Fifteen years after the brutal massacre of his family by vicious outlaws, Bill (John Phillip Law) is finally ready for revenge, having perfected his gun-slinging skills; however, the young man finds himself facing competition from recently released criminal Ryan (Lee Van Cleef),who is also gunning for the murderous gang.

Death Rides a Horse marks my very first foray into the spaghetti western genre outside of the relative safety of Sergio Leone's better known movies, and while it's not quite on a par with the Leone classics, the film is still a solidly entertaining adventure that certainly can't be accused of not trying…

Between the film's brutal, rain-lashed opening massacre and its wind-swept gun-fight finalé, Death Rides A Horse delivers almost all the elements one might reasonably expect from the genre: a dashing, gun-slinging hero hell-bent on revenge, a grizzled ex-convict with a score to settle, loathsome villains, wonderful widescreen cinematography, a jail-break, a lynch-mob, fist fights, whisky drinking, poker playing, lots of rapid-zoom close-ups of eyes, a cool Ennio Morricone score, a village of scared Mexicans, and just a little gallows humour.

Where the film suffers somewhat is with its rather pedestrian plot, that offers too few genuine surprises, and which, at almost two hours, resorts to padding out the action by having the lead characters take it in turns to put themselves in mortal danger, only for one to be saved by the other. This nonsense takes some swallowing, but director Giulio Petroni's stylish handling, some gritty violence, and a fine performance from Van Cleef ensure that the film never drags.

While this might not be a top-tier spaghetti western, it's impressed me enough to make me want to check out further non-Leone movies.

This film begins with a very brutal scene--even by Spaghetti Western standards. A man is killed, his wife and daughter are raped and killed and it's all witnessed by the young son. The scene abruptly changes, and you see John Phillip Law doing amazing things practicing with his guns. Amazing because one of his 6-shooters fires 9 bullets and the other 11 without being reloaded. I am not sure if this was perhaps a deliberate mistake or the film makers were idiots. I would assume this was done deliberately. By the way the scene is done, you'd assume Law was this boy grown up and practicing for the day he meets up with any of the group of men who destroyed his family.

Next, the scene switches to a prison out West. Lee Van Cleef (in my opinion, the baddest character from this genre) is finally getting out after 15 years. Soon after being released, he is attacked by two men and in typical Van Cleef fashion, he air conditions their bodies. When Law finds out that one of the dead men is one of the guys who killed his family, he tries to find Van Cleef. It turns out that they BOTH hate the gang and want revenge, but Van Cleef doesn't want any partners--he wants the pleasure of killing them all himself.

For much of the rest of the film, the two trade off who kills the next gang member--not that either is concerned with sharing. I liked this idea, though the intelligence of these killing machines isn't great--too often one of them would get caught and would need a miracle to escape. And, in each case, the villains are so freaking stupid that they always leave a possibility for survival. Now considering that the bad guys KNOW these two have vowed revenge, you'd think they would just kill them instantly and be done with it.

In many ways, the film reminds me of the classics FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (both with Van Cleef),as in these films the two male "heroes" both try to outdo each other by killing the bad guys. However, in this film it's less about money but about revenge. In fact, aside from the stupidity of the villains, I'd say these three movies are nearly equal in quality and excitement and the film certainly did end well.

After Lee Van Cleef scored in the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western films and after years of support he became a star on his own. Not exactly leading man material, Van Cleef became a kind of lower case Lee Marvin for the rest of his career. His first starring vehicle was Death Rides A Horse where he plays an old outlaw who has a score to settle with an outlaw gang that betrayed him.

Also having a score to settle is young John Phillip Law who as a child saw the same band murder his parents and sister. One of the outlaws feeling sorry for him, carried him from a burning building.

This is hardly an original plot and has been done in American and spaghetti westerns a Gazillion times best known as the storyline in Once Upon A Time In The West. Still veteran westerner Van Cleef and Law carry it off with aplomb.

I'm not a big fan of spaghetti westerns, but this one is all right.