Death Rides a Horse

Rating:
Summary: Similar to For a Few Dollars More
Review: For fans of the spaghetti western genre, Death Rides a Horse will remind them of For A Few Dollars More, one of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy starring Clint Eastwood. While very similar the film is still worth watching. Lee Van Cleef is awesome, as usual, with John Phillip Law giving a decent performance albeit without much emotion. Usual cast of supporters in the genre with Luigi Pistilli and Mario Brega and even a small part with Anthony Dawson. Excellent storyline with one of the best endings in the spaghetti genre. However the DVD is of very poor quality with no extras offered whatsoever. Do what I did and wait for Turner Classic Movies to air it in widescreen and tape it. Only reason I give this DVD 3 stars is because of the quality. The movie on its own would probably be closer to five.

Rating:
Summary: Similar to For a Few Dollars More
Review: For fans of the spaghetti western genre, Death Rides a Horse will remind them of For A Few Dollars More, one of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy starring Clint Eastwood. While very similar the film is still worth watching. Lee Van Cleef is awesome, as usual, with John Phillip Law giving a decent performance albeit without much emotion. Usual cast of supporters in the genre with Luigi Pistilli and Mario Brega and even a small part with Anthony Dawson. Excellent storyline with one of the best endings in the spaghetti genre. However the DVD is of very poor quality with no extras offered whatsoever. Do what I did and wait for Turner Classic Movies to air it in widescreen and tape it. Only reason I give this DVD 3 stars is because of the quality. The movie on its own would probably be closer to five.

Rating:
Summary: Solid Movie, Lousy DVD
Review: I have always liked this obscure Italian western. Lee Van Cleef is outstanding and off sets to some extent, the dull monotone performance of John Phillp Law. Leone stalwarts Luigi Pistilli and Mario Brega also are in the film. The DVD quality is atrocious, the picture is horrible and is in miserable pan and scan to boot. Hopefully one day this film will be restored and given proper DVD treatment. Widescreen folks! Pan and scan just does not make it. That was the big mistake VHS made. If this had nice picture quality and was in widescreen, I would give it 4 stars easily.

Rating:
Summary: Great Western Action Film
Review: If you are a fan of this western, just be warned that the quality of the film is horrible. The print has not been restored at all, and the picture suffers from faded colours, specks and a dirty print. Still, it has Lee Van Cleef and Ennio Morricone doing the score. If the quality of the print doesn't bother you, then the 10 bucks for this DVD isnt that much.

Rating:
Summary: Poor Quality
Review: Lee Van Cleef is awesome as always and carrys the flick. Downer note quality of DVD is poor and seems like a 6th generation VHS copy. Great Movie and Plot but the quality ruins it. 2.5 stars

Rating:
Summary: Great SP western, Bad DVD!
Review: Lee Van is a cool character in this Western. I recommend you watch it on the western channel and avoid this horrible DVD. Walk right buy it because some company will eventually release a mastered addition of it, like many spaghetti westerns in Japan's DVDs.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie but ... Miserable Quality DVD
Review: Of course, I love the movie, the plot, and everything to do with it. Lee Van Cleef is outstanding! However, the DVD sound quality is miserable! It sounds like those cheap Chinese imports about Kung Fu. The quality of the video is also poor. I know it's not my DVD player, because (1) my player is brand new-high quality, and (2) right after I saw this one I put in the "Hang Em High" DVD, and the sound and video quality was quite good. So, in summary, I love the movie and Van Cleef, but I hate the video and audio quality on the DVD. Can't they clean it up with all the high-tech equipment that they have? If they do, I will buy the cleaned-up version.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome movie, but that DVD transfer...
Review: Spaghetti westerns are, in my opinion, generally the best fictional films about the American West. You can argue that John Wayne made a bunch of great movies about life in the Old West, and you would be right to say so, but for some reason the Italians perfectly captured specific elements of the era that made their movies seem more realistic. The frontier was a dirty, violent place full of unsavory types trying to get rich quick. Italian westerns capture this mood expertly whereas American films portray characters whose outfits look like they just came back from the dry cleaners. Hollywood films also tend to apply a black and white dichotomy on the characters, the old "good guys wear white, bad guys wear black" philosophy that obscures the reality of the time and place. Not so in Italian films, where even the good guys often have decidedly unsavory traits. It's too bad spaghetti westerns went the way of the dinosaurs a few decades back; I never tire of watching these films even though I am not an expert on the genre. "Death Rides a Horse" was one of my first excursions outside the standard Sergio Leone canon. After watching the film, I can unequivocally state that this film deserves an elevated place in the genre. It's that good.

"Da uomo a uomo," the film's Italian title, introduces the viewer to two powerful characters. Bill (John Phillip Law) is a young man with a phenomenal command of firearms seeking vengeance. When he was a child, he watched as a gang of ruffians slaughtered his entire family. Even though he couldn't see the men's faces due to masks, he burned into his memory specific identifying features of each of these killers. Later, as a grown man, he rides the countryside looking for a tattoo or a scar that will tell him he has found his man. And woe to the outlaws responsible for the murder of Bill's family if this gunslinger ever finds them. Playing opposite Bill is Ryan (Lee Van Cleef), a recently released convict who just finished a fifteen-year stretch for robbery. Ryan's overriding goal in life is to find his former partners, a gang of miscreants who cheated him out of his take in the robbery and left him behind to take the fall. The former outlaw isn't seeking violent retaliation for what his compatriots did to him; he just wants his money and plans on moving along.

Predictably, Bill and Ryan soon meet up. They don't like each other at the start although they soon build up a grudging respect for each other's determination and talents. Clandestine admiration doesn't stop Ryan from trying to leave Bill behind so he can resume his search for his former partners, but it also doesn't stop the two from continually meeting up. Ryan heads to a town where it is rumored one of his former partners runs several lucrative businesses. Not surprisingly, this guy isn't happy to see Ryan up close and personal. He gives Van Cleef's character a song and dance about not having the money and then tries to double cross him. Oops, one bad guy down for the count. The next stop on the pay-off highway sees pretty much the same result. A few of these one-time outlaws are going legit and the last thing they want is a reminder of their shady past. That doesn't mean they have changed their violent ways, though. When Ryan's surviving partners decide to put a stop to this loose cannon for the last time, the action moves down into Mexico where Bill and Ryan duke it out with the bad guys. A twist ending, one that shouldn't be that great of a surprise, pits the two uneasy partners against one another.

"Death Rides a Horse" is an atmospheric, character driven spaghetti western sure to entertain fans of the genre. Lee Van Cleef is excellent, of course, as the wronged Ryan. With a short glance, a movement of the body, and a brief word, Van Cleef can and does convey a whole range of emotions. The same cannot be said for John Phillip Law, who as a central character in the unfolding drama emotes with all the range of a rock. The bad guys are great, seedy looking villains without an ounce of sympathy for anyone who gets in their way. Check out those ultra scary looking banditos they hire to gun for Ryan and Bill. It looks like I'm slipping into that dichotomy I blasted Hollywood for, namely the good guy/bad guy separation. Van Cleef's character, however, is only good in the sense that he's trying to get what he is due. He could care less about righting wrongs or bringing these guys to justice. He just wants his cash so he can take off. If that means stomping on toes that just happen to be bad, so be it. Ryan would just as likely step on good people.

This DVD, from a company called Direct Source, is a huge disappointment. Sure, you get a few crummy extras (a trivia quiz and a few lean cast bios), but the picture quality is so bad, so atrocious, that it looks like the cousin thrice removed of a seventh generation VHS duplicate. Moreover, the picture is a badly cropped fullscreen transfer. "Death Rides a Horse" desperately needs a decent disc release because this film is one powerful spaghetti western effort. Watching Lee Van Cleef duke it out with the baddies is an event always worth celebrating. Here's to hoping we'll see a better DVD version in the future.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Spaghetti westerns ever
Review: The title says it all. Out side of the dollars trilogy and Once upon a time in the west this is my favorite Spaghetti western. Lee Van Cleef is [...] as usual John Phillip law is decent if nothing special the story is solid the action is great and the score is outstanding. Now for the DVD. It sucks. The transfer goes from crappy to incredibly crappy mostly staying in between. There are a few extras, Bio's and a reviews that's about it the movie gets 4 stars but the DVD gets 1 1/2

Rating:
Summary: Great Van Cleef
Review: This Text Refers to the Uav Corp. Release.
This is possibly the best Region 1 DVD version available as of January 2005. Film Format: 4:3 Pan & Scan . Picture Quality:Average
Probably one of the Top 10 great Italian Westerns and certainly the best film from Giulio Petroni.
Lee Van Cleef gives another good performance and in my opinion he was the greatest star of Italian Westerns next to Giuliano Gemma, argue if you like.
I Have seen the film a number of times and don't want to spoil the story for other viewers, see other reviews below.
This Uav release is a worthwhile buy at a budget price.
Though a print in it's original 2:35:1 Technoscope ratio is long overdue. You gotta buy in Japan if you want that one.