The Price of Death (1972)

Gianni Garko plays a new character in this Spaghetti, the slick and smooth gunman named Silver, lured away from a holiday at his hacienda filled with lovely ladies by an old friend (lawyer Jeff Plummer), who wants him to save a scoundrel (Klaus Kinski as Chester Conway) from the hangman’s noose.

Someone has robbed Polly Whitaker’s saloon and gambling hall, killing one of Polly’s girls and a bartender in the process. Two of the three outlaws wound up dead, too. The deaths are blamed on Chester, and he’s sentenced to hang.

But Polly is convinced he didn’t do it, though she wants Chester dead for her own reasons. Plummer wants justice, and if that means freeing a no-account like Chester, so be it. For a handsome sum, Silver takes the mission.

With the help of a pretend diary from the dead whore, he accomplishes his mission too, partly because Chester has an iron-clad allibi, of the most vicious sort.

Review:

Garko changed names for this film, but the character barely changed. Not as clever as most of the Sartana films, but far from the worst Spaghetti fare you’ll find by the early 1970s.

A couple of neat plot twists make up for what clearly was not a lavish budget. The one oddity is the band or miners, who break out into Three Stooges style fights every time Silver crosses their path.

Directed by:
Lorenzo Gicca Palli

Cast:
Gianni Garko … Silver
as John Garko
Klaus Kinski … Chester Conway
Franco Abbiana .. Jeff Plummer
Gely Genka … Polly Whitaker
Luciano Catenacci … Sheriff Stanton
as Luciano Lorcas
Giancarlo Prete … The Reverend
Luciano Pigozzi … Dr. Rosenthal
Laura Gianoli … Polly’s sister
Alfredo Rizzo … Judge Atwell
Andrea Scotti … Coot

aka:
Il venditore di morte
The Last Gunfight

Composer: Mario Miglaiardi

Runtime: 89 min.

Memorable lines:

Doc, after examining a wounded outlaw: “Sheriff, this man’s dead.”
Sheriff: “But he’s still breathing.”
Doc: “That’s just because he hasn’t noticed it yet.”

Polly: “My luck is bad. The others are going to hang you. And I wanted to.”
Chester: “You can always pull my feet, you know.”
Polly: “It’s going to be gory, Chester. When they get through, nobody will be able to recognize your feet.”

Trivia:

Gianni Garko was best known as Sartana. Here, director Palli creates a new character for him, a suave playboy named Silver, who has a mansion-like hacienda and pretty women hanging about.

This was the only Spaghetti directed by Palli, though he also made “Blackie the Pirate” (1974), featuring the team of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.