Death Rides a Horse (1967)

The real king of the Spaghetti Westerns was not Clint Eastwood, it was Lee Van Cleef.  In this one, Van Cleef is left holding the bag by the gang of outlaws he used to ride with who double cross him and leave him to serve 15 years at hard labor in the Territorial Prison.  On the trail for revenge, Van Cleef's path keeps running across John Phillip Law who is looking for the same gang to get revenge for the murder of his family.

Like Roger Ebert said in a 1969 review panning this movie, "The heroes of these films would save a lot of time if they'd accept one simple rule of thumb: Generally speaking, everyone they meet is either (a) the man who killed their families 15 years ago, (b) a stranger who is after the same villians for mysterious reasons of his own, or (c) their father, brother or son."

Although the movie was a step below the Eastwood movies, Death Rides A Horse is entertaining and, for a spaghetti western, well made and well acted.  The film was directed by Giulio Petroni and written by Luciano Vincenzoni who co-wrote The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More with Sergio Leone.  The original score was written by Ennio Morricone.  The movie was released in Italy under the title Da Uomo a Uoma "From Man to Man."

According to Howard Hughes in Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: "One of the key themes of Lee Van Cleef's best post-Leone spaghetti westerns is corruption and capitalism in the west.  Ex-outlaw Walcott has gained a foothold in society and become the head of the Lyndon City Bank.  Having negotiated a deal with Senator Carlisle involving the Atchison/Santa Fe Railroad, he steals the senator's million-dollar public works donation.  This episode is another example of Vincenzoni using historical sources for his scenarios.  Much wheeler-dealing was done to decide a route for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe involving Cyrus K. Holliday, a Pennsylvania lawyer, who talked Congress into a huge land grant to support his grandiose, overreaching scheme."

Death Rides a Horse borrows heavily from other films.  The climatic shootout in the Mexican village, El Viento, which means ("The Wind"), is stolen from the climax of The Magnificent Seven, which in turn stole it from Kurisawa's Seven Samurai.

John Phillip Law comes close to biting the dust!

Again according to Hughes: "Death Rides a Horse" marked the end of Lee Van Cleef's most successful period in Europe; not in terms of box-office receipts ("Sabata" considerably outgrossed it in 1969), but in terms of quality.  With the exception of "Day of Anger" and "Sabata," Van Cleef was cast in second-rate star vehicles, with bizarre changes of pace, and some outright disasters - a foregone conclusion whenever Van Cleef attempted comedy.  In 1967 Van Cleef was at a crossroads: should he stay in Europe and enjoy the high life, or return to the U.S. and try to build on his comparative fame? . . . Van Cleef's agent, Tom Jennings, commented years later, 'Lee was always a bigger star everywhere else than in Hollywood.'  With Van Cleef's growing global popularity, they could probably spell his name everywhere - sadly everywhere except Hollywood."

Death Rides A Horse is a solid B+ Spaghetti Western.  Three and a half sixguns out of five.

The Man Who Loved Women (L'Homme Quie Aimait Les Femmes) (1977)

Bertrand Morane, the main character in director Fracois Truffaut's 1977 film L'Homme Quie Aimait Les Femmes (The Man Who Loved Women), has a problem: he's a sex addict.  Bertrand absolutley can't get enough.  He wants to get to know and sleep with just about every woman he meets. Bertrand loves them all: young, old, single or married, it doesn't matter.

Morane is an engineer who works in a laboratory testing the aerodynamics of airplane designs.  When he's not working, he seems to do nothing but read or chase women.  Bertrand has a fetish for women's legs and feet.  When he sees a woman with legs and feet that he likes, he'll go to any lengths to meet her.  For instance, Bertrand runs his own car into a concrete pillar to claim that a woman he saw hit him so that his insurance company will run her tag.  On another occasion, Bertrand, a bachelor, calls a woman advertising as a baby sitter so that he can get her over to his apartment.  When Bertrand is diagnosed with gonorrhea, he cannot remember the names of the six women he has slept with in the past twelve days.

Bertrand begins writing a book, which he calls The Skirt Chaser, which is his version of Casanova's diaries and details all of his relationships.  When he brings the manuscript to the typist, the typist is so shocked, that she refused to continue typing the book.  When he submits the book to a publisher, the male editors think that it is garbage but Genevieve, a female editor, fights for the book to be published.  Almost immediately upon meeting him in person, Genevieve also becomes one of Bertrand's lovers.

Bertrand likes a shapely store mannequin

After the publication of his book, Bertrand sees two women with beautiful legs and darts across a busy street to meet them and is hit by a car and seriously injured.  In the hospital, when he sees the beautiful legs and shoes of his nurse, he is driven to try to get up from bed, and rolls out of bed and dies.  His funeral, which opens and ends the film, is attended by a huge crowd of women whom Bertrand had made love to.

Bertrand shows one of his "friends" how he likes her hair.

The movie is actually much better than the description of it makes it sound.  Bertrand is a pretty sympathetic character, and some of the women he seduces seem to be more in control of the situation than Bertrand.  There is a whole back story that Bertrand's mother had a whole string of lovers and, therefore, Bertrand can't handle a committed relationship.  There is a scene, when Bertrand is on a date in Paris with his editor, Genevieve, when he runs into a  woman that he once lived with.  There is much regret on both sides that things didn't work out.  The woman shows a willingness to try to get back together, but Bertrand rebuffs her advances.

Bertrand with his editor the lovely Genevieve (Brigitte Fossey)

Although it sounds really bad,  I liked The Man Who Loved Women a lot.  The films stars Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey, Nelly Borgeaud, Genevieve Fontanel, Leslie Caron, Nathalie Baye, Valerie Bonnier and Jean Daste.  Reviewer Vincent Canby, reviewing the film for The New York Times in 1977 said L'Homme Quie Aimait Les Femmes was a "supremely humane, sophisticated comedy that is as much fun to watch for the variations Mr. Truffaut works on classic man-woman routines as for the routines themselves."

The crowd of all female mourners at Bertrand's funeral

The film was the subject of an American remake released in 1983 which starred Burt Reynolds and Julie Andrews which bombed at the box office.  The Bad Catholic gives the original French film Four Out of Five Stars.