Death Carries A Cane

Death Carries A Cane is a 1973 Italian giallo film

Giallo is an Italian exploitation murder mystery genre with elements of other genres. Thanks, Wikipedia.

It is now the best title of anything I have covered thus far. I was worried that the cane would be metaphorical, but it is not.

I'm glad I saw the cane title instead of these alternate titles:

Dance Steps on the Edge of a Razor
The Tormentor
Maniac at Large
The Night of the Rolling Heads
Devil Blade.

Otherwise, I might have missed it!


It starts with POV shot through a coin-operated telescope across an italian town

He was an actor before Game of Thrones

Two men fight over the binoculars. They spot a woman bending over with a view up her skirt.

Definitely an exploitation movie.

A woman takes some photographs of tourists. One of them informs us that her name is Kitty. Of course it is. He tells Kitty that they have to find Alberto to catch a plane.

Kitty looks through the telescope to find Alberto's balcony and sees a man stabbing a naked woman through a window.

Hitchcock totally ripped off this movie!

Also, who commits murder with the window blinds open?

More importantly, that's an extremely creepy way to find Alberto.

Most importantly, it took a whole four minutes and fourteen seconds for this exploitation movie to get to the first naked woman.

Right before the man turns around, the telescope expires. Of course it does. Kitty puts another coin in and the man has disappeared. She sees the house number is 57.

Kitty tells an officer that a woman was murdered. The officer says he can't do anything because he is a fireman. Social commentary?

Alberto pulls up to a curb. Kitty tells him that she saw a women being murdered. Alberto mansplains

Alberto: Are you really sure, honey?

Alberto and Kitty drive the man and woman to the airport. Afterwards, they drive to the police station. Alberto asks some more questions about the murder and mansplains again

Alberto: Yeah, but, are you sure?

So, after seeing the woman being murdered, Kitty asks an officer in the vicinity, who tells her to go to the police. Instead of going to the police there, she goes home, which requires driving on the highway, and then drives back. Why?

Kitty talks to the inspector. The inspector condescendingly asks her whether the woman was strangled or knifed.

Kitty and Alberto drop off some photographs of a decapitated mannequinn to a director. okay.

Cut to the director and a blonde woman having sex.

It took this exploitation movie over nine minutes to get to a sex scene.

The man has to give up because he is too stressed about the show.

This is a medical condition known as directional dysfunction

The phone rings.The woman picks up. It's Kitty. Kitty asks Lydia (the blonde woman) if she has heard about the murder. Lydia says she has heard about another one, but not this one.

Lydia runs a newspaper. Kitty tells her the story so she can print it.

At some point in the future (this movie doesn't indicate passage of time well), Kitty looks through the newspaper for the murder story and finds nothing. If this movie doesn't explain this by the end, I'll be angry.

Note the  J&B whiskey bottle

Apparently, J&B whiskey bottles are in many giallo movies.

The doorbell rings. The inspector steps inside, and then asks if he can go inside.  Well...

On the terrace, a hilarious situation doesn't play out. The murder inspectors walks in on Alberto stabbing a dummy. I honestly don't know how the movie failed to make this funny.

The inspector confirms that they did indeed find the corpse of a women. Kitty says that the killer was dressed in black. Of course he was.

She points the dummy to indicate to the inspector what a black hat looks like.

POV shot of the killer opening a box of weapons. He takes a razor and slices a piece of paper. Not the paper!

CONFIRMATION: This movie has a disabled character in it.

The killer approaches a house with a man eating in the kitchen. He uses his cane to knock on the door. Adaptation!

The man opens the door but nobody is outside. I hope there is a reason for this beyond trying to create suspense.

He goes back inside and closes the door. Another knock. Suspense

Remember when I made a reference to Hitchcock? I regret that now.

The man goes the window, opens it, and sees nothing. He turns away and the killer uses his cane to grab the neck.  Adaptive murder!

He slits the man's throat with a razor. The gore effect is pretty good.

The police investigate the corpse. One of them makes the observation that the body with a slit throat was killed witha razor.

Lydi arrives and interrogates an investigator, claiming that three murders were connected and that it is probably a sex maniac.

She is clearly aware that she is in a giallo movie.

A forensic scientist named Lenny inspects blood stains on the three murders and deduces that all three murders were performed by the same person who had  a bad leg and used a cane.

My physical therapist once told me that walking with a bad gait could hurt me. I didn't know she was talking about murder accusations.

The moral is: "If you commit a murder, don't get the bottom of your cane wet with blood'"

The detective requests

"a file of all deviants and sex offenders with leg disabilities"

Clearly a commentary on the way the justice system disproportionately treats disabled people unfairly.

Before this movie can offer any more valuable social commentary, the killer sneaks in, pulls the covers back on a sleeping naked woman, and takes her picture.

Wait, it's not the killer. It's the inspector. Good twist.

Seriously,good twist. And I don't think the inspector is the killer, because of the whole cane thing.

The inspector is angry because Lydia ran the story connecting the murders.

He wants the government to revoke the newspapers license.

No Trump jokes.

Cut to another sex scene. Of course. Between Kitty and...a man who I don't recognize. The camera lingers on Kitty.

Incidentally, Death Carries A Cane was directed by a man. Maurizio Pradeaux.

The inspector calls in Alberto, tells him the murderer had a leg injury, and asks why he was limping last week.

Alberto stumbles over some lame excuse about spraining his ankle and wonders whether the detective is pulling his leg about the murder case.

I mean, this is commentary about the justice system.

The detective shows Alberto a photograph of him and the murder victim at an art show. Alberto is horrified that the detective would insinuate that he would take a girl to an art show.

She looks just as blonde and thin as most other women in the movie.

Alberto tells Kitty that he was questioned about being the murderer. Kitty laughs.

That night, she pictures the man killing the woman in the window and Alberto stabbing the dummy.

It goes like this:

1. A man stabbed a woman with a knife
2. The man knew how to use a knife to stab a body
3. A dummy is an approximation of a body
4. Alberto knows how to use a knife to stab the dummy
5. Therefore, Alberto knows how to use a knife to stab a woman
6. Alberto is guilty. QED

Kitty tries to leave, but Alberto wakes up and makes her stay. Then they have sex. Of course they do.

Marta, the cleaning lady for the murder victim. calls alberto and says that she knows who killed Marta. We don't see her face, so we know she is mysterious.

Alberto goes over to her house and she is just an old lady.

 Disappointing. However, Marta tells me that the man that the murderer killed in his kitchen was the chestnut vendor who saw the first murder. Glad that scene had a point. Marta offers to tell Alberto who the killer is in exchange for $2000.

In a confusing exchange, Alberto says he doesn't have the money. Marta tells him that he will get a lot of money for telling the newspapers the name of the killer. But she still wants the money before telling him. How does that work?

Alberto says he'll get the money by tommorrow.

Marta walks upstairs with a candle and a knife. Not sure why, but it sure fulfills the promised "horror" genre.

A cat jumpscares her.

When Marta reaches the top of the stairs, the man with the cane slits her throat.


On the bright side, Alberto doesn't have to come up with $2000 anymore!

Alberto had been taping the conversation between him and Marta. He plays the tape back to the detective to prove that he wasn't the killer.

Coincidentally, right after the tape plays, the detective gets a call to inform him that Marta was killed. This movie sure doesn't waste time.

A cobbler agrees to mend a show for a blonde (of course) woman. End scene.

There is a cane in the background. And the shoe is warped. And there is no other point to this scene. From this, we can deduce that he is not the killer.

A black-haired(!) fully-clothed(!) woman dances in front of Alberto, Lydia,and Marco as they film. She takes her top off. Right.

She takes her skirt off. Right. It's been almost ten minutes since the last semi-nude scene. I was losing interest in the movie.

Lydia's sister Sylvia calls. No, she hasn't been in the movie yet. Sylvia disapproves of Marco because he films strippers. Okay. She invites Lydia to dinner, but Lydia declines.

This had better be relevant.

The inspector and Alberto meet up. The inspector apologizes because the whole thing with the photo was just a trick to see his reaction. Also, the inspector has men following Alberto. Because the killer is also following Alberto. I'm confused.

Also, the inspector says that the killer got another girl. They know it was the same person because he used the same technique. Slashing throats is apparently unique to this killer.

A nameless woman walks into her apartment. In a shocking departure, she is fully dressed and has black hair.

The killer is under her bed. He waits for her to undress. Of course. Although the camera never shows her naked body. This movie is classier than that.

I'm sure this sounded erotic on paper

The killer suffocates the woman with her pillow. Then he slices her body. Overkill?

Lydia strips as Marco plays the piano. Then they have sex. Again.

Look, I'm not inherently against movies objectifying women, but it keeps interrupting the plot!

The inspector tells Alberto in the worst way possible. that they are going to use Kitty to lure the killer. I paraphrased it:

Inspector: We chose a girl to use to bait the killer. It's Kitty because the killer will know that she is your girlfriend. It won't be dangerous. She won't mind, will she?

Except it sounds worse in the movie.

The killer cuts out a picture of a bag with a certain design on it from the newspaper. In a clever edit, the next shot is of Kitty dressed as a prostitute carrying a bag with that same design. The inspector and Alberto wait in a car nearby.

So I guess somehow they got Lydia to run the newspaper ad so that they could lure the killer to Kitty carrying the same bag as in the ad? Am I missing something?

Anyway, the killer arrives. The cane drops. Kitty gets into his car and the police ambush him.

Oops, it's actually the police chief. Who happened to also use a cane. This is very contrived. The chief tells Alberto to have "the money" on his desk by tomorrow. What money? The $2000 for revealing the name of the killer? Which he doesn't know?

At this point, we learn that the bag is the same one that the lady buying chestnuts used at the scene of the crime. No, that doesn't make sense. Yes, it is in the movie.

Just trying to describe the plot of this movie is so difficult I am having trouble making jokes.

I stopped the movie and went to bed. The next day, I had it figured out. I could have been thinking about something productive, but instead I was trying to work through the plotline of Death Carries A Cane.

The chestnut girl was carrying the bag. She dropped it when she ran away. The police took it in as evidence. They couldn't find the owner, so they just kept it. Then the inspector had the idea to use it to lure the killer whey figured out he was killing witnesses. They change the story so that Kitty was the one carrying it.

I have no idea whether that's true, but at least it makes sense. As much sense as any of the other twists in this movie. If I hadn't admitted that I just made that up, you probably wouldn't have questioned it.

This is the first movie I've covered that actually made me angry. And it has nothing to do with the disability representation. Exploitation movies shouldn't require me to take a night just to understand.

A man comes into Lydia's office and asks whether she wrote the story about the killer. His name is Emmanuel, and he made the bag that Kitty used to lure the killer. And that the girl bought chestnuts had. In my version.

He wants to capitalize on the connection between his bag and the murders with the funniest line in the movie.

"Put Emmanuel's on and you'll be a lady killer."

Emmanuel casually mentions that he has only made one of those bag and knows who bought it. Lydia gets her name. Very convinient. I don't think there's any plot twist that could surprise me at this point.

Lydia walks out as Emmanuel suggests another idea

"We photograph the bag with the bodies. We photograph the two of them together, it's fabulous, it can't miss!"

Someone should remake this movie and set it in Current Year tm. Just imagine the hashtags.

The chestnut girl comes over to Lydia's place. I got extremely confused because she looks a lot like Kitty.

I thought it was Kitty at first but that made no sense. Less sense than before.

The chestnut girl glances at a photo. Her eyes go wide and she runs away

It's not that bad of a picture.

Seriously, she identifies the guy with light hair as the killer. Just go with it.

Aren't whodonnit stories so satisfying when the killer is someone who was never established?

Chestnut Girl drives away to a phone and calls the police, claiming she knows who the killer is.

But she doesn't tell him who it is. she is just upset because that means that the killer will kill her now. She hangs up and goes back into her car and drives away. That was a waste of the police's time.

Also a waste of her time, as the killer is somehow in the backseat.

How did he know that she figured out who he was and find her so quickly?

If he has some sort of supernatural foresight ability... that would be one of the more believable twists in this movie.

Somehow, just by strangling her with his cane, blood splatters from her neck all the way to the windshield. THEN he cuts her neck open.

He wants to remain inconspicuous, right? So he kills Chestnut Girl while she's driving on a busy road. How does he get out of the car without people noticing? Will he have to go kill all of the other drivers? 24 minutes left.

As per usual, the graphic violence is followed by a nude scene. One thing about this movie isn't predictable!

Alberto sketches Kitty's nude body. Kitty says she wants to be a singer and asks Alberto to listen to a tape she made. Alberto complains that they have enough to worry about.

Kitty: You can't continue to be interested in cripples and crimes, you know. Life must go on.

Screenwriter: Did you notice the alliteration?

Yeah, he should just move past the serial killer who is still at large.

Kitty can't find the cassette player. Alberto says it's in the kitchen. Turns out that Alberto used the same tape to record his conversation with Marta, just on a different track. It took me too long to figure that out, and I remember cassette players!

Conveniently, Alberto accidentally presses the button that replays his conversation with Marta.

Marta (recording): [the newspapers] will be dancing just as pretty as the girls did and you won't have any trouble getting it young man, I can tell you.

From this, he figures out that all three victims were dancers at the same school.

...are they implying that the killer's motive is that he's upset that other people can dance and he can't?

That is simultaneously brilliant and really, really dumb.

He never listens to Kitty's performance.

Alberto calls Lydia and asks whether the MacDonald girl went to a dance academy. Lydia tells him the name of the academy. Then she calls Sylvia.

Sylvia apparently went to the same dance academy. Conveniently. Lydia asks whether she knew the MacDonald girl. Sylvia snaps that she doesn't want to talk about the school and hangs up. Lydia has a flashback to Sylvia using a cane back at school when she hurt her leg.

Did the movie ever establish that the killer was male? Does Lydia know that? I really don't care at this point.

Now the implication is that Sylvia hurt her leg at the dance academy and went back to kill all of her classmates because she was jealous that she had to leave.

That is simultaneously even more brilliant and really, really, really dumb.

Alberto and Kitty go to the dancing academy and ask about the Martinez girl. The head tells them that she never head of her. Alberto and Kitty leave.  The killer approaches the school

A woman named Mrs. Exposition hops in the backseat. She tells Alberto and Kitty that she is the secretary and was Martinez's best friend at school.

C-O-N-V-I-N-I-E-N-T-L-Y

The blond guy approaches a shop window and looks at the razors.

The camera never shows whether he uses a cane. If he is not the killer, the movie better have a really good excuse for this scene.

Lydia calls the police because she never saw the chestnut girl.

Kitty, the secretary, and Alberto sneak into the school. I had trouble figuring out whether it was the secretary because all the women look similar and the picture quality is really poor.

Alberto asks the secretary why she is helping them. The secretary replies that she and the Martinez girl were "more than just friends"

This development is significant because it justifies a ten second lesbian sex flashback.

Not that any of the other sex scenes had justification

Kitty says she has to go to the bathroom and leaves. In any other slasher-esque movie, I would say that she will die soon. This movie has so many pointless diversions, I doubt it.

Alberto and the secretary pick up some binders full of photos and flip through them. The killer approaches.

Alberto is definitely going to find a reveal in that binder. But will the killer get him first? So suspenseful.

He doesn't find a reveal. Alberto and the secretary bring the binder to kitty and tell her to flip through it and take pictures of each page. Taking pictures of pictures. such a thrilling climax! Meanwhile, Alberto and the secretary go upstairs to find more records.

the killer looks at kitty. Kitty stops on one page and says, out loud

 "But it's impossible. It just can't be. But it might. because..."

The killer turns out the light at this. He approaches Kitty with a flashlight. Kitty thinks he is Alberto, letting him strangle her. But she somehow gets away. Because she is a main character.

Kitty runs outside to a greenhouse and bars the doors.

...the killer is above breaking glass?

Alberto runs downstairs and can't find Kitty. The killer starts to slowly break the glass.

I have mixed feelings about  this.

It's a clever way to reveal the killer bit by bit.

Kitty should have realized that glass is breakable

Right before the killer's face is shown,the movie cuts to Alberto and the secretary looking around for a few seconds.

There are four minutes left in the movie

The killer approaches. His face is hidden. He extends his cane towards kitty's neck.

Three minutes left.

It would be hilarious if the movie ended without revealing the killer

Kitty scrambles away, but he gets her neck.

The detective shoots the killer in the back. He came out of nowhere.

At 1:22:36 of this 1:25:18 movie, the killer is revealed as...Marco.

Okay. Whatever.

Who was Marco again?

Right. The director.That makes sense. When the Chestnut Girl picked up the photo and saw the killer, the audience thought it was the blonde guy. But it was actually Marco.

This is the one of the few times I can honestly use the phrase "That makes sense," in reference to this movie.

It doesn't explain the blonde guy, though.

Lydia walks in and is understandably upset. She says she didn't know.

The detective says that Marco just pretended to be lame to throw the police off.

So...this movie doesn't have a disability in it. I wasted a lot of time for nothing.

The final couple minutes is Lydia playing the role of the psychiatrist in Psycho:

Marco had a fear of failure, so he killed successful dancers. He also faked impotence for...some reason.

The End!

As Roger Ebert once wrote: "Sometimes a movie comes along with a title so perfect you're afraid to see it because that might spoil everything."

Death Carries A Cane starts out strong but falters halfway through. There is too much gratuitous plot that interferes with the sex scenes.

Blindman

The Crimson Bat series is a gender-swapped rip-off of a popular BlindswordsMAN character named Zatoichi. I'm not using "popular" sarcastically.

Obviously, this sparked thousands of angry men to spend countless hours writing posts, making Youtube videos, and harrassing people online about how feminism and cultural marxism were ruining the world.

Using the 1969 internet..

Blindman is a Western version of Zatoichi. The back of of the box even boasts this.

How much sexual content is the average spaghetti western? Is this going to be a Blind Dead scenerio, where the "forbidden sexuality" is about as extreme as those 8th grade sex ed videos?

Also, the Roger Ebert quote is pretty misleading. He was referring to Crimson Bat.

So this is my review of a Grindhouse exploitation Italian Western shot in Rome and Spain in which Ringo Starr plays the antagonist to a blind bounty hunter.

The opening shot is amazing and I hope they do something similar if they ever make a Dark Tower movie.

It sure would be silly to open the Dark Tower movie in the Algul Siento, which doesn't appear until a pivotal scene in the seventh book.

Wouldn't that be silly?

The blindman fled across the desert and Ringo Starr followed. Maybe.

He enters a town:

This had better not be the extent of the More Sexual Content Than The Average Spaghetti Western^tm.

His hat is pulled over his eyes. For the reveal of his blindness later.

Oh, sorry. Spoiler alert: He's blind.

He rides around the town for a few minutes, until a man comes out of a store.

The gunslinger asks where a man named Skunk is. The man replies the "funeral parlor"  and we get the reveal.

Damnit, Zoltan et the eyes again.

Did I choose this movie just to rant about the Dark Tower movie?

Of course not. They never made a Dark Tower movie.

The gunslinger asks whether the church has a tower.

Look, I really, really don't want to spend this entire review complaining about the Dark Tower movie. But it's so tempting.

The gunslinger shoots the bell at the top of the tower and wakes up the town.

Skunk comes out of a house and asks what the gunslinger wants. the gunslinger replies "my 50 women" and I regret my line about feminism at the beginning of this review.

Skunk claims that he doesn't have the women and makes a homophobic joke.

Man, I missed watching these exploitation movies.

The gunslinger has to transport the women to the miners. Domingo has the women. Skunk tells him that he is in Mexico. \

Every night, the gunslinger asks the lord where his friends are. What a smooth way to establish character.

Oh, also he blows up the building with Skunk.

The gunslinger rides across the desert in a sequence that looks exactly as I imagine it will be in the upcoming Dark Tower movie.

They're including the second book.

The gunslinger comes across a man in a hut and reveals his name: Blind Man Ciego.

Ciego asks where Mexico is. The man points, and Ciego goes.

Okay, hold up. The movie established that Ciego is blind when he had to feel the arm of the man pointing towards the church.

Nine minutes in and already an inconsistency. Not good.

This bothered me so much that I went back. Apparently Ciego told the man to show the horse. Sorry for doubting the integrity of Blindman

Ciego looks at a map to confirm that Mexico is indeed south of Texas. He enters another village.

There are many long shots of Ciego just standing or walking around.

Ciego asks for a room at an inn. The inkeeper tries to light a candle.

Ciego says no to the candle, but asks for a prostitute.

Said prostitute enters, strips, and lies down next to Ciego.

Have I mentioned that I miss doing exploitation movies? Her name is Margerita.

Ciego asks whether she knows where Domingo is. She claims ignorance, but relents when he offers money.

She accepts the money in exchange for screwing someone over.

Margerita tells him to talk to Pilar's father. Who is Pilar? No idea.

Ciego asks Pilar's father where Domingo is, but three characters plus Ringo Starr ride into the village and ask for Pilar. Pilar is a prostitute.

One of the them is named Pedro and uses a guitar to announce their arrival to Pilar and remind me that I could be watching Man of la Mancha or something.

Ringo Starr plays Candy, Domingo's brother.

Hold on. Ciego has been searching for information about Domingo for long enough to justify a traveling montage across the desert. A few seconds after he asks the person who knows about Domingo, Domingo's brother shows up.

So far, this adaptation of The Dark Tower has been better than I thought, but contrivences like this are bringing it down

The other men barge in and drag out Pilar. Candy and Pilar ride away into the horizon. As they leave, Pilar's father calls Candy a pig. Keep that in mind.

The remaining men beat up Pilar's father. Ciego, the gunslinger who was hired to escort 50 male-ordered mail-order brides to Mexico, gives them a lesson in morality

Ciego: Peace brothers. There's enough hate in this world. All we have to do is try to love one another.

After discovering that he is blind, the men force him to dance and shoot at his feet. Ciego falls down, and retaliates with some gunshots.

I'm glad there is at least some gunplay in this film about a gunslinger.

At Candy's brothel, woman splash water onto the naked prostitutes. The camera holds on them for a long time.

Not because they are naked. Because this movie holds on every shot for a long time.

Also because they are naked.

Candy and Pilar are traveling back to the brothel. They sleep in a tent the first night and share some meaningful lines.

Candy: You are my woman. You understand?

Pilar: I will never be your woman.

This dialogue is an improvement over the dialogue in The Dark Tower (2017).

Now some soldiers wander into the brothel and the prostitutes parade in front of them

Ciego and Pilar's father reach the brothel. The soldiers have exposed the breasts of many prostitutes.

I am more intrigued at who thought this was a good decoration for a brothel.

This is Domingo. Not the skeleton, the guy facing the camera.

Ciego somehow got into the brothel, shoots a gun and gets the attention of everyone.

Ciego, the riteous gunslinger, asks for his 50 women to fulfill his contract with Skunk.

Domingo asks to see the contract. In the most hilarious contract related joke since A Night at the Opera, Domingo claims he can't read.

Domingo burns the contract and tells Ciego that he burnt the contract. Because he is blind.

"Fight" scene. Domingo throws Ciego around and kicks him. I honestly thought that there would be more gunplay in . Even Crimson Bat I: Crimson Bat, The Blind Swordswoman had a swordsfight pretty early on.

Maybe Ciego doesn't want to accidentally hit the prostitutes. That's understandable. What isn't understandable is  the lack of gunplay almost one third into this movie.

Domingo kicks Ciego out of the brothel. Then he hosts a meal for the soldiers. The soldiers hand over $50,000 in silver coins in exchange for the prostitutes.

$50,000 in 1971 equals about $308,440.95 in 2017.

I'm not going to calculate the inflation of silver.

Dmonigo has a snake around his wrist.

 I think that means he is bad.

Candy walks into a room in the brothel and asks Pilar who killed his men.

Ciego confront him.

Ciego: I didn't see a thing.

 It's clever because it doesn't answer the question. Ciego holds Candy at gunpoint.

The soliders wait for the display of the prostitutes. Instead, Domingo and his men shoot all the soldiers. This might be a good twist if I cared about the plot.

The soldiers at the table are still alive. Until Domingo's men  kills everyone except a leader, who is worth some money.

It's really difficult to care about any of this. All I can think of is how far the plot has strayed from The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

Ciego waits by a train, still holding Candy at gunpoint. Domingo and his men approach. Domingo promises that he has the 50 women.

The women board the train and the conductor counts them. Ciego releases Candy and somehow there is over an hour of movie left.

Candy and Domingo have the following brilliant exchange:

Candy: You're gonna let him go?

Domingo: That's right

Candy: Well I'm going to stop him.

The gunslinger and 50 women ride Blaine the Train across the desert.

Ciego creepily caresses women's faces. One of them pull a gun on him.

Something about "woman having autonomy" really clashes with the overall themes of Blindman.

The train goes back to the brothel. Ciego eats alone. For a long time.

If my synopsis so far (42 minutes into movie) has been muddled, boring, and thin...that means I am accurately conveying the movie!

There are three solid minutes of Ciego eating.

Which are three of the best minutes in the film.

Not a joke. Domingo and Candy put a snake in the bowl of food and for two minutes, a competent series of images flash across the scene.

A first for this movie!

Seriously, this is a suspenseful scene for What Ever Happened To Blind Man?

Ciego senses the snake and ruins the scene.

Ciego: What kind of a son of bitch puts a snake in a man's food?

He says this before flinging the snake off of him.

Candy and Domingo enter and laugh.

Ciego claims that if he dies, they will never see Pilar again.

Ciego says that he has Pilar and at this point, I don't know whether he is telling the truth. Last time Pilar was in the movie, she was in the brothel. Why is the movie so complicated

Candy and Domingo torture Ciego as the prostitutes look on. Torture involves being yanked up and down on chains.

This doesn't work. Candy threatens to break every bone in his body unless he tells him where Pilar is.

This is a lie, because the next scene is a new interrogation technique. Now there is a fuse going towards his genitals. And the fuse slowly burns. You know, this is a surprisingly suspenseful scene as well. Especially for The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger.

The prostitutes watch.

 "Damn it, this is the fourth time this week!"

Candy cuts off the fuse before castration. Ciego reveals that Pilar is in a shepherd's house on a mountain outside the village.

Ciego spouts some patriarchial cisnormative toxic masculine philosophy about how his genitals are more important than his eyes because they define his manhood or something like that.

I'm more curious about whether this is the promised More Sexual Content Than The Average Spaghetti Western ^tm.

Now Candy and his men ride across the desert and nobody follows. They reach the hut.

Back at the brothel, Ciego is chained up outside the prostitutes' cell. He practices swinging on the chains and manages to kick Domingo. Ciego steals his gun and keys to the cell.

I was expecting a lot more of the violence in this movie to be gun-focused. Just saying.

Ciego opens the door to a cell and frees a prisoner. However, he makes the man go back and get his hat. How else will he be able to dramatically reveal that he is blind at the beginning of the next movie: The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three?

Ciego and the man try to escape, but they get caught at the doors. He shouldn't have wasted time retrieving the hat.

Finally a gunfight. Except the man doesn't really shoot as much as punch. Ciego shoots a few times.

They escape onto the roof. Ciego whistles to call two horses. He jumps on one. When the man tries to jump, Ciego whistles the other horse away as a joke.

Definitely risk breaking your only ally's legs for a joke. Good idea.

More riding across the desert. Ciego tells the man to leave him. Forget the line about the ally.

Candy and Domingo enter a town church and discuss  the situation with the prostitute and not killing a blind man in front of a priest.

Domingo tells Candy to forget about Pilar. He has a good point. Candy doesn't think so and and a fight ensues.

Now Domingo decides to get Pilar for Candy. That character development took all of twenty seconds.

Pilar's father tells Ciego and Pilar that he found some dynamite in the cave that they are in.

I know rapidly jumping between locations is in the style of The Dark Tower but it doesn't work in movie form.

Ciego tell's Pilar's father to buy two additional wagons, fill them up with dynamite, and bring thin to Domingo's fort.

I just noticed that Ciego keeps bullets in his hat.

Pilar asks Ciego why he is helping and Ciego admits it's just for the money. I love this movie.

Pilar's father tries to get back to his wagon, but Candy accosts him about Pilar and Ciego. Candy stabs him for calling him a pig at the beginning of the movie. Totally worth planting that seed about four-five minutes ago.

Pilar tries to leave the cave, but Candy flees across the desert towards her. She runs back in and tells Ciego. Ciego plants some dynamite and tells Pilar to go towards the back entrance.

Candy's men approach on horseback and, in any other movie, this would be the climax. But there is still over half-an-hour left. There are a lot of scenes in this movie that could be climaxes. I guess that's why it's an exploitation movie.

The music is great.

Commenting on the music in a written review is not too useful, is it?

Ciego detonates the dynamite and closes in the front entrance. He also apparently blew up whatever was playing the great music.

Candy gets into the cave first and gets upset by Pilar's underwear hung on a clothesline.

I have to complain about this scene. Ciego blew up several sticks of dynamite around the cave, causing falling rocks to seal off entrances, and the vibrations kept the flimsy clotheline and underwear up?

Don't try to convince me that Ciego kept a clothesline and pair of Pilar's underwear lying around, set up and detonated a series of dynamite sticks, and then hung up the clothesline and underwear in the few seconds before Candy came in just to be petty.

More Sexual Content Than The Average Spaghetti Western^tm  

Ciego shoots Candy and escapes out the back entrance with Pilar.

This should be the ending. They killed the villain and escaped. But the movie is only two thirds done.

Domingo and his men enter the cave. Right. They find Candy's body.

Pilar and Ciego enter Domingo's fort. Pilar finds her father's body,' Ciego grabs a maid, forcing her to sing.

This is a clever parallel to the beginning of the movie, where Domingo's men forced Ciego to sing.

Her singing draws the attention of Domingo's sister. Ciego grabs her and forces her to open thhe cell with the fifty prostitutes.

They escape onto a few wagons.

Awfully small number of fifty prostitutes

Meanwhile, Domingo and his men ride across the desert towards the cave. The "fifty" prostitutes jump out of the wagons and run away from Domingo's men. Domingo shoots a few of them.

At this point, I've completely lost track of everyone's motivations. The movie is still great though.

Domingo' men surround the prostitutes around a pole with their horses, evoking carousel imagery which means...

Which means...

Hey, one of the woman's tops is pulled down! Again!

Domingo shoots a few more women until he spots Pilar. He orders his servant to bring her to him.

Ciego ties up Domingo's sister and rips her clothes off. Of course he does.

Afterwards, Ciego blows up the entire village. Why is this guy the hero again?

Domingo and his men ride into town and find his sister tied up naked. Somehow having survived the explosions.

Domingo forces the other men away. Ciego flees across the desert and maybe Domingo follows. Ciego finds one of the empty wagons that originally held the prostitutes and decides to go investigate.

Cut to Candy's funeral.

They killed the advertised main Starr!

Some people release doves.

 It's symbolic of the peace that will surely fill the final 24 minutes of this movie.

They pray and men in black enter with bells and candles.

I really do like the look of this man in black.

I hope they cast someone similar for the upcoming Dark Tower movie and not just a big name like, say, Matthew McConaghay.

Pilar, dressed in a white dress and silly crown, approaches the coffin.

Domingo announces that Pilar will still marry Candy.

The priest reminds Domingo that, despite the movie being okay with treating woman as property and sexual coercion, necrophilia is still frowned upon.

(Side Note: If you have been looking for a "good" necrophilia-based horror-comedy(?) about cystic fibrosis, watch Excision. I enjoyed it, but it was probably pretty bad. Very disturbing)

Domingo grabs Pilar and claims he will marry her without a priest. "Marrying" in this context is stabbing her with a knife. Different cultures have different tradition.

At this exact moment, Ciego ignites some explosives. Ciego sure is good at timing things.

Ciego rides into town and taunts Domingo. He rides away and intentionally falls off his horse so that the men will ride away from him. That's pretty clever.

Ciego and Pilar reunite. Ciego is in barn when Domingo's sister jumps him, knocking him over with a pot.

This entire movie is just characters appearing in locations for no reason.

Ciego strangles her with his legs. Again, not a lot of shooting from this alleged gunslinger.

Domingo's men have guessed that Ciego is at the fort, so they go back. After confirming, they ride back to get Domingo.

There are about twenty minutes left and it doesn't feel like the movie is approaching a climax any more than the other times the movie appeared to approach a climax.

Ciego and Pilar ride to find a place to hide. On a white horse. Domingo's men spot it easily.

They ride to a cemetery. BAD IDEA. One of the men goes back to get Domingo. Again.

Finally we have a good gunfight. Ciego hide behind a barn and shoots the men as they appear. He hits one with his rifle, drops it, and scampers away. Damn it.

Pilar and Ciego enter the barn and ambush one of Domingo's main men. Ciego drops a shovel to judges how far down a drop is and then jump to attack the man.

Domingo and his men flee across the desert and nobody follows.

Pilar and Ciego confront Domingo in a cemetery. This is the climax. Unlike the other five climaxes.

Ciego tells Pilar to get down on the ground and drops his rifle. Domingo raises his gun and the most ridiculous twist in the movie happens.

Remember those soldiers who were last in the movie about an hour ago?

Apparently, Ciego created an alliance with them off screen and arranged for them to be waiting right behind the graveyard for this moment.

Makes sense.

As much sense as anything else in this movie.

Domingo and his head man retreat to a barn. Another one. The soldier shoot the head man and Ciego follows Domingo into the barn.

Following the tradition, the final confrontation of this movie involves no gunfighting. Just a lot of punching and hitting.

Domingo does point his gun at Ciego, but, in another astonishingly silly twist, a general pops out and burns Domingo's eyes with his cigar.

This poetic justice would be a lot more effective if Domingo's vendetta against Ciego stemmed from Ciego's blindness instead of the whole "you killed my brother" thing.

Yes, I am critiquing the poetic justice of an exploitation film about a blind gunslinger featuring Ringo Starr as the villain.

Domingo scampers around, finds his gun, and attempts to shoot Ciego. Ciego casually shoots and kills Domingo.

The moral is "Smoking solves all your problems."

Ciego shoves some dynamite into Domingo's mouth, tells him he is fucked, and flees across the desert with Pilar.

This is a whole lot more realistic than the final confrontation in The Dark Tower (2017). Even taking into account the magic.

Ciego finally tells the general for what this entire quest was about: getting the $50,000 for delivering the women.

This theme is explored in the following dialogue.

General: But why do you love money so much?

Ciego: I like to buy things.

Also, the building explodes, making the head soldier laugh. They leave as friends.

With two minutes left, Pilar informs Ciego that the general left with the fifty women. Ouch.

The general flees across the desert and the blindman follows.

Blindman is a lot of fun. It doesn't take itself seriously at all and is one of the best movies I've covered.

I can definitely say that this is the best Dark Tower movie I've seen all year.

The joke being that this is the only Dark Tower movie I've seen this year.