Bandidos

Massimo Dallamano (What Have You Done to Solange?, Colt 38 Special Squad), cinematographer of the first two instalments in Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy, steps into the director's chair for the first time with Bandidos, an action-packed and visually sumptuous western from the peak of the genre's popularity. Top marksman Richard Martin (Enrico Maria Salerno, Savage Three, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) is inadvertently caught up in a train heist staged by his former protégé, Billy Kane (Venantino Venantini, City of the Living Dead). Brutally maimed and no longer able to fire a gun, Martin ekes out a living as a traveling showman - until the day he meets Philip Raymond (Terry Jenkins, Paint Your Wagon), an escaped convict framed for murder. Taking Raymond on as his apprentice, Martin plots to use him to extract his revenge on Kane, entangling the destinies of all three men and setting the stage for a brutal showdown. With a tightly written script and Dallamano's keen eye for striking compositions, Bandidos ranks as one of the very best Italian westerns outside Leone's trilogy, its success granting Dallamano a tragically brief but extremely fruitful career as a director.