Day of Judgment (1971)

A Masterpiece!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

¨Doomsday day¨ , or "Il Giorno Del Giudizio" , or ¨Eye for an eye¨ or ¨Day of the judgement¨ is a so-so Ravioli Western , being professionally , though mediocre , realized by a craftsman called Mario Gariazzo and proceeded in Italian style . The film packs action , shootouts , drama , high body-count and it's fast moving and quite entertaining . For money, for pleasure , for revenge , he doesn't care why he kills or how ¡ . The film deals with an Union soldier (Ty Hardin stars as a relentless revenger) whose family (his wife played by Rosalba Neri in a brief role by flashbacks) is killed by cutthroats . He then seeks a merciless vengeance on the six killers (Rick Boyd , Stelio Candelli , Bruno Corazzari , Riccardo Pizzuti , among others) who murdered his spouse & child and burned his home . A bit later on , he meets for blind vendetta , as he aware how to chase the murderers and he kills any one by one . He tracks down and kills each man one by one until he finds the leader of the gang .This exciting western contains a story full of violence , good dramatic pace and slick direction . Acceptable but average Spaghetti Western ; it follows the Sergio Leone wake , including close-up , zooms , crusted faces , choreographic duels and no being carried out in American style . It's a thrilling western with poor outdoors and breathtaking confrontation among heartless protagonists , Ty Hardin , against heinous powerful murderers and other underlings . Well-staged action sequences with rousing crossfire and spectacularly bloody shootouts . Charismatic performance for the whole casting . Ty Hardin is good in his usual tough role . Ty Hardin may be a name best remembered by Spaghetti Western aficionados, but in his day, from the mid-'60s to the early '70s, Hardin was one of the most popular actors of the television . Ty began working in films as a secondary . From there, he began acting in TV shows , later moving onto the Western genre , where he found his niche . Unlike fellow Spaghetti star Clint Eastwood, however , Hardin never became a top international box-office attraction . Ty then moved west to California and won some minor roles in B movies . Soon, Ty had his own show, ¨Bronco¨ (1958), which ran from 1958 to 1962 . From here, he moved into a brief flurry of film activity : Merrill's marauders (1962) , PT 109 (1963) , Wall of Noise (1963), and Battle of the Bugle (1965) . After this, Ty's career drifted off into a series of forgettable movies made in Europe and , later, he worked in Prescott, Arizona , as an evangelistic preacher . Though often dismissed as just a hunk of "beefcake" but he had a decent career . Support cast is pretty well , filled with familiar faces from Spaghetti , such as : Gordon Mitchell , Federico Boido or Rick Boyd , Stelio Candelli , Bruno Corazzari , Riccardo Pizzuti , Craig Hill , Nando Poggi , Andrea Fantasia , and Giovanni Cianfriglia or Ken Wood . Furthermore , the slimy, menacing outlaw played by Ralf Baldassarre , here in his ordinary role as a bandit and in a cruelly baddie character .The great musician Ennio Morricone composes a nice soundtrack , well conducted , this turns out to be one of the most memorable parts of the movie , as it's plenty of enjoyable sounds and haunting musical background and with agreeable leitmotif . Although Ennio Morricone is credited for scoring this film , it was actually written by him for ¨The Hellbenders¨ (1967) by Sergio Corbucci and it was lifted, uncredited, from that film . Faded cinematography by Lanzoni , including discolored images , being necessary a perfect remastering . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Mario Gariazzo . Mario was a professional filmmaker who wrote and directed all kinds of genres , such as : Sci-Fi : "The Brother from Space" (1988) , "Eyes Behind the Stars" , "Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind" ; Erotic : ¨Sor Emmanuelle¨, ¨Play Motel¨, ¨Erotic Flash¨, "Top Model" ; Action : "Execution Squad" , "Il Carabiniere " ; Terror ¨L'Ossessa¨(1987) and Western : ¨The Long Day of the Massacre'(1968) , "God Will Forgive My Pistol" (1969) "The Masked Thief" , ¨AcquaSanta Joe (1971) also stars Ty Hardin and this one , ¨Day of the judgement¨. Rating : Passable and acceptable , though contains some flaws and gaps and excessive zooms . Worthwhile watching for the Spaghetti Western aficionados

According to this movie vigilantism should be preferred over real justice. This movie is an orgy of brutal shooting scenes without much story. It does therefore make no sense to watch it. Even if the longer Italian version should have more story included, the morals behind the movie remain questionable. Moreover, the director did a terrible job cutting the scenes. Everything seems to be cut together carelessly, so that at no point in the movie any suspension can develop. Also the characters remain flat and are not developed at all. The audience only learns a minimum about the main character. His life and motivations remain unclear. I therefore highly recommend to watch the classic Westerns before turning to this movie.

Californian star Ty Hardin stars as a Yankee soldier who seeks revenge on all those responsible for killing his Indian wife and his Son. Armed with his 6 shooter, Henry rifle and a toy robot of a little drummer boy.he moves among the townsfolk disguised as an 19th century hippie, (who digs graves and bleats out biblical passages, plotting his Doomsday on all those that wronged, and there's a lot of them. What could have been a Spagetti western classic turned out to be a bit of a disappointment mainly due to the poor direction, the action scenes are some of the worst I've seen, guns not in frame,shootings off screen , 9 shooters???, really horrible work. I saw the full 88min version and there a re 2 scenes that are in different places to the 74 min cut down version.the music cues are different too. The music is marvelous only it was not written for this film, it was written by Ennio Morricone for the film the Hellbenders (I Crudeli-1967) all that said Ty Hardin is cool as the Yankee with no name and even better as the Hippie preacher man, it was also nice to see Craig Hill in a non gun slinger roll as the carnival man "O Connoor". The Toy robot idea was a clever replacement for the old chiming pocket watch gag. Not the best in the west but a must see for die hard Spag fans.The dubbing was pretty good esp the Hippie voice

Unfortunately, the version of this movie that I have suffers from very poor editing. There are a couple of scenes that are so badly chopped that you just kind of have to figure out for yourself what just happened! Confirming my suspicion that this movie was grossly hacked up is the fact that, according to the IMDb, the Italian version of the film runs for 99 minutes. My English language DVD is only 73 minutes long!What's left of the movie is actually very enjoyable. It's a decent B-grade revenge story with all the requisite cool action scenes and cheesy emotional flashbacks that make these movies so much fun to watch.The music score is decent, but it borrows some parts from another, more well-known, spaghetti western called "The Hellbenders" (I Crudeli). I wouldn't be surprised if the borrowed parts of the music score are unique to the English language version. Perhaps the editing wreaked so much havoc with the original score that some moron in the chopping room said "let's just stick that Hellbenders song in there to fill in those parts." Who knows?The version that I have probably really deserves a 5 out of ten rating at best, but I can tell that the movie would be considerably better in its complete, original form, so I am giving it an extra point. I hope a good print of the film in its entirety gets released some day, because I would love to see it and rewrite this review. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a 7 or an 8. At any rate, I liked it anyway, so if you're a spaghetti western fanatic, you may find it to be worth watching, even in its current chopped up form.