A Man and a Colt (1967)

Claudio Undari (Robert Hundar) plays Dakota Joe, a killer for hire who travels south of the border to do a job for a wealthy landowner named Don Carlos de Larr (Mirko Ellis).

He steps smack into the Mexican revolution and soon sees what happens to the followers of Zapata. They’re tortured and killed. Peons loyal to their patrons are treated slightly better.

Dakota Joe is being hired to kill Dr. Garcia Gomez, a follower of Zapata who is turning some of Don Carlos’s peons into revolutionaries.

Dakota takes a $1,000 down payment for the job he’s supposed to do, but insists on meeting Dr. Gomez before gunning him down. He meets a middle-aged man doing his best to care for the poor in his village.

So Dakota declines the job, then induces further ire in Don Carlos and company when he comes to the aid of a young couple, pretty Carmencita (Marta Reves) and her husband-to-be Pablo.

Seems Don Carlos’s brother is intent on following the tradition of pre-consummation, which allows him to break in the new bride before her husband has “his turn.”

In a former bandit named Pedro (Fernando Sancho), Dakota finds an unlikely ally, but one more interested in the Don Carlos’s money than anything else.

In Beatrice de Larr (Gloria Milland), he finds a lovely and unfaithful wife to Don Carlos with an attraction for the tall, handsome stranger from north of the border.

Review:

One of the best Spaghetti Westerns you’ve probably never seen. The copy I watched was a Spanish-language version with English subtitles.

Tulio Demicheli serves up a film that moves along at a brisk pace, includes plenty of action, but also quickly has you caring about what happens to the main characters.

Don Carlos’s brother is as villainous as they come. We meet him practicing his gun skills by shooting bottles practically out of the hand of Carmencita’s husband-to-be.

As for his lecherous intentions toward Carmencita, he says a young peon couple should take “pride” in the fact that he wants to bed the bride.

We also get lovely Gloria Milland in an unusual role for her. She’s the privileged wife of a rich aristocrat determined to make Dakota Joe her playmate, whether she has to fake a broken ankle or visit him in the middle of the night.

His rejection stings. Even more so when she discovers him rushing to the rescue of Carmencita.

Fernando Sancho and his mother with her ailing heart provide the comic relief, and this time around, we even get a tempered performance from Fernando.

Directed by:
Tulio Demicheli

Cast:
Claudio Undari … Dakota Joe
as Robert Hundar
Fernando Sancho … Pedro
Mirko Ellis … Don Carlos de Larr
Gloria Milland … Beatrice de Larr
Marta Reves … Carmencita
Jacinto Martin … Gracian
Francisco Moran … Garcia / Diego de Larr
Felix Dafauce … Dr. Garcia Gomez
Luis Gasper … Matthew
Raf Baldassarre … Pedro bandit
Ana Carvajal … Ingez
Giovanni Petti … Sam, hotel clerk

Runtime: 85 min.

aka:
Un hombre y un colt
Dakota Joe
A Man and His Colt

Music: Angel Oliver

Memorable lines:

Dakota Joe to Pedro and his men: “Don’t try to follow me. The night is wet, and you could catch cold.”

Pedro to Dakota Joe: “Pedro has changed a lot, my friend. Now, how do you say? I’ve been redeemed.”

Dakota Joe: “Never come up behind a man with a gun.”
Beatrice de Larr: “I like the danger.’

Beatrice de Larr: “Why are you rejecting me?”
Dakota Joe: “Because when I’m going t hunt, I like to be the hunter, not the prey.”

Dakota Joe: “A man needs a cause, to live or to die.”