Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

George Martin plays Sandy Cassell, who rustles a herd of wild horses from the Connelly ranch with his gang.

Craig Hill plays Bill Mack, who works out a deal to retrieve those horses with Connelly’s widow and sets out on Cassell’s trail with his sidekicks.

Everyone winds up at the Cook ranch, where a widow and her two daughters are brutally murdered in the middle of the night. Naturally, Cassell, Mack and all the men with them are prime suspects. And so the race to escape the scaffolds begins.

Mack and Cassell take along pastor’s wife Barbara Ferguson as a captive, hoping it will buy them time to reach the border. They hole up in an old Mexican fort.

But the posse on their trail will stop at nothing. Danny Boyd (Aldo Sambrell) and a handsome young lad named Steve, who was engaged to one of the Cook girls, are particularly determined to see everyone in the fort dead or brought to justice.

Craig Hill as Bill Mack in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Susy Andersen as Barbara Ferguson in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Review:

Different enough to be interesting, especially since it’s the bad guys who are under siege for a change and, though at odds, the men under Cassell and Bill Mack are forced to fight side by side for survival.

It’s also a bit of a whodunit since we’re not sure who really killed the Cook family until the last 15 minutes or so of the film. Susy Anderson, with a distracting Irish accent, plays the female lead and would appear in only one other Spaghetti.

The film also features a rousing score from Francesco de Masi.

George Martin (right) as Sandy Cassell, working on a deal with Bill Mack in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Tomas Blanco as Clark Bennett, a man with a secret motivation in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Directed by:
Nunzio Malasomma

Cast:
Craig Hill … Bill Mack
George Martin … Sandy Cassell
Susy Andersen … Barbara Ferguson
Jose Manuel Martin … Benny
Aldo Sambrell … Danny Boyd
Tomas Blanco … Clark Bennett
Margarita Lozano … Madeline Cook
Eleonora Brown … Anne Cook
Maria Montez … Liz Cook
Adrea Bosiac .. Pastor Ferguson
Renato Rossini … Steve
as Howard Ross
Frank Brana … Adam

Also with: Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia, Umberto Raho, Luis Duran, Laura Reder, Antonio Molino Rojo, Jose Canalejas, Alvaro de Luna, Ricardo Palacios, Rafael Albaicin, Francisco Nieto, Enrique Santiago, Ricardo Costa, Jose Riesgo, Jaime de Pedro, Jorse Terron

aka
Quindici forche per un assassino
The Dirty Fifteen
Dirty Buster’s

Score: Francesco de Masi
Song: “You’ll Be Mine” by Raoul

Runtime: 100 min.

Jose Manuel Martin as Benny, a member of Bill Mack’s band in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Aldo Sambrell as Danny Boyd, one of the men looking for the killers of women in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Memorable lines:

Benny: “Poor old man Connelly should have put his trust in us. We would have robbed him just the same, but he wouldn’t have been killed.”

Barbara: “You’ll finish up getting yourself killed. You and all your men with you.”
Bill Mack: “My men will fend for themselves. As for me, I’m the one man I have the right to kill. No one will mourn my death.”

Bill to Barbara: “Ol’ Benny used to tell us about a certain woman. She gave a general one wonderful night of love. Then cut his head off. I wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to me.”
Barbara: “You’re really awful.”

Doc: “Amazing. You have enough lead in your bodies to keep a whole regiment going.”
Cassell: “That’s nothing, doctor. For us, bullets act just like a tonic.”

Renato Rossini (Howard Ross) as Steve, fiancee of one of the murdered Cook girls in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Margarita Lozano as Madeline Cook with her daughters Ann (Eleonara Brown, right) and Liz (Maria Montez in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Trivia:

Nunzio Malasomma directed 41 films in a career that began in the 1920s. This was his last. He was 74 when the film was released.

Susy Andersen appeared in just 10 films, but one was the 1963 thriller “Black Sabbath,” really a trio of horror tales. In one of those, she plays a lovely young woman named Sdenka, who turns the head of Mark Damon, who is in turn terrorized by Boris Karloff. Supposedly, the band Black Sabbath was playing a small club across the street from a theater where the film was playing and adopted the name.

Ricardo Palacious as Juan, Barbara Ferguson’s helper, being questioned by Bill Mack in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Susy Andersen as Barbara Ferguson, the pastor’s kidnapped wife in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Craig Hill as Bill Mack, willing to scheme with Sandy Cassell in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)

Susy Andersen as Barbara Ferguson with George Martin as Sandy Cassell in Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968)