B list. The wide-screen and color images look good on DVD. The music is lush and memorable, so much so that a viewer is tempted to hum the strains of the repetitious theme the way one would ape the haunting whistle and WA-WA-WAAAA (as we did in graduate school) of THE GOOD, THE BED, AND THE UGLY, repeat the magnificent whistling-plus-orchestra theme of THE PROUD ONES, or attempt to imitate the classic strains of THE BIG COUNTRY soundtrack. Some of the lines are a little hokey and stilted as they often are in these simplistic tales -- no one ever spoke like that in the old west --and the guns still whistle, but if you are only looking for a little fun and don't mind the occasional subtitles when people in the border states of the US speak French (evidently these are scenes that did not appear in the version of the film as first shown in the States and, therefore, were not dubbed into English), it fills the bill.

Well, I've always gave WILD EAST DVD'S good reviews in
the past,But,I guess it is my turn to get a defective DVD.
The last 20 minutes of PAYMENT IN BLOOD was really fustrating
for me to watch.Such as,like,watching TV on satellight cable,
then you loose the signal and the the pixels pop up on the screen
and then fade out and loose reception.Mean while the chapters of
the movie skip around and go into freeze mode all the way to
the end of the movie.And also in the beginning of RED BLOOD
YELLOW GOLD,the first 20 minutes of the movie.REALLY,REALLY
fustrating.I would give these 2 westerns and WILD EAST's DVD
a five star,but??????
Can't get a response back from wild east,still waiting to hear
back from Amazon.