The spaghetti western is a curious subgenre of exploitation cinema. The best ones are brilliant, and in my humble opinion there aren't any truly bad ones out there. There are just a whole lot of them, maybe hundreds, that simply... exist. Like "Death at Orwell Rock", for instance. It's not a particularly bad western, it just isn't any special or memorable whatsoever. The film follows the typical structure of a stranger arriving in a corrupt town, and gradually it becomes clear that he's on a personal mission to settle an old vendetta. It's watchable enough, and the script does contain one of two ingenious moments (like an identity swap and a feisty finale), but it doesn't differ much from the previous 10 you have seen, or the next 15 spaghetti westerns you'll watch. There are a couple of familiar Italian cult-faces in the cast, like Luciano Pigozzi and Nello Pazzafini, and they deliver largely on autopilot, just like director Riccardo Fredo whom I prefer when he makes gothic horror movies or Gialli.
Review of Death at Owell Rock
