Day of Anger (1967)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Scott has a lowly job in the town of Clifton, mainly clearing up people's rubbish, and is treated with disinterest and sometimes contempt by the seemingly righteous citizens of the town. Into which town rides the mysterious Frank Talby and everything starts to be shaken up as two main plot strands emerge; the taking under his wing of Scott by Talby and Talby's efforts to get back the $50,000 dollars he claims is owing to him. It starts off slowly establishing character then moves up several gears to the gripping climax.Giuliano Gemma as Scott is good and Lee Van Cleef as the ambiguous (Is he a hero or a villain?) Talby is even better. Although playing in an Italian western was so familiar to him Van Cleef still manages to give a compellingly nuanced performance. Walter Rilla as Murph is the best of the supporting actors. The rest of the cast are typical Italian western actors in that they don't look quite right as American cowboys but have oddly fascinating faces. To bolster the film are a splendid music score by Riz Ortolani and the gorgeous cinematography by Enzo Serafin in Technicolour and Techniscope., making the landscapes particularly beautiful. Each shot could be framed as a work of art. A spaghetti western not to be missed.

A scruffy garbage boy becomes the pupil of a famed gunfighter, and the stage for confrontation is set when the gunman becomes unhinged and overruns the boy's town through violence and corruption.The film credits the novel "Death Rode on Tuesdays" by Rolf O. Becker as its basis, although director Valerii and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi have attested that this credit was primarily included to appease the West German co-producers, and that although some scenes are partially borrowed from it, the film is not an adaptation of Becker's novel.This is an interesting western, not just because it has a young man going from janitor to gunfighter, but it has the audience questioning whom to trust. There is sort of the classic theme of a hero being mentored by a villain, and how that can complicate alliances.

One of my favorite teen memories surrounds the film "Day of Anger." I saw it at the El Rey Theatre in Walnut Creek, California in 1972 as part of a double feature with "Superfly." Don't ask me how that match-up was booked, but I went with a couple of friends and thanks to the new release paired with it, the place was nearly packed. Old school singleplex with 1000 or so seats. Everyone was hushed and into the story until Lee Van Cleef stomped into the scraggly bar in the scraggly village, banged on the wooden plank serving as the bar and demanded: "Get me Wild Jack!" For a moment the theater remained hushed. Then, from a few rows behind us, a guy yelled out "WILD JACK! What kinda name is that?" Suddenly taken by the over-the-top melodrama, the crowd turned the whole experience on its end and started howling at what now seemed to be a self-referential satire on the spaghetti western genre. Of course I didn't think in such high-falutin' terminology at the time, I just thought it was funny. With all due respect to serious aficianados of the genre, it was just one fun night. One of the guys I went with suggested that we go back and repeat the astonished "WILD JACK!" comment the next night, but we figured, I think rightly, that you had to be there, it was a one shot thing, with perfect timing that had us laughing too hard to take it seriously when poor Scott Mary finally had his day in the sun and finished off his mentor while reciting the final rule of the gunfighter.

Tonino Valerii's "Day of Anger" ranks in the lower half of the ten top best Spaghetti westerns. This intelligent, superbly made, marvelously lensed formulaic saga about the rise and fall of a notorious gunfighter holds its own against comparable American horse operas, partially since veteran Hollywood villain Lee Van Cleef of "High Noon" stars as the lead-slinging anti-hero who is as fast on the draw as he is deadly accurate with his aim. This lean, mean, gritty 95-minute sagebrusher is one of the three best Spaghettis that Van Cleef appeared in, with "Death Rides A Horse" edging "Day of Anger" out as the best, while "For A Few Dollars More" closely follows in third place. As far as I know, no American western has gone into as much detail about the rules of being a gunfighter as "Day of Anger." Indeed, "Day of Anger" recalls both the Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins relationship in Anthony Mann's "The Tin Star" (1958) and Brian Keith and Steve McQueen in Henry Hathaway's "Nevada Smith" (1966) where an old gun teaches a young gun the rules. Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef) delineates the nine things that Scott Mary (co-star Giuliano Gemma of "Fort Yuma Gold") must learn to survive as a gunfighter. First, never beg for anything from another man. Second, never trust anybody. Third, never come between a gun and its target. Fourth, like bullets, punches in a fistfight must be first if you want to finish the brawl. Fifth, if you wound a man, then you'd better finish him off; otherwise, he will try to kill you. Sixth, you must aim your bullets well and always shoot them at the right time. Seventh, take a man's gun away from him before you untie his wrists. At this point, Scott Mary interjects a rule that he contrived on the spot: "Don't give a man any more bullets that what he needs." Eighth, sometimes you will have to accept a challenge or lose everything. Ninth, when you start killing, you cannot stop it.Scenarists Renzo ("Jungle Holocaust") Genta and Ernesto ("My Name Is Nobody") Gastaldi, along with director Tonino Valerii, based their "Day of Anger" screenplay on a German novel by Ron Barker entitled "Der Tod Ritt Dienstags." Valerii and company waste no time establishing the primary setting in the inhospitable frontier berg of Clifton, Arizona, and we meet an illegitimate fellow simply known as Scott (Giuliano Gemma of "The Master Touch") who was raised in the local bordello and now serves as the community's garbage collector. Everybody looks down their collective noses at woebegone Scott. Scott's life is grim, unrelenting drudgery until gunfighter Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef) rides into Clifton and pays Scott a dollar to stable his horse. Later, in the saloon, after Talby has given Scott his dollar, he invites the youth to have a drink. The outraged saloon owner refuses to serve Scott and another gunman challenges Talby. Talby guns him down and an inquest clears him of murder. The irate townspeople beat up Scott for testifying on Talby's behalf. Scott flees the town on his mule to track down Talby. He finds him in the border town of Bowie where Talby is demanding that Wild Jack (Al Mulock of "The Hellbenders") pay him back the $50-thousand that he owes him. Jack explains that he just got released from prison where he served a 10-year sentence. Talby has no sympathy for Jack, until he explains that the robbery that he staged was planned by the pillars of community in Clifton and that they sold him down the river. Eventually, Talby has to shoot Jack and then he sets out to blackmail the pillars of Clifton to obtain his $50-thousand. Scott helps Talby out of a scrape afterward by tossing him a gun after three bandits have dragged him through the sagebrush on his belly. Of course, Talby wipes them out and Scott and he become thick as thieves. Only in the final quarter hour do Talby and Scott Mary have their first and final falling out over Talby's decision to gun down Scott's friend, the elderly lawman. The shoot'em up finale reiterates the nine gunfighter rules. Riz Ortolani's jazzy energetic orchestral score is a welcome departure from the Ennio Morricone staple, and Enzo ("Beyond the Law") Serafin's widescreen cinematography captures the primitive quality of the west. At one point in the plot, Talby burns down a saloon that he has half-ownership in and kills his partner. The saloon that Talby orders built is probably the most distinctive saloon in the history of western movies both foreign and domestic. What stands out about the facade of the saloon is that huge, hand-carved, and painted Colt's .45 six-guns serve as the facade uprights.Although this Lee Van Cleef & Giuliano Gemma western is serious from start to finish, "Day of Anger" gets its best joke in early in the action, but you have to be a Spaghetti western fan to appreciate it. Scott grabs his mule to ride after Talby. Scott Mary calls his mule 'Sartana,' the name of an invincible gunslinger in Spaghetti westerns. Valerii and his scribes has fashioned an old-fashioned western that owes more to Hollywood than Europe. Essentially, "Day of Anger" amounts to a morality play wherein the hero is rewarded for his virtue and the villains are penalized with death for their perfidy. Lee Van Cleef excels as Talby and Gemma is convincing as the green kid who grows up fast. Talby remains a static character, while Scott changes over time from a nobody to a somebody, something rare in Spaghettis. Nothing in "Day of Anger" is unrealistic. Valerii stages a great joust-like duel on horseback where the rivals must load black powder rifles with cap and ball while riding hell-bent at each other and shoot to kill. The dialogue doesn't consist of snappy repartees, and violence isn't glorified as it usually is in most Spaghettis.