Born to Kill

It’s not surprising this is an obscure spag western: It’s got too much tiresome comedy relief from a Walter Brennan type supporting character, the direction is competent but pedestrian (from a director who did very few further films), and the story is as routine as the action. For the same reason, too: All this movie does is give us a stock mysterious stranger in town, confront him with groups of bad guys who are flunkies of the main villain, and let him turn the tables on them over and over, polishing off 3 or 4 or 6 in each go until they’re all gone.Still, it’s not badly done, and it’s always a pleasure to see Gordon Mitchell in a lead role. He had more presence and acting ability than just about any other “muscle man” who rode the peplum wave. So his screen career lasted much longer than the other sword ‘n’ sandal stars, even if it seldom rose above exploitation movies. Here he’s playing the Eastwood-ish unflappable lone gun, though with his striking gaunt looks and droll, acerbic presence, the impression he makes is closer to Lee Van Cleef here. (Though Van Cleef never had this physique, which Mitchell duly shows off in a couple bedroom scenes.) He doesn’t get to show the more gonzo side that made him a great villain on several occasions, but he’s got the magnetism to carry off the flimsy script as well as it can be carried off. Ferni Benussi is colorless as the only female character (a prostitute, natch), but there’s a cool quasi-hippie-ish, Tomas Milian-like quality to bad guy Aldo Berti, an actor whose career seems to have been almost entirely confined to spaghetti westerns.If you love that genre, kick this rating up to 6; it’s a bit above average for the form, but Mitchell aside, too mediocre and forgettable to be really worth a look for abnyone with just a casual interest in Euro-westerns.