Blood River (1974)

John Ireland plays Abe Webster, who’s built a prosperous ranch out West.

He dreams of the day the railroad will come through the area and of a city rising that will bear his family’s name.

He’s hoping lovely young Catherine (Rosalba Neri) will marry his son Ben (Miguel de la Rivera) so that he’ll have heirs to inherit what he’s built.

But Catherine finds herself torn between two men, Ben and Ringo Hammond (Fabio Testi), who’s a lover of the most jealous sort.

Then Abe’s old friends begin dying — old friends who helped him massacre an Indian village years earlier, an event that haunts him to this day.

Two children — a young boy and a young girl — survived that massacre after watching the whites rape their mother.

The son, Condor, is now determined to kill the 10 whites who participated in the attack.

The daughter, Isidra, wants the whites to pay too, though she’ll resort to more mysterious means of getting revenge.

John Ireland as Abe Webster in Blood River (1974)

Luisa Rivelli as Isidra with Rosalba Neri as Catherine in Blood River (1974)

Review:

A late Spaghetti that eschews the silly slapstick that had infested so many films by that point and goes more the Keoma route with a mix of violence and mysticism.

Not that it’s in the same league as Keoma. For one thing, this was obviously made on a much smaller budget. The Indians, for instance, gather for counsel around a single teepee.

But the film features spirited performances by Neri as the woman who can’t resist her former lover and Testi as the scorned man prone to jealous rages.

Add Ireland to the mix and lots of blood-letting — and some twists — as the film heads toward its climax and this is a film begging for a decent DVD restoration.

Fabio Testi as Ringo Hammond in Blood River (1974)

Daniel Martin as Condor in Blood River (1974)

Directed by:
Gianfranco Baldanello

Cast:
Fabio Testi … Ringo Hammond
John Ireland … Abel Webster
Rosalba Neri … Catherine
as Sara Bay
Luisa Rivelli … Isidra / Isidra’s mother
Daniel Martin … Condor
Miguel de la Rivera … Ben Webster
as Michael Riviere
Jose Canalejas … Matt
Vittorio Richelmy … Josh
Maria Teresa Zago … Aunt Alice
Luis Induni .. John Crawford
Angelo Dessi … Luke
Attilio Dottesio … Smith
Bruno Arie … Harrington
Sergio Sagnotti … Willie

Runtime: 95 / 88 min.

aka:
Dieci bianchi uccisi da un piccolo indiano

Music: Piero Umiliani
Song: “Blood River” by Lydia MacDonald

Maria Teresa Zago as Aunt Alice in Blood River (1974)

Jose Canalejas as Matt in Blood River (1974)

Trivia:

This marked the final Western for Rosalba Neri, one of the best known leading ladies of the Spaghetti West. In fact, she made just two more films, with a supporting role in the 1975 Claudia Cardinale film “Libera, My Love” and a part in a 1976 Italian comedy, “Il pomicione.”

The next year, director Baldanello would release “The Great Adventure,” an Alaskan wilderness film starring Jack Palance and Joan Collins. This film marked his seventh Spaghetti, a string of movies that began with 1965’s “Thirty Winchesters for El Diablo.”

John Ireland as Abe Webster with Miguel de la Rivera as Ben Webster in Blood River (1974)

Rosalba Neri as Katherine in Blood River (1974)

Luisa Rivelli as Isidra in Blood River (1974)

John Ireland as Abe Webster with Rosalba Neri as Katherine in Blood River (1974)

Rosalba Neri as Katherine with Fabio Testi as Ringo Hammond in Blood River (1974)