Giuliano Carnimeo and Gianni Garko's Italian western series concludes with Light the Fuse... Sartana is Coming, yet another entry that starts off strong before rambling off into complete nonsense. Light the Fuse's opening act briefly swings the character back towards spectral unease by having him saunter into shot just as a couple of corrupt peace keepers murder a Judge. Naturally, Sartana intervenes before turning himself in at the nearest penitentiary - a collection of barred, blistering pits, dug into the earth then filled up with lawbreakers.
This prison setting allows Carnimeo to explore a previous untapped knack for cruelty. Sartana is urinated on after asking for water and an uncooperative inmate is doused with acid in an attempt to loosen his tongue. Although not unusual for Italian Westerns, this sadism is quite surprising for Sartana, a shoot-out series that doesn't otherwise dwell on injury or the application of pain. Gunshots, rather than blowing meaty holes through men, tend to either strike them dead or, when somebody is making a point, graze their skin.
Unfortunately this tougher framing doesn't hold, soon Sartana is breezing through the usual double-crosses, far more excited about a shuffling automaton named Alfie - a wind-up toy designed to look like a racist caricature of an Apache warrior containing, variously, a lighter, a flamethrower and, finally, dynamite. An assassin with a custom, silenced Derringer stalks the town where Sartana is conducting his investigation but, somehow, the two never really cross paths to any significant degree. For the finale, Sartana makes good on a promise (from earlier in the film) to open a music hall. The man in black unpacking a pipe organ-cum-howitzer to conduct a symphony of carnage for an advancing, hapless, cavalry.
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