Twenty Paces to Death (1970)

Just after the Civil War, Aleck Kellaway (Alberto Farnese) is tricked into helping rob a Union gold shipment, thinking he’s helping the Confederacy rise again.

When he learns he’s been duped, he straps Clegg Kimberly (Cesar Ojinaga) alive to the back of the gold wagon, his feet dangling to the ground, and sends it back to the Union encampment with a note explaining what happened.

Then, on the way back to his Texas ranch, Kellaway comes across an Indian camp where everyone has been killed except for a half-breed boy who’s buried in the dirt up to his neck.

Kellaway frees the lad, names him Mestizo and takes him home to raise as his own.

Flash forward several years. Mestizo (Dean Reed) has grown into a strapping young man, albeit one who has fallen for Kellaway’s pretty daughter Deborah (Patty Shepard).

Problem is, she’s been promised to the secretly sadistic Cedric Whitefield as part of a deal that will help Kellaway become mayor.

Meanwhile, Clegg Kimberly has served his time and is looking for revenge. That stunt with the wagon left him a cripple, and he’s found a pretty assistant for his scheming in a whore named Hazel (Maria Pia Giancaro).

Review:

A flat-out mess with action scenes so amateurish that it appears no one involved had ever filmed a movie before.

An example: Late in the film, Reed’s character fires a shot at one of Clegg’s men. The bullet raises dirt in the stone wall well above the man’s head. Nevertheless, the bad guy groans and falls dead.

Oh, and try not to laugh too hard at the scene where Kellaway finds a much younger Mestizo buried in the dirt and hurriedly digs him free. Wow.

In many of the scenes, the acting is just as second rate with Cesar Ojinaga being the only member of the cast who brings much gusto to his part.

The general ideas in the plot are interesting enough to have made this a decent film, even on what was clearly a shoestring budget. But this bunch certainly wasn’t up to pulling it off.

Directed by:
Manuel Esteba
Antono Mollica
as Ted Mulligan

Cast:
Dean Reed … Mestizo
Alberto Farnese … Aleck Kellaway
as Albert Farley
Patty Shepard … Deborah
Maria Pia Conte … Hazel
as Maria Pia Gian
Cesar Ojinaga … Clegg Kimberly
Gustavo Re … Eugene
Jose Ignacio Abadal … Cedric Whitefield
Luis Induni … Logan
Fernando Rubio … Hassett
Antonio Molino Rojo … Max
Marta May … Widow Potts
as Marta Flores
Miguel Muniesa .. Union officer
Alejandro Ulloa … Rebel soldier

Runtime: 82 min.

aka:
Veinte pasos para la muerte
Saranda

Music: Enrique Escobar

Memorable lines:

Clegg Kimberly: “Kellaway, you shot my brother, you scum. I’m gonna shoot your guts out.”

Clegg Kimberly, after slapping a saloon girl across the face a couple of times: “You’d better learn right away. Never snicker at my bad leg.”

Mestizo to Aleck Kellaway: “I love what you love. And I hate what you hate.”

Widow to Mestizo: “Getting you to talk is like pulling teeth with rubber pliers.”

Cedric Whitefield to Mestizo: “You’re skin’s a very unusual color. That’s why half-breeds are good for target practice.”

Mestizo: “Aleck Kellaway taught me one thing. Before you get mad at somebody, stop and think, and then count to 20. If you’re still angry, it’s alright to kill him.”

Clegg Kimberly to Hazel, of getting revenge on Aleck Kellaway: “I used to dream of this all those years in jail. You’re stupid if you think I’m going to pay him back with a few bullet holes in the belly. I want to destroy his life, bit by bit.”

Trivia:

The title comes from a scene in which Mestizo squares off against two of Clegg’s men. He tells them to take 20 steps before firing. It truly is their 20 steps to death.

One of the last Spaghetti outings for Dean Reed, though in 1981 he played a singing rodeo rider in the Hungarian-made musical-comedy-Western “Sing Cowboy Sing” (1981).