BY FRED BLOSSER
Kino
Lorber Studio Classics has released “A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die!,†a 1968
Italian Western, in a Blu-ray edition. In the movie, Gov. Lem Carter (Robert Ryan) offers amnesty to outlaws in
a bid to quell lawlessness in 1880s New Mexico. On the run from deputies and bounty hunters, desperado Clay McCord (Alex
Cord) decides to seek the governor’s clemency. McCord suffers from paralytic spasms of his gun hand. The attacks have become more frequent and
more severe, and he fears that they represent the onset of epilepsy, the malady
that disabled and eventually killed his father. But enemies on both sides of the law make it difficult for him to go
straight as he wishes to do. Bounty
hunters surround the town of Tascosa, where McCord must go to sign the needed
papers, and even if he can elude them, the cynical marshal, Roy Colby (Arthur
Kennedy), is disinclined to give him a break. The gunfighter is equally unwelcome in nearby Escondido, a haven for
fugitives, after antagonizing Kraut (Mario Brega), the brutal hardcase who
controls the rundown settlement. It’s
even money on who will bring McCord down first, Kraut’s pistoleros or Colby’s
deputies. Although I can’t find any
sources to either confirm or refute the speculation, I believe that Brega’s
dubbed English voice as Kraut belongs to American actor Walter Barnes, who made
several Italian and German Westerns in the 1960s.
With
an American executive producer, three high-profile ‘60s American actors in
starring roles, an Italian producer, an Italian director, and an Italian
supporting cast dubbed into English, “A Minute to Pray, a Second to Dieâ€
straddles the divide between the earnest tradition of U.S. Westerns and the
violent, anything-goes approach of the Italian kind. It opens with a long (actually, too long)
outdoor sequence of McCord and a pal eluding a posse, like characters in “One-Eyed
Jacks†and any number of other classic Westerns. Then follows a scene of two sadistic gunmen
roughing up a frightened priest in front of an altar, and eventually shooting
him in the back. Try to find a situation
like that in a John Wayne or Roy Rogers movie. The two gunmen are played by Aldo Sambrell and Antonio Molino Rojo, who
-- like Mario Brega, the Ernest Borgnine of Italian Westerns -- are instantly
recognizable from Sergio Leone’s stock company of scruffy character
actors. An unsympathetic critic might
speculate that a respectable if unexceptional American Western could have
resulted had the moviemakers tightened the script, dialed back the film’s high
body count, and substituted homegrown character actors for Italian ones in the
supporting cast. On the other hand, for
those of us whose moviegoing tastes were formed in the Cinema Retro era, the
manic unevenness of the picture as it exists has a certain freewheeling charm
of its own.
Kino Lorber’s cover
notes advertise the Blu-ray as a new high-definition master from a 4K scan of
the original negative. Although the
daytime scenes have some graininess, the nighttime lights and darks are clear
and sharp. The label’s resident
Spaghetti expert, Alex Cox, contributes an informative, droll, but respectful
audio commentary. Those new to Italian
Westerns will learn a lot about the genre from Cox’s remarks, while fans will
have fun matching their knowledge against his in spotting familiar Italian faces
in the movie’s supporting cast. As
another supplement, the disc also includes the original ending from the
European print of the movie, transposed from an old, overseas VHS tape. This bleak denouement is stronger by far than
that of the U.S. cut.
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FRED BLOSSER IS THE AUTHOR OF "SAVAGE SCROLLS: VOLUME ONE: SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE HYBORIAN AGE". CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON