Nest of Vipers (1969)

A young boy named Manuel is due a $10,000 inheritance now that his estranged father has died.

But four relatives are conniving to claim the money for their own when Lt. Hernandez (Luigi Pistilli) stumbles upon a body that’s the result of that conniving.

Now he has a plan. Have someone kill the boy. Have that someone hanged for the murder.

Then the path to the inheritance will be clear and he can split it with Manuel’s money-hungry relatives.

Hernandez goes to a local revolutionary named Pancaldo to find a man for the job. He offers up a drunken gringo named Luke (Luke Askew).

But when Luke arrives at the place where he’s supposed to kill a man, he finds only young Manuel — a boy he’s recently befriended.

He’s determined to protect the youth and find out who wants him dead. And why? Because Luke’s also got his own demons to face involving a young boy from his past.

Review:

Different enough to be effective, even if it does seem to drag in stretches.

Lots of fine performances in supporting roles help, including Magda Konopka as the young woman who has taken in Manuel and Chelo Alonso, the temptress who wants part of that inheritance.

The others after the money include an inn keeper named Ignacio, a man of God named Jesus Maria and the weak-willed Luciano.

Guglielmo Spoletin and Benito Stefanelli are also effective as the revolutionary Pancaldo and his chief lieutenant, respectively.

Directed by:
Giulio Petroni

Cast:
Luke Askew … Luke
Luigi Pistilli … Lt. “The Snake” Hernandez
Magda Konopka … Maria
Luciano Casamonica … Manuel
Franco Balducci … Luciano
Chelo Alonso … Dolores
Giancarlo Badessi … Ignacio
Franco Valobra … Jesus Maria
Monica Miguel … Ignacio’s wife
Guglielmo Spoletin … Antonio Pancaldo
as William Bogart
Benito Stefanelli … Pancho

aka:
La notte dei serpent
Night of the Serpent
Nest of Vipers — Ringo Kill

Score: Riz Ortolani

Runtime: 106 min

Memorable lines:

Pancaldo: “I’ve just the man for you. Alive enough to kill someone, and not alive enough to matter if he is killed.”

Maria: “If you eat peyote, you get nearer to God.”
Luke: “You can’t get nearer to what’s not there.”

Trivia:

This marked a rare lead role for Luke Askew, who is perhaps best known as the stranger on the highway in 1969’s “Easy Rider.” He would later play a veteran cowpoke, again named Luke, in “The Culpepper Cattle Co.” Askew died in 2012 at the age of 80.

Known as the Cuban H-Bomb for her sultry dance moves, this marked the final film for Chelo Alonso, who rose to fame playing a temptress to many a muscleman in the sword and sandal films of the late 1950s and early 1960s. According to cultsirens.com, she opened a cat-breeding business after retiring from acting.