Have a Good Funeral, My Friend... Sartana Will Pay

After missing a sequel, Gianni Garko is back for Have a Good Funeral, My Friend... Sartana Will Pay. Sporting a blonde horseshoe moustache and a much paler, sickly complexion, the actor now looks more like a boozy, middle-aged Rutger Hauer and less a time displaced Iain Glen. Despite Garko's reappearance, Giuliano Carnimeo's film still has no room for Sartana as a supernatural proposition, instead Have a Good Funeral's portrayal leans further into the assured, high-stakes gambler persona that previous sequels corrected to. Sartana is also firmly grounded by, not just the film's gold rush back-stabbing, but - in a first for the series - human, sexual desire.

Sartana's influence on Daniela Giordano's Abigail Benson is such that the heiress takes to emulating the cowboy's ostentatious-but-grim outfit in a combative coda that suggests a Sister Sartana spin-off that, unfortunately, never came to be. Despite this missed opportunity, Have a Good Funeral is still one of the better Sartana entries. Carnimeo's film demonstrates a firmer grasp on its upheavals, deploying twists and treachery in ways that excite rather than baffle. As always, everyone is on the make, from George Wang's Fu-Manchu-in-repose casino owner to Indian Creek's bank managers and law enforcement. Bounty Killers are incompetents, smuggled in from rival productions, as if to prove Sartana's supremacy over the Spaghetti Western prairie. As always, Garko's gunslinger navigates these dangers with ease, gleefully forking out for increasingly flowery burials as the bodies pile up.