Day of Anger (I giorni dell'ira) (1967)
Directed by Tonini Valerii, a former assistant director on Sergio Leone's 'Fistful of Dollars', this spaghetti western is his second picture as director. Starring two of the genre's biggest stars, Lee Van Cleef and Giuliano Gemma. This is a tale of an older gunslinger that sees an opportunity to remain at the top whilst settling down in the town of Clifton. The town has a secret, it was built on the proceeds of a crime and the now rich inhabitants had a hand in it but they betrayed one of original criminals who went to jail.
Van Cleef's character befriends Gemma's Scott, giving him a surname and teaching him the ways of a gunslinger. Quite quickly Scott becomes adept and pretty soon would do anything for his mentor who is quickly becoming a power in the town through both blackmail and coercion. But Talby, (Van Cleef) also has a secret, he's not such a good gunslinger after all, his prowess with the firearm is down to the weapons modified hammer and shorter barrel, a fact which he fails to tell his young protégé, and should he ever find himself up against the young man, well it 'was' him that chose Scott' gun...with the longer barrel.
This isn't some straight 'out for revenge shootout' like a lot of spaghettis, it’s quite intelligent and does have a number of exciting scenes; the duel on horseback is incredible for instance. The only gripe I had with the movie was that its de rigueur musical theme isn't quite as catchy as the more famous examples of spaghetti such as the Dollars movies or Sergio Corbucci's Django.
The film recently released by Arrow comes in two flavours, the original Italian cut at 114 mins complete with either an Italian soundtrack or an English one, and a much shorter International cut at 86 mins.