Day of Judgment (1971)

Wonderful Movie

Simply Perfect

Instant Favorite.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

DAY OF JUDGMENT is a typical revenge-fuelled spaghetti western for former Hollywood actor Ty Hardin. It's a film that goes through the motions rather than innovates, but in itself it's not too bad and at least it isn't boring, albeit shoddy in places. Hardin plays the sole survivor of a family massacre who goes gunning after those responsible, taking them out one at a time; the film's alternate title DRUMMER OF VENGEANCE refers to his son's toy soldier that he carries round with him. The action bits are okay but hardly spellbinding, but at least there's a good supporting cast in the form of Rossano Brazzi, Craig Hill, Rosalba Neri, and Gordon Mitchell.

Californian star Ty Hardin stars as a Yankee soldier who seeks revenge on all those responsible for killing his Indian wife and his Son. Armed with his 6 shooter, Henry rifle and a toy robot of a little drummer boy.he moves among the townsfolk disguised as an 19th century hippie, (who digs graves and bleats out biblical passages, plotting his Doomsday on all those that wronged, and there's a lot of them. What could have been a Spagetti western classic turned out to be a bit of a disappointment mainly due to the poor direction, the action scenes are some of the worst I've seen, guns not in frame,shootings off screen , 9 shooters???, really horrible work. I saw the full 88min version and there a re 2 scenes that are in different places to the 74 min cut down version.the music cues are different too. The music is marvelous only it was not written for this film, it was written by Ennio Morricone for the film the Hellbenders (I Crudeli-1967) all that said Ty Hardin is cool as the Yankee with no name and even better as the Hippie preacher man, it was also nice to see Craig Hill in a non gun slinger roll as the carnival man "O Connoor". The Toy robot idea was a clever replacement for the old chiming pocket watch gag. Not the best in the west but a must see for die hard Spag fans.The dubbing was pretty good esp the Hippie voice

Unfortunately, the version of this movie that I have suffers from very poor editing. There are a couple of scenes that are so badly chopped that you just kind of have to figure out for yourself what just happened! Confirming my suspicion that this movie was grossly hacked up is the fact that, according to the IMDb, the Italian version of the film runs for 99 minutes. My English language DVD is only 73 minutes long!What's left of the movie is actually very enjoyable. It's a decent B-grade revenge story with all the requisite cool action scenes and cheesy emotional flashbacks that make these movies so much fun to watch.The music score is decent, but it borrows some parts from another, more well-known, spaghetti western called "The Hellbenders" (I Crudeli). I wouldn't be surprised if the borrowed parts of the music score are unique to the English language version. Perhaps the editing wreaked so much havoc with the original score that some moron in the chopping room said "let's just stick that Hellbenders song in there to fill in those parts." Who knows?The version that I have probably really deserves a 5 out of ten rating at best, but I can tell that the movie would be considerably better in its complete, original form, so I am giving it an extra point. I hope a good print of the film in its entirety gets released some day, because I would love to see it and rewrite this review. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a 7 or an 8. At any rate, I liked it anyway, so if you're a spaghetti western fanatic, you may find it to be worth watching, even in its current chopped up form.

A man returns home from the Civil War to find his wife and child have been murdered. He vows revenge and sets off to get it. Before he kills he sets in motion a small mechanical drummer that was one of his son's toys. As the body count increases the town where the killers reside gets nervous wondering who is next.I saw the shorter 75 minute version of this film and can only wonder how this plays in the full 99 minute Italian version. Here the film is a series of brutal gun downs by our "hero" with very little in between them. To be honest the action is not bad, its just that with little more than the gunfights for the first half of the movie any interest is lost before the second half gets under way (I ended up picking up the paper and reading). There is no character development and little plot beyond the quest for revenge and the sheriff trying to stop him by standing around looking concerned. Making things worse is the dubbing which is so loopy as to be nonsensical.This is not a movie I can not recommend, at least in the shorter version, unless you are need to be put to sleep or are trying to see every Spaghetti Western ever made.4 out of 10