And Now Make Your Peace with God (1968)

Fabio Testi and Mohammad Ali Fardin — just Fardin here — are Steve Cooper and Stanley Maserick, two men heading to Denver to settle old scores.

Cooper wants to track down the relative who, years earlier, orchestrated the killings of his father, mother and grandfather, inheriting the family fortune in the process.

Maserick once had a lucrative gold mine. Until a gang of ruffians showed up one day, stole his gold and dumped him in the river, presuming he was dead.

When bandits attack the stage Cooper and Maserick are riding west on, a fast gun named Sanders (Jeff Cameron) shows up just in time to play the hero. And the two men bound for Denver become three.

Once they arrive in Denver, they immediately arouse the suspicions of a town boss named Johnson, a sheriff-candidate named Corbett and Jonathan Clay, the man who pulls all the strings in Denver.

Turns out two of those are also the men whom Cooper and Maserick are seeking.

Our heroes also encounter a curvy saloon singer named Suzanne and pretty young girl named Claire Ericson, who’s eager to help because her dad was killed trying to stand up to Johnson and the plan to make Corbett sheriff.

Review:

Making his directorial debut, Demofilo Fidani clearly had a much larger budget than he would enjoy for some of his future films. Heck, he had three male leads, three lovely lasses and a large cast at his disposal.

But he also tried to make the film with a razor-thin plot likely to leave viewers muttering ‘huh?’ way too often.

Like why is Cameron’s character along on this adventure? Like why would Johnson recruit Suzanne for his espionage work when she admits being smitten with one of the strangers?

Heck, we’re well into the film before we learn what’s motivating Maserick and Cooper.

For the most part, that script serves as little more than an excuse to take us from gunfight to fistfight and back again, with most of those gunfights resulting in bad guys doing acrobatic spirals of death.

Fidani also serves up a catfight in which Suzanne and a fellow saloon girl go tumbling down two flights of steps. One source reports that former stuntman Testi served as a stunt double for at least part of that scene.

Directed by:
Demofilo Fidani
as Miles Deem

Cast:
Mohammad Ali Fardin … Stanley Maserick
as Fardin
Jeff Cameron … Sanders
Fabio Testi … Steve Cooper
Ettore Manni … Jonathan Clay
Virginia Darval … Miss Claire Ericson
Cristina Penz … Suzanne
Calisto Calisti … Johnson
as Anthony Stevens
Amerigo Leoni … John H. Corbett
as Custer Gail
Gualtiero Rispoli … Ericson
Armando Visconti … Storekeeper
Paolo Figlia … Boyd
Giovanni Quarrel … Judge
Franca Itors … Becky
Luciano Doria … Doctor

Runtime: 85 min.

aka:
Ed ora… raccomanda l’anima a Dio!
And Now I Recommend My Soul to the Lord

Music: Franco Bixio
Song: “Just a Coward” by Mary Usuah

Memorable lines:

Suzanne, the saloon girl: “Steve, where you headed?”
Steve: “We’re going to Denver City.”
Suzanne: “So this is only another adventure to you, isn’t it?”
Steve: “Who can say? One adventure can easily turn into the most important thing that ever happened to you.”

Johnson, trying to recruit Suzanne for his double dealing: “You’re going to find out who (the three strangers) are and what they’re doing here?”
Suzanne: “Listen, Johnson, perhaps you didn’t notice, but one of those three impressed me very much. I’d give him anything he wanted, anytime he asked for it. And I confess, that’s my only interest in this affair.”

Sanders: “Sure, Stanley, the world is full of vultures, ain’t it?”

Trivia:

In the flashback scene to Steve Cooper’s youth, that’s Fabio Testi playing his own father and director Demofilo Fidani himself in the role of Steve’s granddad. Fidani played small roles in a few of his Westerns.

Fardin was a former wrestling champ from Iran who went on to fame as an actor and became known as the King of Hearts. Though his films were banned in his home country following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, a reported 20,000 people mourners gathered in Tehran to pay respects following his death in 2000. This marked his only Spaghetti Western.

This marked the first starring role for Fabio Testi, who served as a stuntman and bit player in better known Spaghettis like “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Among Western fans, he’s probably best known for his role as Clayton Drumm, the stranger who tempts actress Jenny Agutter and winds up with Warren Oates on his trail in “China 9, Liberty 37” (1978).