Sartana

Sartana is a series of Spaghetti Western films which follows the adventures of the title character, a gunfighter and gambler who uses mechanical gadgets and seemingly supernatural powers to trick his rivals.

[1] Of all the Spaghetti Western characters, Kevin Grant wrote in his book Any Gun Can Play that Sartana's personality and traits are sustained and developed among the official films.

[4] Sartana would continue to resort to his conjurer tricks in the film, making his tiny pistol appear out of such unexpected places as a hat, a boot, and a loaf of bread.

He often meets with a character named Sabata, a white-clad gunman who quotes William Shakespeare and Lord Tennyson, who foils several of Sartana's plans.

[4] In the fourth film, Have a Good Funeral, My Friend... Sartana Will Pay (1970), an owner of a goldmine is murdered, leading his daughter to arrive in town to claim the property.

[11] Curti described the final film as containing elements of other genres such as the giallo, as it depicts Sartana as a detective who investigates and solves a mystery.

[12] The character of Sartana was first created by screenwriters Ernesto Gastaldi and Vittorio Salerno for the film Blood at Sundown (1966), directed by Alberto Cardone.

[2] The producer proposed two scripts, neither of which interested Garko as he was looking to portray a different type of character compared to those he had played in Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre and Per 100.000 dollari ti ammazzo, which were not very popular with audiences.

Sartana also has a flashier wardrobe and browses saloons with lush interiors compared to the typically ragged appearances and simple surroundings of earlier Spaghetti Westerns and their characters.

[1] Garko spoke later about the creation of the character in 1990, stating that cartoon strips were "like film, are part of arte d'imagine and therein lie [Sartana's] cultural roots".

[2] He specifically consulted with the writers of each film to preserve the character's integrity and would later claim that he had a clause in his contract with producer Aldo Addobbati that the scripts had to meet with his approval.

[1] Retrospective reviews of the series include Amy Longsdorf of the Courier-Post, who stated that "of all the Spaghetti westerns which arrived in the wake of Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" trilogy the "Sartana flicks [...] ranks as some of the best.

[13] Fridlund described Fidani's Sartana films as not having very involved plots and contained simply orchestrated fight sequences where "the bad guys (and their director or script writers) can seldom come up with anything more clever than to, one at a time, make an open rush against the sneaking hero and consequently get shot.

[1] Sartana Kills Them All starred Garko as a character called Larry Santana who is dressed in a brown leather jacket with fringes, not a black suit and long coat, and he does not use special weapons or tricks.