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: 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: "Da uomo a uomo" There's only one man in this movie.
Review: Sergio Leone defines the genre, but there are other Italian directors who know their way around the spaghetti western. If they have Lee Van Cleef to work with, well, the audience is in for a really good time.Death Rides a Horse is the relatively unknown masterpiece in an era that produced westerns of varying quality. It has all the plot prerequisites: blood and mayhem galore, a wrong the needs righting, and an interesting relationship between the avenging good guy and the man who crosses his path with an agenda of his own that needs taking care of. The music is quirky as only Ennio Morricone knows how make it; and the photography, if you are lucky enough to watch a good copy, has that hot, stark quality favored by the directors of these films. The acting is another matter. At one end of the spectrum is John Phillip Law who has the personality and delivery of a piece of cardboard, on the other, Lee Van Cleef who is grand mastered of the sinister glance and soft-spoken line. It's Van Cleef's movie all the way, right down to his last gesture of self-sacrifice in the end. It's a shame that this movie has been allowed to deteriorate, but Turner Broadcasting has a good copy. Maybe if we leave enough requests on the TCM web site, they will run it for us sometime.
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: DID THE OTHER GUYS SEE THE SAME MOVIE I DID?
Review: This moive has bad video, really bad. Its like those cheap kung fu movies you by for six bucks. The scrip is less than poor. The acting for the most part is bad. Law and Van Cleef's acting was for the money and they just went through the paces. The action was just fake guns going off and not interesting. One of the worst westerns that I have seen. If the rating system had a score of negative I would have given it that.
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.
Rating:
Summary: van cleef's best character . super soundtrack
Review: van cleef's best spaghetti western outside of those with clint eastwood. plot very good. John Phillip Law was ok, but probably weakest link in film. Soundtrack very haunting and atmospheric. Probably the last of van cleef's really good italian westerns.
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