Director Alfonso Brescia may be better known for his space movies like Battle of the Stars, War of the Robots, Star Odyssey and War of the Planets. Or maybe giallo movies Naked Girl Murdered In the Park and Your Sweet Body to Kill. Perhaps even his Ator sequel Iron Warrior or the absolutely demented The Beast In Space. Like all Italian exploitation directors, he hit so many genres and that also includes Westerns, as he made this, My Gun Is the Law, I giorni della violenza, Cry of Death If One Is Born a Swine, which was written by Renato Polselli, and this movie.

Written by Lorenzo Gicca Palli (who directed and wrote Blackie the Pirate and The Price of Death), Killer Caliber .32 is the story of Silver (Peter Lee Lawrence), a gunslinger who. is hunting a masked gang one by one. Silver might be one of the coolest Italian — well, Lawrence was a German-burn actor who lived in France — cowboy there is. He’s always ahead of the killers and dispatches each of them with a supernatural sense of calm.

Who is the man behind it all? Well, it’s either the man who hired him, banker Mr. Averell (Andrea Bosic), the sheriff (Mirko Ellis) or a gambler named Ramirez (Gregory West). No worries at all. Mr. Silver isn’t showing the slightest sense of fear or effort. He’s too cool for anything else.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Ringo, It’s Massacre Time (AKA Wanted Ringo, Revenge of Ringo and Reward for Ringo) is at once an Italian Western and a mystery. A series of deaths at a ranch — the victims are all foaming at the mouth — brings Mike Wood (Mickey Hargitay) to solve things. Yet he soon mysteriously disappears (he was actually the star of the movie, but had to fly home to California when he learned that his son Zoltan was mauled by a tiger at Jungleland during a publicity shoot for his wife Jayne Mansfield) and his brother Ringo (Jean Louis) comes on board.

Director and writer Mario Pinzauti starts with those basics and then goes wild, bringing in elements of the giallo and even voodoo dolls, something you may not see in a single other Italian Western. Pinzauti made several movies that cashed in on other films, like Let’s Go and Kill Sartana, Mandinga, Passion Plantation, Due Magnum .38 per una città di carogne and Clouzot & C. contro Borsalino & C., which looks like Borsalino quite a lot from the poster.

There is a femme fatale named Pilar (Lucia Bomez) and a witch — yes! — that lives in a cave that has caused all of this. The film feels like it was being written as it was shot, as people literally stop speaking in scenes and some characters walk on and never get seen for the rest of the movie. It’s just a blast of complete wildness and while I appreciate just how strange it all is, if you’re looking for a complete film, this is in no way it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed by Enzo Barboni, who wrote the movie with Marco Tullio Barboni, Sons of Trinity (AKA Trinity & Babyface and Trinity & Bambino: The Legend Lives On) finds the sons of, well, Trinity and Bambino being Trinity (Heath Kizzier) and Bambino (Keith Neubert).

Just like their fathers, Trinity loves women and getting in trouble as he works as a bounty hunter while Bambino is a sheriff who doesn’t want bothered by his cousin. They end up having to stop a wealthy landowner by the name of Parker (Siegfried Rauch) and the Ramirez Brothers from evicting the people of San Clementina. As always, there’s a beautiful woman — Bonita (Yvonne de Bark) — to get Trinity to do the right thing.

This is decent but Terence Hill and Bud Spencer are superior in every way to the young cast. It did make me smile, as the fight scenes remind me of their films, but it just feels like something is missing. But hey — Jack Taylor shows up, as do Riccardo Pizzuti (the creature from Lady Frankenstein), Renatoi Scarpa (Prof. Verdegast from Suspiria) and José Lifante (Dr. Death from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen).

I realize it’s unfair for me to think this would be anything or anywhere as fun as the films that inspired it, but I think the potential was there. A cameo from Hill and Spencer would have at least brought a smile and some sense of passing the mantle so to speak.

The Campos and Mounter family have been fighting for years. Then Senor Campos (Rufino Ingles) and Bill Mounters (Luis Induni) come to an understanding. Both families will fight in the open and a judge will decide who wins. The losers must leave California.

Rodrigo Campos (Peter Martell) and the rest of the family spring a trap and kill nearly all of the Mounters except for Bill and his son Johnny (Peter Lee Lawrence), who is captured by the Campos family and kept in jail with Lefty (Andres Mejuto), a man with a hook for a hand.

The Campos want them to fight to the death but Johnny gets them away alive. Lefty then teaches him how to survive: “Shoot first, shoot to kill. Keep an eye on the allegedly dead. Beware of spare guns. Never turn your back to another colt. Keep your eye and your hand steady if you want to live long and healthy. Always get even.”

Johnny comes back for revenge and falls for Giulietta Campos (Cristina Galbo), which should let you know that he’s the Italian Western Romeo and she’s Juliet. There’s also a saloon girl named Rosalind (Maria Cuadra) who falls for him and like all fallen women who redeem themselves in these movies, she dies to help save him. There’s also Sheriff Cooper (Piero Lulli), who is in love with Giulietta and she in no way returns his ardor.

In real life, Lawrence and Galbo fell in love and were married. Sadly, he died of brain cancer at the age of thirty, but before that, he would be in Pistol for a Hundred Coffins and she would appear in The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, The House That Screamed and What Have You Done to Solange?

This was directed by Gianni Puccini, who mainly worked as a writer. His assistant director was Paul Naschy, who also appears in a bar scene where his character loses an arm wrestling match and has his hand impaled.

I really enjoyed this movie. It takes the basics of Shakespeare and becomes its own movie. It ends — spoiler warning — with death itself killing everyone else except our young lovers, which is quite different than the classic.

It was shot by Mario Montuori, who was the cameraman on Bicycle Thieves. I also love the soundtrack, which is Gino Peguri. He also did the music for Bloody Pit of Horror and Supersonic Man.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Gold transfers keep getting attacked, which puts a hurting on the U.S. Mint, so they sent Joe Ford (Rik Van Nutter, Felix Leiter in Thunderball) — better known as Dynamite Joe — to make sure those bandits get taken care of. Joe’s talent is blowing people up. That’s why they call him Dynamite Joe, after all.

Joe builds an entire train car out of gold. That doesn’t seem like a plan, but I’m also not someone that throws lit sticks at people. Maybe it’s the fact that Van Nutter was in a Bond movie, but this feels like a Eurospy mixed with an Italian Western and I am all for everything that is all about.

So yes, Joe shows up looking like Eastwood, but this is by Antonio Margheriti which guarantees great camerawork and something a little different. Cinematographer Manuel Merino also shot She Killed In Ecstasy, so the camerawork is great and the soundtrack by Carlo Savina is a bit off as well and I mean that in a “it’s a bit off” and I love it usage of the phrase. He also composed the music for Comin’ at Ya!, Lisa and the Devil, And God Said to Cain… and many more.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed by Agustín Navarro and written by Fernando Galiana, Mario Guerra, Julio Porter and Vittorio Vighi, this Italian/Spanish Western comes from just before the genre took off in those countries.

Frank Dalton (Paul Piaget) is out to get vengeance for his dead sister, a woman wrongfully accused of killing her husband. It’s a relatively American Western by way of a murder mystery and is very unlike the Eurowesterns that would come after. There’s also a sheriff (Fernando Casanova) trying to solve who the murderer is and trying to keep Frank out of harm’s way.

Notable cast members include Barbara Nelli (Lady Morgan’s Vengeance, Bloody Pit of Horror) and Rafael Bardem, the grandfather of Javier. I wish this were a better movie, but there are certainly others to check out. Then again, the appearance of a black-gloved killer in the middle of a Western is always something I am going to watch. There should be more giallo Westerns! I looked up a list on the Spaghetti Western Database and see the following listed that I need to watch:

Killer Caliber .32

Killer, Adios

Ringo, It’s Massacre Time

The Last Traitor

The Masked Thief

The Price of Death

Kill the Poker Player

Revenge of the Resurrected

The Crimson Night of the Hawk

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as El sabor del odio (The Taste of Hate), A Gun for One Hundred Graves and Vengeance, this Italian-Spanish Western was directed by Umberto Lenzi and written by Marco Leto, Vittorio Salerno and Eduardo Manzanos.

Jim Slade (Peter Lee Lawrence) had it rough in the Civil War. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness, so he refused to shoot other soldiers. He’s locked up in a labor camp for cowardice before being pardoned. When he gets home, he finds that his parents are dead.

Jim gets over that whole thing about not killing people pretty quick, taking out three of the four suspects quickly. That’s when he goes after their leader, Texas Corbett (Piero Lulli), which brings him to Galveston. Seconds after he shows up, he meets a preacher by the name of Douglas (John Ireland) and witnesses a bank robbery. He soon learns that Corbett was behind that robbery, so he gets the job of sheriff so he can legally hunt down and kill him.

This feels like an Italian Western mixtape with a weird undertaker (A Fistful of Dollars) and an end battle in a cemetery (Django). Then again, if you get upset with every Italian movie that rips something off, you’re going to be angry your entire life.

My favorite thing about this is that even though Jim is now able to kill people, he only drinks water. Never whiskey.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I guess picking Chino for a month of Italian Westerns is a cheat, even if this is an Italian/Spanish production.

Based on the book The Valdez Horses by Lee Hoffman, it was released in Italy as Valdez, il mezzosangue (Valdez the Half Breed). It was directed by John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape) and Duilio Coletti, who producer Dino Laurentiis hired to do inserts and reshoots. Sturges was unhappy with the film, feeling that casting Jill Ireland as the love interest was a mistake. That said, once Bronson and Ireland got together, she was often his on-screen lover.

Chino Valdez (Bronson) is a horse breeder who suddenly has Jamie Wagner (Vincent Van Patten) in his life, an orphan who needs raising as much as the horses of Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi) need broken in. He also falls for the rich man’s sister Catherine (Ireland), a forbidden relationship between an entitled white woman and a half-breed poor horsebreeder.

European film lovers will enjoy seeing Fausto Tozzi (Cry of a Prostitute), Corrado Gaipa (the Italian voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi), Melissa Chimenti (Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals), Diana Lorys (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) and Annamaria Clementi (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals).

I was struck in this movie by the Spanish countryside, as well as the fact that despite being an expert on horses, Chino has no idea that Catherine would never leave her rich life to live with him in a shack with no money in the middle of nowhere. His idea of love — and even making love — are basic ones that he’s taken from being raised in a harsh world of taming animals and surviving on your own instead being taken care of. He can make love to her, but he can never truly provide for all the other things she truly needs. Jamie understands that, even if he’s barely a man.

At the end, after it all goes wrong, Chino realizes that if he can’t have the life he wants, no one can have his work. He releases his horses into the wild instead of letting anyone else take them. Even his enemy Maral recognizes and respects that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Ciakmull L’uomo della vendetta (Ciakmull the Vengeful Man) was directed by Enzo Barboni, the director of They Call Me Trinity, Trinity Is Still My Name and Even Angels Eat Beans. He replaced Ferdinando Baldi, who was fired by the producer Manolo Bolognini because they fought over Baldi wanting Annabella Incontrera to play Sheila, the role that went to Ida Galli, who is also known as Evelyn Stewart.

Chuck Mool (Leonard Mann, Night School, Flowers In the Attic) escapes the institution he’s been in thanks to three men, Woody (Woody Strode), Silver (Pietro Martellanza) and Hondo (George Eastman). Chuck has no idea who he is and the men decide to ride with him in the hopes that he can get his memory back. He makes it to a town where he was supposedly the best gunfighter and is being counted on to choose sides in a war between the Caldwells, whose leader John (Helmuth Schneider) might be Chuck’s father and the Udos, whose leader tries to convince Chuck that he’s really his father. Turns out that Chuck’s half-brother Tom Udo (Lucio Rosato) has always hated him for being illegitimate and he was supposed to stay out of the way.

Pietro Martellanza and George Eastman were Barberi’s original picks to play Trinity and Bambino. There are hints of that movie here as some of the fights are comical and in the way that Hondo can shuffle cards, not to mention a bean eating sequence.

By the end, this movie finally remembers to have some action, but it’s helped along by the cast and a sparkling Riz Orlotani jazz score. It’s great!

The AKA for this is The Bastard of Dodge City which spoils one of the movie’s reveals.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Anthony Steffen, born Antonio Luiz de Teffé von Hoonholtz and also known as Antonio Luigi de Teff, was born at the Brazilian embassy in Rome in what is known as the Pamphilj Palace. His noble family came from Prussia, with his great-grandfather being the Great Baron of Teffé and his father Manoel being a Formula One racer and a Brazilian ambassador. His grandaunt, Nair de Teffé von Hoonholtz, was the first female caricaturist of Brazil and wife of Brazilian President Hermes Fonseca. And yet his teen years were filled with war, as he and his family worked with Italian resistance fighters against the Nazis.

From 1965 to 1972, Steffen became the Italian Clint Eastwood, showing up in 27 Italian Westerns like Django the Bastard, Arizona Colt Returns, A Few Dollars for Django and Viva! Django as well as giallo movies such as Crimes of the Black Cat, The Killers Are Our Guests and Play Motel. He retired to a jet set life based out of Brazil.

He also wrote this movie along with director Edoard Mulargia, who also made Don’t Wait, Django… Shoot!, Tropic of Cancer and Escape from Hell, which is part of the two movies that make up Savage Island.

Shango (Anthony Steffen) has been framed for the death of a telegraph operator. That man just happens to be the only person that can inform a small Mexican town that the American Civil War is over, which allows Major Droster (Eduardo Fajardo) to keep the war going and lording over the people. Shango hangs from a wooden cage until Fernandez (Attilio Dottesio), his daughter Consuelo (Barbara Nelli) and son Pedrito (Giusva Fioravanti) help him to escape. Droster allows his henchman Martinez (Maurice Poli) to attack the people of this small Mexican barrio and this won’t stand. Shango must get his revenge and somehow goes from PTSD POV to avenging killing machine in moments. And it all ends in fire and self-sacrifice.

Giusva Fioravanti went from being a child star to — along with Francesca Mambro — becoming a leading figure in a far-right terrorist group, Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari. His brother Cristiano had joined a far right youth section at the age of 13 and Giusva joined as well to protect him. But even a year in the U.S. didn’t make him any less violent or devoted to the cause. Along with his girlfriend Francesca Mambro, they had no real ideology but still caused plenty of mayhem, including potentially being behind the Bologna Massacre in 1980 that killed 85 people. Today, Fioravanti is a writer for Il Riformista focusing on human rights and the criminal justice system in Iran and the U.S.

You can watch this on Tubi.