Dead Men Don't Make Shadows (1970)

Touches You

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Hunter Powers plays smug, deadly bounty hunter Lazaar, who isn't averse to killing his prey and keeping whatever gold they've stolen too, as well as the reward money! He keeps the gold in a coffin in a remote graveyard watched over by an old man he's blackmailing (I think), but little does he know that there's a young upstart following him to the next town……and the next town, and then one after that, then another one, and there might be another before the young guy finds a town to settle in. We eventually start to get some sort of plot by the time as Lazaar starts to blackmailing the local (evil) mine owner who is a wanted man, there's some sort of gypsy lady, and the mine owner's also evil henchman dresses like Juan Sheet – mascot for the kitchen roll Plenty! Also, playing a gypsy in this film seems to mean wearing a lot of necklaces and having dirty smudges all over your face. This one also takes place in the exact same town as the Unholy Four without any changes at all! That's confusing for starters. And Gordon Mitchell does a Kinski and appears in the film for about five minutes! Apart from that, you get the usual Spaghetti Western plot (Old Gunslinger/Young Gunslinger/Gold/Teaming up/Double Cross/Crooked Businessman/Mexicans/Shooting stuff). It's neither good or bad.

Ruthless bounty killer Hunt Powers rides into a town controlled by a very nasty mine-owner, in order to make the man face justice for his past misdeeds. Trailing the bounty hunter is another man who wants to do the same with Powers.An incredibly languid spaghetti western, Dead Men Don't Make Shadows goes on for about forty minutes before a plot begins to materialize. When it does, there's still elements that make little sense.Technically, it's well made and atmospheric. Sets, costumes, photography, and direction are all adequate. The story is just too spare and too typical to be satisfying. I wanted to like this more than I ultimately did.Director of photography Aristide Massaccesi, who also acted in it as well, is better known as the infamous Joe D'Amato, great director of countless seedy sex and gory horror films from the seventies to the nineties.