cinema history class: a town called hell

Session: Spaghetti (with Different Sauces) Westerns, Week 1
Movie: A Town Called Hell (1971)
Directed by Robert Parrish 

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

Plot:
Ten years after her husband was murdered, a widow returns to a godforsaken town to find the killers. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

It's unclear to me whether this is technically a spaghetti western, since it wasn't made with Italian money -- it was an international (mostly European) coproduction, though, and it does feel like a spaghetti western so I'll go with that.

That said, the fact is not all spaghetti westerns are good. Case in point. The premise is reasonably compelling, and in fact seems like the perfect idea for a spaghetti western. But the storytelling is muddled, which makes it hard to follow.

The exceptional cast (Stella Stevens, Robert Shaw, Telly Savalas, Martin Landau) turn in a good effort. Especially Telly Savalas, who spends a lot of time shirtless -- in a William Shatner sort of way. But Landau is not exactly believable as a Mexican.

I wanted to like this one more than I did.

Ratings:

Me: 6.5

Christina: 7.2

Ethan: 7

Sean 2 out of 4