It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

For feck's sake! Those sleazy business owners are at it again! Just like Fistful of Lead and I Am Sartana, Pray for Your Death, these guys are setting up the local bank to be ripped off for their own gain. It's a pity that Sabata tracked down the bad guys who nicked the loot, shot everyone involved, then brought the stolen safe back to town. Now he's blackmailing the bankers for a cool thirty grand!And like some Italian genre film hell that keeps repeating itself over and over again, the bankers are played by the same guys who usually play the bankers, the sheriff is played by the same guy who usually plays the sheriff in these films, Romano Puppo is obviously one of the bad guys and Van Cleef's gadget carrying Sabata character looks suspiciously like Gianni Garko's gadget carrying Sartana character, whom is based on Lee Van Cleef's Colonel Mortimer from For A Few Dollars More.What makes this film cooler than the eight or nine hundred other Westerns with the same plot and cast produced by Italy that year is that it's got William Berger as a banjo playing bell covered hippy, a mute acrobat called Alleycat, a gun that fires from both ends and an explosion filled finale to rival all the explosion filled finales of eighties films such as Die Hard and Commando! Can I further sell by telling you that Berger's banjo contains a rifle?It also sidesteps the good guys figuring out who the bad guys are and goes straight for the businessmen trying to destroy Sabata by using bounty hunters, one of whom tells Sabata that he's going to kill him the moment he stops laughing (spoiler: Sabata shoots him), and another turns up as fake priest with a pretty poor ruse for taking Sabata out.It's all nonsense, but it's fun nonsense, and the theme tune sounds like Ween's Vallejo. To quote a Youtube comment: "That creepy homo with the comb over is the best bad guy ever."

What's not to like about a Lee Van Cleef Western, especially of the spaghetti variety. As the title character, Van Cleef is a one man demolition crew as he takes out one outlaw after another upon recovering a safe containing a hundred thousand dollar military payroll. With his first seven rifle shots, Sabata kills seven bandits and hauls them back to Daugherty City to collect his reward. You know, things haven't changed much over the years. I just caught Tarentino's "Django Unchained" the other day, and you could put a Western hero up against an army of outlaws and they always come away virtually unscratched. Except that Sabata caught a crease in the neck from Banjo (William Berger), I guess they had to show he was human after all.Now I've caught my share of European Westerns, but it was quite some number before I got to see the kind of flying stunts and acrobatics that are on display here. At least here they show you the see-saw contraption that Alley Cat (Aldo Conti) used at times, otherwise you have to take it on faith that he's a human kangaroo. I have to admit, the guy was pretty athletic, he did a couple of tumbles without the aid of any gimmicks a few times, so you know he had to have some talent.However the story has some disjointed pacing at times that make you wonder how one scene connected to the next. Such was the case with the five Claytons who arrived on the scene to take out Banjo - no set up, no prior mention of their names, and all of a sudden Banjo is gunning them down with his, well, banjo. The finale had the same abrupt kind of jump as well; Sabata agrees to face Banjo in a 'fair' showdown the next day, and wham, in the next scene they're drawing down on each other with virtually no time to transition the scene.But I guess it's all part of the genre. I've seen worse, and there's no replacing Van Cleef whether he's playing a good guy or a villain. A couple questions though, how did the posse get out of the canyon after Sabata's rock slide pinned them all in? And did anyone else notice the banner in Daugherty City with the name 'Jim Kincaid' on it - what was that about?

Lee Van Cleef is Sabata, a fast shooting man in black with gun sight eyes and a Winchester that can out distance anyone. He meets up with some rather wild Mexicans and they blackmail some town officials who are crooks into giving them more and more money. The mayor and his boys wont give the money up and hire everyone they can to kill Sabata including his old friend Banjo, but no one can bring Sabata down.I love these kind of westerns. I can watch them all day. They seem perfect in almost every war. The only thing that kills the perfection is the stories do leave a little bit to be desired. During this era they were dishing out westerns as fast as they could make them, and although beautiful and brilliant with great direction, and good actors the stories often clashed and kept them from being 100 percent perfect.Frank Kramer's direction is some of the best I have ever seen. It is breathtaking. He co-wrote this trilogy with Renato Izzo and they work well together. Lee Van Cleef is one of my heroes and does so good in the title role. His fat Mexican compadre played by Pedro Sanchez was wonderful too. I really loved the acrobat Alley Cat played by Bruno Ukmar, and the judge played by Gianni Rizzo and of course Banjo (William Berger) all made for a great cast.The music was wonderful and set the pace, and speaking of pace, this movie didn't waste time with boring dialog or romance or anything it got right to the action which was great. I also loved how Sabata has bullets in the butt of his gun making for a surprise.I highly recommend this to any western fan...such a great film. 7/10 stars

I just finished watching this film and I must say I had mixed feelings. I have seen quite a few Spaghetti Westerns such as The Lee Van Cleef Vehicles Gods Gun, The Grand Duel, Gunlaw (AKA.Day of Anger), The Good Die First, Death Rides a Horse, plus The Dollars Trilogy, Madron & Once upon a time in the west etc. I would have said this film would occupy the middle ground between the Excellent Dollars Trilogy, Once upon a time in the West, Death Rides a Horse and the total Rubbish such as The Good Die First & Gods Gun. Sabata was almost as good as Gunlaw A.K.A Day of Anger.For me Van Cleef was very good, but the rest of the cast was somewhat lacking in any real charisma. Banjo was probably the next best thing in the film but to me did not really look the part, The movie was also too humorous for my liking and including acrobats was going too far to take seriously, although I suspect this was not to be taken all that seriously.Linda Vera was absolutely stunning. For someone with beauty of that magnitude they should have increased her part and maybe made her a Femme Fatale type character ! The lead villain Stengel was decidedly poor and really could have been dealt with a lot quicker and easier as he did not come across as somebody to be feared. The various attempts on Sabata's life and him demanding more money each time also became quite tiresome, it seems the script writers ran out of ideas.All in all though this film was entertaining and I would give it a 5.5 out of 10.