#533: And God Said to Cain
A visually striking horror revenge western, all shot on a budget
Initial release: February 5, 1970
Director: Antonio Margheriti
The slasher film is, surprisingly, quite an old genre, with roots dating back to the early 20th century: Mary Roberts Rinehart’s 1908 novel The Circular Staircase (later adapted into 1926 silent film The Bat) suggests a literary origin, as does Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (don’t look up the original title.) In 1960, after 40 years of a steady groundswell of ideas and a loosening censorship regime in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic Psycho blended sexuality and violence in a film that, while not having the biggest body count, would set the tone for horror film the rest of the decade, particularly when the Italians started doing it. And Italy never shied away from soaking their films in blood, with the mid-1960s bringing the parallel developments of giallo films and a particularly bloody, cynical take on westerns (popularly known as spaghetti westerns.)
Which brings us to Italian director Antonio Margheriti. Known for his extensive filmography (including cult classic Cannibal Apocalypse) and breakneck filmmaking method (involving close attention to lighting and using several cameras simultaneously to get as many different shots as he can) he had positioned himself as a master of genre film. Often putting out out several movies a year, ranging from sci-fi to sword-and-sandal to horror, he had an eye for almost impeccable cinematography and lighting. 1970’s And God Said to Cain (E Dio disse a Caino in Italian), one of Margheriti’s small collection of westerns, is one of the unsung greats of the genre, while also nodding to the burgeoning Italian horror scene by being a sort of proto-slasher, featuring a grim, violent hero waging a one-man war on an army of goons loyal to a wealthy and cruel rancher during a brutal windstorm that ravages a tiny Texas town in the night.
Klaus Kinski is Gary Hamilton, a rough, stone-faced prisoner working in a chain gang, ten years after the Civil War. After a sudden pardon, he promptly heads for where he knows an old enemy happens to live. With a horse and a brand new repeating rifle, he rides into town just ahead of the storm; his target, Acombar, happens to be aware that Hamilton has been freed and has his small army of henchmen prepare an ambush. But Hamilton evades them, and as darkness falls he takes them out one by one, stalking them from windows, tunnels, alleys. He’s got them so spooked they’re almost shooting each other, and Acombar is increasingly desperate, for he knows why Hamilton wants him dead: he framed Hamilton for the stagecoach robbery that made him rich, then convinced Hamilton’s girlfriend Mary to lie about Hamilton’s whereabouts.
The film wastes no time in getting to the main event, Hamilton’s nightlong rampage making up the vast bulk of the film. The gunmen (whose loyalty is guaranteed by the chance of winning $10,000 for Hamilton’s corpse) patrol the streets of town, but are powerless to stop him as he guns them down, strangles them from the shadows, or, in one occasion, pulls them into the path of a heavy church bell falling from the tower. In the film’s climax, the film directly references the classic hall of mirrors scene from the 1947 film noir The Lady from Shanghai; it’s a fantastic moment that shows that even if And God Said to Cain is ultimately derivative like much of Margheriti’s body of work, he is a master of his craft.
And God Said to Cain is a visual feast for what was clearly a fairly low budget; sometimes shaky editing, sub-par effects (mostly to do with guns: sometimes there isn’t even a muzzle flash) and an English dub that doesn’t always measure up, don’t take away from what’s a showcase of superb cinematography, great set design and spectacular lighting. Klaus Kinski is terrifying as Hamilton, a grim (if principled) reaper who picks off the enemy one by one, like some kind of semi-virtuous cowboy Michael Myers. The film is marked at the beginning and ending by the theme “Rocks, Blood and Sand,” sung by gospel singer Don Powell (not the same guy as the former drummer for Slade) over a big band-ish tune by legendary Italofilm composer Carlo Savina, whose best-known film is probably 1978’s The Fury. It’s a fantastic little tune that sets the tone for the rest of the movie (while also clearly lifting a lot from 1966’s Django, which opened with a similar kind of song.)
There’s a lot of westerns out there, of varying quality, but I think And God Said to Cain is one of the better ones out there, not for anything original, but because it so perfectly encapsulates what we watch Euro westerns for, and doesn’t need to be anything more than what it is, a sort of hoedown Halloween with some fantastic kills and a killer you don’t feel bad rooting for.
