CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Calum Hutton
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
Leofwine_draca
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.
Stefan Willa
According to this movie vigilantism should be preferred over real justice. This movie is an orgy of brutal shooting scenes without much story. It does therefore make no sense to watch it. Even if the longer Italian version should have more story included, the morals behind the movie remain questionable. Moreover, the director did a terrible job cutting the scenes. Everything seems to be cut together carelessly, so that at no point in the movie any suspension can develop. Also the characters remain flat and are not developed at all. The audience only learns a minimum about the main character. His life and motivations remain unclear. I therefore highly recommend to watch the classic Westerns before turning to this movie.
spider89119
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.
unbrokenmetal
A Yankee officer returns from war to find his wife and son murdered by a band of killers. A toy drummer is the only remaining memory for him, because they burnt down his house. The officer takes the toy drummer with him as a symbol of his vengeance. He lets him play every time he found one of the murderers, and kills one by one. This extremely simple story serves as a formula of ritual. 1971, there had been several years in which the Italian western had formed its typical clichés, and I believe writer/director/producer Mario Gariazzo is quite aware that he uses them all. Ty Hardin as the officer uses masks so nobody knows who he is. An excellent cast supports him. Rick Boyd, Lee Burton and Ken Wood are familiar faces from earlier westerns. Gordon Mitchell is the deputy sheriff, and Craig Hill gets the role of a circus director with a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache. Beautiful Edda Di Benedetto appears as an Indian girl who helps the avenger. Despite some confusion probably due to the cuts (copies in most countries are 20 minutes shorter than the Italian original) and lack of original music (soundtrack mostly borrowed from "I Crudeli"), this is a good revenge western movie for the fans of the genre.
