mformoviesandmore Perhaps by calling it a spaghetti western you now already know the storyline and the ending.It starts with a family being killed for some reason and yet the young boy is left alive by the gang who ensured they killed everyone else in the room. So - little thought went in to the scenario for setting up the revenge storyline.The boy grows up and ... well you can guess.Lee Van Cleef becomes the mentor, guardian, partner, competitor and plays his usual role to the usual high standard.The story plays out - but that's about it.There is nothing in the dialog to add value. There is nothing from the support actors. There aren't even any tense moments or long held stares as there should be in a spag-western.A fun genre, for which this is a lesser number.

tcaramela This movie started off with a great opening scene with a bad storm and a family who gets slaughtered this is typical for SW movies a revenge for a slaughtered family theme. I liked how it showed four men masked and each man shows the boy some distinguishing feature to help him later in life identify each of the culprits with the exception of one who loses the bandanna around his face and is an easy spot. Another man comes in and saves the boy from the fire. Its a great western of two men who both have a score to settle with the same men. It is director Guilio Petroni's best western by most critics, I have yet to see his Night of the Serpent which is told to be a great second of his work. Lee Van Cleef gives a great performance in this one and the famous Ennio Morricone gives another brilliant score. I actually always have enjoyed the villain roles of Anthony Dawson and he is good in this one as well.

winterbear-157-474225 To me, not one of the better spaghetti westerns. Maybe something is lost in translation, but the scripted lines in English are embarrassing and spoken as such. There are some evocative scenes but some completely unbelievable ones that even the actors seem to find embarrassing. I've tried to like this film but there are far better in the spaghetti western genre to appreciate. It just all seems befuddled and forced to me. Still, its worth watching for Lee Van Cleef, but not a film I would revisit for the acting, plot, storyline etc. It's only real saving grace is a distinctly darker score by Ennio Morricone, but then that is available on various CDs. In short, emotionless and drab.

Lechuguilla As with other spaghetti Westerns, the characters here are mean, the landscape is bleak, and the music is haunting. It's a stereotyped image of an Old West that never was. But the genre makes for generally interesting movies.In "Death Rides A Horse" the story is a typical revenge yarn. It's fairly predictable, though there's a nifty plot twist toward the end. The two main characters seesaw back and forth as dual protagonists, each with the same apparent objective, yet each with a different level of maturity and suspicion of the other. The rest of the characters seem mostly like background props, stick figures, lacking uniqueness and personality.People here rarely smile except when they express a jeering, scornful attitude toward someone else. They're all angry and violent. Women exist to be abused. And the bad guys are predictably stupid; when they have the chance to kill the good guys, they make excuses why they need to wait.I might have liked this film more if the DVD had been better. In the copy I watched the colors were washed-out; some images were grainy or blurry. And the sound was bad.Yet even allowing for a poor DVD, the film lacks technical quality. Editing is as bad as the dubbing. Dialogue trends banal. The score, though haunting, repeats too often. And the visuals convey the impression that the producers spent all of twenty dollars on production design.As one of the two leads, Lee Van Cleef gives a respectable performance. But John Phillip Law, the second lead, looks lost throughout the film. He is so wooden and stilted that a blue-eyed mannequin could have animated the character better, and no doubt cheaper.To really appreciate this film, or rather to overlook its faults, the viewer needs to be a hardcore spaghetti Western fan. The genre does offer some really high quality films. "Death Rides A Horse" isn't one of them.