zardoz-13 George Hilton and Walter Barnes make a heroic pair known as Lord and Bull in "Guns for Dollars" director Giuliano Carnimeo's superior shoot'em up "The Moment to Kill," with Horst Frank as an incredibly Draconian villain who craves to wield a riding crop. Hilton plays his typical gunslinger, but he doesn't wear anything black. In fact, he wears a white hat, and he carries one six-gun on his hip. Barnes wears a Confederate jacket, a brown derby, and totes a double-barrel shotgun. When he reloads, all he need do is open his jacket, and it is lined with loops galore for his shotgun shells. Together, Hilton and Barnes are as good as Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, except they don't argue with each other. Judge Thomas Warren has summoned them to find a cache of Confederate money hidden in town. Literally, there is never a dull moment as this pair fends off advances from the villains, and the body count slowly mounts into double digits as they do their best to kill our heroes. It doesn't hurt matters that one of Garnimeo's frequent collaborators--the prolific but gifted Tito Carpi wrote this memorable Spaghetti western with another genre stalwart Enzo G. Castellari who wrote the masterly "Any Gun Can Play" and the Franco Nero classic "Keoma." Helmed with skill by Garnimeo, written exceptionally well by Carpi and Castellari, "The Moment to Kill" benefits immeasurably with "Return of Halleluja" lenser Stelvio Massi who always seems to set up his cameras in the best place for each scene. Mind you, Massi would come into his own as a director of actioneers about the police. The beauty of "The Moment to Kill" is its numerous gunfights at either day or night, and the way that Carnimeo stages them so that Massi's cinematography and Renato Cinquini & Ornella Micheli's editing compliment each other. The best Spaghetti westerns never ran out of varmints for the heroes to plug, and somebody is already ready to spin around and throw up their hands "The Moment to Kill" when the bullets riddle them. Alberto Boccianti's production design and Stefano Bulgarelli's art department contribute to the success of this western. There is a chilling scene where several hooligans terrorize a crippled woman in a wheel chair, and the camera set-ups vary to give the action multiple perspectives. Although it isn't a major Spaghetti, the town and the sets don't look like a ramshackle sagebrusher. "The Moment to Kill" qualifies as one of the better low-budget westerns. Now, if only somebody could find a letterboxed copy!

Wizard-8 The DVD company Wild East put this out with another George Hilton spaghetti western on the same disc, "Full House For The Devil". The two compliment each other, and not in a good way. This is a pretty poor western. The first third of the movie is very confusing, with motivations by the various characters murky. Eventually we learn what's going on, but the movie doesn't really improve with that knowledge. The story remains very slow-moving, and the sporadic action sequences are not particularly exciting. The two protagonists (played by Hilton and Walter Barnes) are not very likable, coming across as kind of smug and cold-hearted. Is there anything of merit to be found here? Well, the opening credits song is not bad, and the director occasionally pulls off an interesting visual. But I think even the biggest spaghetti western fans won't find this limited merit enough to make the movie worth investing their time with.

The_Void The main reason I prefer Spaghetti Westerns to American ones is because the Spaghetti ones are generally far more entertaining. That's not the case here. The Moment to Kill is undoubtedly one of the most dull westerns I've ever had the misfortune to watch, and the film is made all the more disappointing by the fact that it could have been good! The story is certainly derivative, but similar ones have lead to great westerns before and after this film. Basically, we focus on a pair of gunslingers; Lord and Bull, that go after some treasure with only a book and a young crippled girl to go on. The film is very dark; but I don't mean in terms of the plot, I mean in terms of the picture; a lot of it takes place at night and I often found myself wondering exactly what was going on. The story gets boring very fast and this is mostly due to the tepid relationship between the central characters. George Hilton takes the role of Lord, but mostly looks bored; and he is joined by Walter Barnes as his partner. The two look odd on screen together and it doesn't work very well. There are not many noteworthy scenes, and even the many shootouts get boring before long. All in all, I wouldn't recommend this film to even the biggest Western fans.

unbrokenmetal More than a bucket of blood promises the German title of the movie: "Ein Sarg voll Blut" means "a coffin filled with blood". Needless to say there is no such thing in the movie. Django and Bull, two gunmen with nothing else to do, look for a woman who knows the secret of a gold treasure. Quite a lot of baddies want to lay their hands on the gold, too, of course - not an unusual story, but "Il momento di uccidere" still is a spaghetti western above average due to excellent camera work and editing plus the ironic, yet very tough George Hilton starring as Django. Horst Frank ("Preparati la bara") is among the villains, while Walter Barnes plays Django's partner as such a rogue you wonder how he happened to be one of the good guys. Loni von Friedl acts convincingly as the pretty heiress who has more than one secret to hide. A movie without any serious flaws, really.