Quinto: Fighting Proud (1969)

Donning robes and hoods and ringing a bell, Blackie (Alfonso Rojas) and his gang ride into a prosperous town out west.

They’re not really lepers. They’re just using the ruse to make all the townsfolk flee for safety while they rob the bank.

It works. They make off with $500,000. But one gang member is gunned down during the holdup. A second is wounded and captured by a posse during the getaway.

Problem is, when the gang reassembles, the loot is missing. One of the bandits is apparently trying to double-cross all the others and keep the $500,000 for himself. Or herself, because the gang includes Blackie’s pretty, gun-toting girlfriend (Sarah Ross as Kate).

So the gang members — Blackie, Kate, Albert, Navajo, Sucre, Hank and Jones — agree to meet at the Ghost Valley stage station to sort out the mess.

When the shooting stops there, the only people left alive are a cowardly traveler named Bill (Steven Tedd), a saloon owner intent on avenging his wife’s death (Roberto Camardiel) and three saloon girls wondering how they can turn the outlaws’ arrival to their advantage.

Well, except for Eliana. She was about to head to the big city to find a husband when Blackie and his gang arrived.

Her hopes of making it out alive might hinge on Bill. Then, again, when the gang members start turning on one another, no one seems very safe.

Review:

First for the good. The opening in which the gang dresses up as lepers so no one interrupts their bank robbery in certainly unique.

And Sarah Ross has an interesting role as female outlaw Kate, who professes to be Blackie’s girl, but loves money more than him and loves toying with other men more than either.

Otherwise, the film is done in by a plot that is flat-out illogical and makes even less sense when the director starts revealing “twists” in the last five minutes or so.

Okay, perhaps you can blame the awkward — in some cases downright ludicrous — love lines on translation issues. But not a plot in which one gang member steals the $500,000, then agrees to reunite with his partners to figure out who has the money. I mean, wouldn’t he or she just hightail it with the loot?

Want more logic issues? Why is no one concerned when gang members start dying? Might not one of them be the only person who knows where the stolen money is located? And why is no one concerned when Sucre starts teaching the captive named Bill how to use a gun?

And to top is all off, we have an Indian gang member named Navajo who dotes over a white girl he found injured in the desert. Wow.

Oh, and there’s no one named Quinto in the film, though the English title would lead you to believe that’s the case. The Italian title translated: “Fifth: Do Not Kill.”

Directed by:
Leon Klimovsky

Cast:
Giuseppe Cardillo … Bill
as Steven Tedd
German Cobos … Sucre
Sarah Ross … Kate
Alfonso Rojas … Blackie
Diana Sorel … Eliana
Alfonso de la Vega … Hank
Joe Kamel … Albert
Jose Maro … Navajo
Roberto Camardiel … William
Raf Baldassarre .. Stage guard
Charo Soriano … Jenny
Josefina Serratosa .. Gladys
Jose Luis Lluch .. Jones

Runtime: 93 min.

aka:
Quinto: non ammazzare

Memorable lines:

Blackie, as Kate cuddles up: “Let’s get some rest now.”
Kate: “C’mon, Blackie, don’t be mean. I’m all confused inside. I feel all nervous and wound up tense, just like a toy. Blackie, I’m cold — freezing.”
Blackie: “C’mon, what is this?”
Kate: “I just wanted to be near you. Everybody knows what a man you are. I’m only a frightened little girl. I’m always afraid.”
Blackie: “Kate, you’re a …” And the kissing begins.

Eliana, explaining why she’s leaving her saloon job: “I’m going to ive in the big city. I’m going to get a husband. In there, it’s a rattler. Or a creep.”

William, the tavern owner, about avenging his wife’s death: “You can’t kill a man who’s already dead. They cut my heart out.”

Kate: “You shouldn’t lose control, Blackie.”
Blackie: “What do you mean by that?”
Kate: “You shouldn’t let the boys see you like that. You look all angry and red. It ain’t fittin’.”

Trivia:

Steven Tedd (Giuseppe Cardillo) and his Elvis haircut somehow gets top billing here, but the lead male role belongs to German Cobos as the guitar-playing, revenge-seeking Sucre. Cobos died in 2015 at age 87; he continued to act well into his 70s.

According to IMDb, fetching redhead Sarah Ross appeared in just seven films. Two of the others were Spaghetti Westerns — “Halleluja for Django” (1967) and “The Ruthless Four” (1968).