Woodyanders Half-breed Keoma (the almighty Franco Nero in peak rugged and soulful form) is tired of eking out a living by killing people. So he decides to return to his childhood home. However, Keoma soon finds himself caught up in a fierce dispute between innocent settlers, a band of sadistic bandits, and his own hateful and vengeful half-brothers. Director Enzo G. Castellari, who also co-wrote the compact and complex script with George Eastman, Nico Ducci, and Mino Roli, relates the engrossing philosophical story at a hypnotic gradual pace, does a masterful job of crafting a potently gloomy mood rife with despair and desolation, maintains a dark grim tone throughout, stages the exciting shoot-outs with consummate skill and incendiary flair to spare (the striking use of strenuous slow motion in particular seriously smokes), presents a stark and startling portrait of a brutal lawless town, and tops everything off with a wonderfully peculiar existential sensibility that offers a provocative examination on the themes of life, death, and fate. The excellent acting by the top-rate cast keeps the movie on track: William Berger as Keoma's wise and tolerant father William Shannon, Olga Karlatos as sweet and caring pregnant lady Lisa, Donald O'Brien as the ruthless Caldwell, Gabriella Giacobbe as a sinister prophet of doom, and Orso Maria Guerrini, Antonio Marsini, and Joshua Sinclair as Keoma's resentful siblings. The always welcome Woody Strode has a nice role as Keoma's faithful old buddy George. Aiace Parolin's picturesque cinematography provides an appropriately dusty'n'dingy look. The quirky and operatic, but still harmonic score by Guido and Mairizio De Angelis for the most part works, although the overwrought warbling by the female singer is a bit much at times. Punctuated with jolting outbursts of savage violence and further enhanced by a singularly brooding sober atmosphere as well as a poignant "you can't go home" central message, this one rates highly as one of the most unusual and distinctive Italian Westerns made in the 70's.

cynthiahost Poor Keoma, played by Franco Nero,who played Valentino in the movie of the week on a.b.c. back in the 70's, does still look like him.But poor Keoma,an adopted Indian,who just came back from the civil war,does discover that his home town is run by renegades in which the leader is Caldwell ,played by Donald O Brien.Keoma's step brothers,Butch ,played by Orso Maria Guerrini,Lenny played by Antonio Marsina ,are a part of the gang and still don't respect him,as they use to beat him up.Why didn't his daddy punish his brothers for it?His daddy played by William Berger, still respects him,but still loves his other three too.One of the actor who play the brother looks like Donald Sutherland,it's just coincident.There a plague,but Caldwell won't allow medicine to come in the town.Then there's ex slave George ,played by Woody Strode, who's now an alcoholic , cause he found out how people still don't except him.Then you have pregnant women ,whom Keona rescues from being murder by Caldwell's men,Lisa,played by Olga Karlatos.Keoma interest in her for the moment.Then theirs the witch,played by Gabriella Giacobbe,who tell Keo that he can't change any thing in this town.The singer who sings the back ground music for this movie sound like billy Jack audition ,for singing that title song of that movie,reject.Then you have the male singer ,who duos with her in some parts of the back ground music ,who sounds like a Johnny Cash Impersonator.Well a lot of violence to kick the bad guys out of town,which offend both conservative and phony liberal censors.Lisa has the baby and dies quickly Keoma is a free soul he does not want to have any responsibility for the child.Gives it to the which who is unable to take care of it too,whom she tell him that she can't take care of him and he might die,his answer,"He can't die,he's born a free soul,"part of a double feature of spaghetti westerns on Blu- ray,I got at Wall Mart.04/18/13

mgtbltp Films like great paintings, are there for us to view, experience, and interpret.  This go round, watching I think it finally all clicked. This is my interpretation.  A truly Mythic Western, an amalgamation of American Western Legend and Myth, Greco-Roman Mythology, and a touch of Catholic theology. Darkness, we enter the Dreamscape from darkness, the roar of time floods your ears and you see a sliver of a crack in the continuum of the universe. Through it we see a horseman punctuated with now the sounds and sights other human artifacts, we cut to frantic hands combing through the debris of humanity. The rider is in a Dream/Ghost town or perhaps Limbus. The hands belong to a Witch/Medicine Woman/Fate and she clutches discarded treasures that she loads on her barrow. She spots the rider and hides. As he passes she calls out a question "Why did you come back? Why did you come back?" So begins KeomaThe De Angelis brothers' weird soundtrack, especially the female voice now suggests an eerie Native American chant and whole film has a dreamworld atmosphere constantly enhanced by the incredible cinematography reinforcing the tone of this last of the great operatic Spaghetti Westerns. A good companion piece to Jodorowsky's El Topo.

OldAle1 The mystical, eerie and rather sombre opening of this late (1976) entry into the Italian western cycle, with its at first somewhat confusing flashback structure and alternation of bright, colorful daylight and gloomy, dusty apocalyptic destruction, all dominated by the fierce old witch-woman who will keep reappearing in the film, might lead you to think you are in for a deep, metaphysical and narratively challenging experiment.Hold on, pardner! "Keoma" soon settles down into a fairly typical Civil War vet comes back to hometown taken over by bad guys/vet saves town all by his lonesome tale, and Keoma bears more than a little resemblance in attitude and wild appearance to plenty of cowboy antiheroes in the past. That's not to say it's boring or formulaic, because over that basic storyline there's plenty to marvel at: gorgeous photography, particularly in the bright daylight scenes, a terrific folk-rock score highlighted by a Leonard Cohen-type male vocalist, a typically solid performance by Franco Nero, and some interesting story touches like a plague that ravages the town (plague? yes) -- a town that seems ready to fall apart, more dreary and decayed even than the one Django rides through in the film of the same name. Keoma not only has to confront the evil gunslinger who has taken over the town, but his henchmen turn out to be Keoma's three half-brothers, and oh -- Keoma is a halfbreed Indian (yes, despite being blonde, blue-eyed and hairy-chested) and his best friend is a black man (the great Woody Strode, looking pretty good at the age of 62). The film doesn't really dig much into the racial aspects of the story, though it doesn't ignore them either. But it all really boils down to a couple of really terrific gunfights at the end, lots of slow-mo Sam Peckinpah-type action (but without much blood), a Christ-on-the-cross image, and a hero riding off into...bleakness? Death? Who knows. A perfect coda to the spaghetti, in any case.