Synopsis
Lee Van Cleef has been dirty, "ugly" and downright mean... now watch him get violent.
Lee Van Cleef stars as Talby, a sadistic gunfighter who rides into town and takes on a young outcast as his apprentice.
1967 ‘I giorni dell'ira’ Directed by Tonino Valerii
Lee Van Cleef stars as Talby, a sadistic gunfighter who rides into town and takes on a young outcast as his apprentice.
Lee Van Cleef Giuliano Gemma Yvonne Sanson Walter Rilla Christa Linder Ennio Balbo Lukas Ammann Andrea Bosic José Calvo Giorgio Gargiullo Anna Orso Karl-Otto Alberty Nino Nini Virgilio Gazzolo Eleonora Morana Benito Stefanelli Franco Balducci Christian Consola Nazzareno Natale Ferruccio Viotti Paolo Magalotti Gianni Di Segni Al Mulock Romano Puppo
Giorno dell'ira, I, Los días de la ira, день ярости, Gunlaw, Blood and Grit, Days of Wrath
Day of Anger is a very solid Spaghetti western directed by Tonino Valerii, who is probably best known for being the AD on Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. Here, Lee Van Cleef takes a timid young man (Giuliano Gemma) under his wing and transforms him into an accomplished gunslinger. Van Cleef isn't exactly a good guy however, so it's quite possible the two men will have to face off against each other eventually.
The story moves along slowly, but the conclusion is pretty spectacular. The relationship dynamic between the two leads is great and it's actually the movie's main selling point.
Riz Ortolani's score is a highlight.
I watched the English dub of the Italian theatrical cut.
Before you accuse one director of stealing from another, you might as well start pointing fingers at filmmakers for cribbing from myths.
If you’ve heard of Tonino Valerii’s “Day of Anger,” it probably came in the same breath as “Star Wars.”
Lee Van Cleef’s wily old gunslinger Talby is Yoda, Han Solo and Obi Wan wrapped up in one. Giuliano Gemma is Luke Skywalker, but bearing the far more unfortunate name of ‘Scott Mary.’ “Anger” is - more or less - the original “Star Wars” trilogy wrapped up in a tidy (earthbound) package under two-hours long.
And while it’s doubtless that George Lucas was taking notes during “Anger,” (right down to a saloon scene that nearly matches “New Hope’s” to…
Arrow Video Blu-ray
Letterboxd users Sebbern and Cameron Macgowan recommend this after I posted that I watched Death Rides a Horse.
I think I like Death Rides a Horse more.
Nice extras on the disc.
"This country is developing, and Clifton along with it. Now, maybe more than ever before, you need a judge as your friend."
Peak Van Cleef spaghetti. Like, I'm not going to lie to you and say it's better than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—Giuliano Gemma is delightful too, but he's no Eastwood as a co-star, and Riz Ortolani does a solid Ennio Morricone impression, but he can't quite measure up to the legend (RIP)—but it certainly has more raw, unadulterated Cleef Minutes.
The town of Clifton is a Nice Place where Nice People live. A gunshot is a rare thing to be heard. Scott (Gemma) is the town janitor; he cleans up the place, pouring the residents' piss…
Following the conclusion of the Dollars Trilogy, Lee Van Cleef continued his spaghetti western run, with a number of pictures that are heavily influenced by his leading man turn in For A Few dollars More. These films cast him as an older gunslinger who acts as mentor to a number of leading men that hope to be the next Clint Eastwood, for a series of passive aggressive buddy pictures. Day of Anger sees Giuliano Gemma as out Eastwood hopeful.
An early directing effort by frequent Leone collaborator, Tonino Valerii, Day of Anger is the best of these Van Cleef apprenticeships. Our plot sees Gemma as a bastard, mistreated by most of the small town he survives in as a frontier…
Spaghetti Westerns often traffic in shades of grey, but this one in particular makes it extremely difficult to parse any of the characters into camps of "good" or "bad." If anything it serves as a condemnation of everyone involved (and perhaps by proxy, America). The town of Clifford treats Giuliano Gemma's character like garbage, because his job is to collect the garbage. A clear race allegory surfaces when he attempts to have a drink in the local saloon and court a prominent judge's daughter. He's not allowed to drink at the saloon, and he's told by the judge he's not to even make eye contact with his daughter. Yes, class issues are all kinds of ugly in the town of…
My intention after speaking to my German LB buddy Einar was to start off my Spaghetti Western journey with Lee Van Cleef's Sabata, but unfortunately someone, and I believe it was my cleaner, has moved certain films from where they're meant to be in my man-cave. I've since found it, two days later, and pencilled it in for hopefully later in the week, but I did still fancy starting with one of Van Cleef's films, so Day of Anger, or "I Giorni Dell'ira" in its native Italian, would start off this new adventure.
Day of Anger was directed by Tonino Valerii, and although LB has him as only directing 13 films, if they're as good as this one, then I'll…