Gianni Garko stars as the mysterious but resourceful troubleshooter in "Find A Place to Die" helmer Giuliano Carnimeo's endlessly inventive but low-budget entry in the Sartana franchise dispatches scores of gun-toting dastards in this frontier fracas that will keep you guessing. Bristling with surprises and reversals galore, "Light the Fuse . . . Sartana is Coming" is a Spaghetti western fans wet dream of violence, double-crosses, and a scavenger hunt for a half-million dollars in gold that our cloaked hero sets out the recover. As stylist and slick as Garko is as the black-clad Sartana with a cigarette in his lips and a six shooter on his hip, he almost meets his match with another Spaghetti western stalwart the incomparable Piero Lulli of "My Name is Nobody." Now, anybody familiar with this European western will know that Lulli carved out his own reputation as a dastard in this genre. The screenplay by "Go For Broke" Eduardo Manzanos, "Any Gun Can Play" Tito Carpi and "Kill Them All and Come Back Alive" Ernesto Gastaldi is as complicated as it is convoluted. No, "Light the Fuse" is nowhere as good as the classic Italian westerns of Sergio Leone, Gianfranco Parolini, Sergio Corbucci, and Giuseppe Colizzi, but it is worth watch just for the hell of it. Just when you think you've got the plot figured out, director Giuliano Carnimeo and his scenarists pull a slick switcheroo of you. Now, Spaghetti western fanatics (like me) classify this richly entertaining nonsense as second tier westerns that recycle every cliche in the Euro-western genre. Clocking in at a trim 99 minutes, Carnimeo rarely lets us take a breather as this vigorous sagebrusher racks up a double-digit body count. Stuffy art house cinema critics typically look down their collective noses in disgust at the unbelievable shenanigans that filmmakers of these oaters serve up with gusto. Okay, it's there loss. If you're searching for a thoroughly entertaining horse opera with none of the pretensions of the elite Spaghetti westerns but twice the action and pseudo violence that "Light the Fuse" provides, you've found a fun shoot-em up.
Review of Light the Fuse... Sartana Is Coming
