SARTANA IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH (1970) **

William Berger stars as Lee Calloway (who is definitely NOT Sartana, although they dress similarly), a rugged bank robber who accepts a job busting some tough hombres out of prison.  He only asks for half of the gold they have squirreled away in Death Valley from a previous heist.  Naturally, his partners double cross Lee, leave him for dead, and take off across the desert.  After Lee gets back on his feet, he follows the bad guys in hot pursuit, waiting for the precise moment to exact his revenge.

Berger gets a memorable scene early on where he notices his wanted poster and crosses out the reward and writes in a higher number.  It’s a nice way to establish his antihero character.  So does the opening shootout, which uses simple, but effective editing techniques to maximize the suspense. Too bad the theme song sounds less like a Spaghetti Western tune and more like something you’d hear a below average lounge lizard belt out on an off night.  

Like most Spaghetti Westerns, Sartana in the Valley of Death uses one of my favorite genre clichés where the villains rough up our hero and he has to think fast and heal quickly before he can make his comeback.  Once Berger (who was also in the official Sartana movie, If You Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death) follows his quarry into the desert, the movie practically stops on a dime.  The endless scenes of him stumbling through the desert gets dull awful fast and help negate the admittedly fun set-up.  In fact, the further the film strays from its central plot, the better it is.  The subplot with a horny frontier lady luring Berger with sex in order to get the reward is more amusing than anything the main plot line has to offer. 

Berger gets the best line of the movie when he guns a bad guy down and says, “He looked for gold, but only found lead!” 

AKA:  Ballad of Death Valley.  AKA:  Sartana in the Valley of Vultures.