cinema history class: dig your grave friend... sabata's coming

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild west

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: Dig Your Grave Friend... Sabata is Coming (1971)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I know I've seen this before -- there were a couple scenes that I recognized. But I have no idea when or under what circumstances.

Plot:
A civil war soldier returns to his father's home, only to find the old man dead. Seeking revenge, he finds himself partnered with an unlikely ally and at odds with a beautiful and brilliant woman who doesn't quite know whom to trust. Together they navigate corrupt officials, hired guns, and shifting loyalties as old scores are settled and new ones are created.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

Let’s get this out of the way first: Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata’s Coming is a Sabata film in name only.

There is a character named Sabata in the movie, but he’s a tertiary figure and about as far from the iconic Lee Van Cleef version as you can get. This Sabata is just a run-of-the-mill hired gun. Unlike Sabata, he’s a bad guy. Unlike Sabata, he has no clever gadgets or gimmicks. And unlike Sabata, he dies.

Joe said what we were all thinking: it’s obvious this movie was not developed as a Sabata film at all. The name was slapped onto it later to capitalize on the popularity of the character. Maybe they could have given Richard Harrison’s character, Steve, the Sabata name instead—that might have made it fit a little better structurally. But even then, it still wouldn’t really feel like a Sabata movie.

So rather than judge this as a failed or bogus entry in the Sabata saga, it makes more sense to look at it simply as a spaghetti western on its own terms.

And on those terms, it’s entertaining. Good in some ways. But not great by any means.

One thing the movie does surprisingly well is function as a kind of buddy film. Steve ends up paired with Leon, an unintended sidekick who helps him navigate an increasingly complicated situation. (It’s hard not to notice that Leon looks a lot like Ron Jeremy, once that thought enters your head.) The buddy dynamic works better than expected—Steve and Leon play off each other nicely, and their interactions give the movie a bit of momentum it might otherwise lack.

In fact, that relationship is probably the main reason the film works as well as it does. When it’s leaning on the interplay between those two characters, the movie feels lighter on its feet and more engaging.

Where it starts to falter is in its reliance on humor. Several of the barroom fight scenes tip over into outright slapstick, drifting into Three Stooges territory. It’s not that humor has no place in a spaghetti western—but here it’s sometimes pushed too far, undercutting any tension the scene might otherwise have had.

On the other hand, the film does occasionally tap into the kind of nastiness that spaghetti westerns are known for. There are moments of cruelty and grit that remind you this genre can still bite when it wants to. Those moments help keep the movie from becoming entirely frivolous.

This isn’t a deep film, and it doesn’t really offer anything new. But it is fun. As long as you’re not expecting Sabata—despite what the title insists—you can get some enjoyment out of it.

After thoroughly discussing what was wrong with the movie, Joe gave it a ten. But he acknowledged that, within the realm of tens, it’s an eight. Because some tens aren’t as tenny as others.

struggle was always the default

I’ve seen a lot of social media posts lately lamenting what’s presented as one of life’s great injustices: most people work for decades, often until around age 65, and only then—if they’re lucky—get to stop working and “enjoy life.” Some retire earlier, some later. Some never really retire at all, continuing to work well past traditional retirement age because they have no choice. This reality is often described not just as unfortunate, but as fundamentally wrong.

And increasingly, the blame is laid at the feet of “civilization.”

The argument seems to go something like this: modern society has imposed an unnatural burden on people, forcing them into decades of toil that humans were never meant to endure. I’ve even seen claims that humans are the only animals saddled with this bizarre notion of “work,” as if the very concept is an invention of spreadsheets, office parks, and capitalism.

But this strikes me as getting things almost exactly backwards.

Modern civilization—especially the specialization of labor that comes with it—has been one of the greatest improvements in human quality of life. Other animals don’t go to jobs in the way we do, but they absolutely still work. For animals in the wild, life is a constant, unrelenting struggle for survival. Food must be hunted or foraged. Shelter must be found or built. Predators must be avoided. Injuries can be fatal. Aging doesn’t come with a gold watch and a pension plan. There is no retirement in the wild.

The same was true for humans before civilization, and for much of early civilization as well. People gathered food. They hunted. They planted. They defended themselves. They worked simply to stay alive. Civilization didn’t invent work; it gradually made survival less brutal. The progress hasn’t been perfectly smooth or monotonic, but the long-term trend is unmistakable. Life today—certainly in America, and broadly across the developed world—is vastly better than life anywhere a hundred years ago, let alone a thousand or ten thousand years ago. We enjoy comforts our ancestors couldn’t have imagined.

The uncomfortable truth is that humans are animals, and our natural condition involves effort. Food does not arrive at the table without work. Shelter does not magically appear. Clothing, transportation, medicine, and infrastructure all require human labor somewhere along the chain. One of the great achievements of advanced civilization is that we now get more of these things with less total human effort than ever before—not that effort has disappeared entirely.

Some of the confusion may be fueled by science fiction. Franchises often portray futures in which humans have transcended mundane labor, freed at last to pursue self-actualization without economic necessity. It’s an appealing vision. But it’s also a fantasy—at least for now.

There are people who believe that artificial intelligence, advancing exponentially and perhaps even designing future versions of itself, will finally deliver that utopia. A world where all material needs are met and no one has to do work they don’t enjoy. I’m skeptical. Human nature hasn’t been repealed, and neither have scarcity, incentives, or power. But it’s an open question. We’ll see.

the reunion we need. the reunion we deserve.

TV keeps rebooting the wrong shows. Enough already. What we actually need is a BJ and the Bear reunion movie.

Picture this: BJ McKay rolls back into Orly County for Sheriff Lobo’s funeral. The man was a pain, a bully, and—let’s be honest—a legend. The town turns out. There are speeches about “law and order” that somehow leave out the part where he terrorized long-haul truckers for sport.

BJ reconnects with Deputy Hawkins, who—miraculously—has aged into exactly what he always was: a straight-arrow, by-the-book lawman who still thinks the system works if you just follow the rules hard enough. Hawkins is genuinely happy to see BJ. Less happy to see Bear riding shotgun, because some things never change.

Enter the problem: Sheriff Lobo’s son. He’s running for sheriff himself, fueled entirely by resentment. He grew up hearing bedtime stories about “that drifter trucker and his damn monkey” humiliating his father on a weekly basis. He bears a grudge. (Yes. Bears. I regret nothing.)

At first it’s petty harassment—traffic stops, inspections, old ordinances dusted off for no reason. But it escalates when BJ realizes Orly County has been “cleaned up” in the worst possible way: small operators pushed out, corruption repackaged as respectability, and Lobo Jr. using his father’s legacy as a cudgel. Hawkins is stuck in the middle, trying to do the right thing while pretending this isn’t personal.

And Bear? Bear sees through everything. The chimp knows the score immediately. He becomes the moral center of the story, which feels right.

By the end, BJ isn’t just passing through anymore. He’s forced to decide whether some towns are worth fighting for—even when the fight looks suspiciously like the same old one. Also there’s a truck chase, at least one courtroom scene that makes no legal sense, and Bear absolutely steals a set of keys at a crucial moment.

Tell me this wouldn’t work. Tell me this wouldn’t be better than the ninth reboot of something nobody asked for. And Joe will give it a ten!

on tipping -- and why I still do it

I'm posting this because I have seen a bunch of social media posts (on a bunch of platforms) about the subject of tipping. I know that, the algorithm being what it is, most people aren't seeing what I'm seeing. I also realize that no one asked for my opinion. Too bad.

I don’t like the current tipping system. If I were designing things from scratch, I’d much prefer a system where tips are not expected — or better yet, not allowed at all. In that world, servers would be paid a proper, predictable wage, menu prices would be higher to reflect that reality, and everyone would know what they’re paying for upfront. No math at the table, no moral arithmetic afterward.

But that isn’t the system we have.

In the system we do have, servers rely on tips. And just as importantly, the prices I see on the menu are built around that fact. They’re lower precisely because the restaurant is not paying full wages and is instead shifting part of that responsibility onto the customer. So if I were to refuse to tip on principle, I wouldn’t be staging a protest — I’d simply be taking advantage of artificially low pricing while someone else absorbs the cost.

That doesn’t sit right with me.

I can dislike the system and still acknowledge the reality I’m participating in. Until the rules change, choosing not to tip doesn’t punish “the system”; it punishes the person who brought the food to my table. And simply saying that "it's the restaurant's job to pay them better" doesn't address the fact that I'm getting a lower menu prices because the restaurant isn't paying them better. 

That said, I do notice that expectations have shifted. When I was growing up, 15% was considered a solid tip for decent service. You tipped more for exceptional service, less if things went badly, but 15% was the baseline. Now the default seems closer to 20%, with suggested amounts sometimes climbing higher than that. Whether that reflects rising costs of living, social pressure, or tip creep driven by point-of-sale screens, I’m not entirely sure — but it has changed.

So I find myself in an uncomfortable middle ground: disliking the system, recognizing its flaws, noticing its evolution, and still tipping — because opting out unilaterally isn’t reform, it’s just imbalance.

I’d happily support a different model. I’d even pay higher menu prices for it. But until that model actually exists, I tip — not because I love the system, but because I live in it.

cinema history class: return of sabata (1971)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: Return of Sabata (1971)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I may have heard of it. Maybe. I dunno. I certainly didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
Master gunman Sabata comes out of hiding to expose and dismantle a powerful gold-smuggling conspiracy run by corrupt officials and bankers, outwitting rivals with gadgets, disguises, and razor-sharp strategy.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Before getting into the movie itself, a small sidenote about something that annoyed me more than it should have: there’s a character named McIntock who is very frequently referred to as “McClintock.” I realize this is not a major sin, or even a particularly interesting one. But once I noticed it, I couldn’t not notice it, and it became one of those tiny irritations that just sat there, tapping me on the shoulder for the whole movie.

Stepping back for a moment, Sabata Returns also marks the end of the official Sabata trilogy, and Keith deserves thanks for guiding us through all three films. I found that they form a neat little case study in how quickly a character can drift into self-parody, depending on tone, direction, and how much the filmmakers trust the audience versus how much they feel the need to mug for it. I acknowledge that that wasn't Keith's intention. He (and most of the others in the room) like Sabata more than I do. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

This time out, Lee Van Cleef is back after sitting out the second film, where he was replaced by Yul Brynner. One might think this was a in for me, but I realized after the second Sabata film, I prefer Brynner's serious interpretation of the character. This movie leans hard into broad comedy—much more than the first two—and for me that’s the single biggest reason it didn’t work. I’m increasingly realizing that I prefer Van Cleef when he plays it straight: not necessarily as a villain, but as a controlled, intimidating presence. He’s terrific in For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Death Rides a Horse—all performances built on stillness, menace, and restraint. Here, he’s asked to be a comedian far too often, and it just doesn’t suit him.

The opening scene didn’t help. The whole dinner-theater-meets-circus setup felt less like a western and more like a particularly campy episode of Batman, complete with winking theatrics and exaggerated villainy. That tone more or less sets the agenda for what follows.

Once again, the film relies heavily on familiar faces in familiar roles, giving the whole thing the feel of a repertory theater company endlessly remixing the same parts. Some people seemed to enjoy that sense of continuity. I didn’t. Maybe if there had been more here that I genuinely liked, I would have found it comforting instead of repetitive.

Gimmicks also return in force: more acrobatics, and now an elaborately deployed foot-operated slingshot, just in case you were worried the movie might go five minutes without reminding you how clever it is. We also get, yet again, the slimy Mexican character and the untrustworthy associate who’s only in it for the money—familiar beats, hit once more.

Add to that a score I found actively annoying, and a runtime that felt far longer than it needed to be, and I spent a good chunk of the film thinking, Jesus Christ—when will this end?

And, of course, Joe gave it a ten -- no surprise there. But at least this time he limited his review to a movie that actually exists.