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Rating: It may seem strange to pair the adjective horror with an Italian western, but certainly, this famous and controversial film by Giulio Questi fully deserves to be considered as such. The protagonist, a young Tomas Milian (the stranger), is seen roaming the streets of a town gripped by the frenzy of violence and greed for wealth.
Betrayed by a gang of outlaws led by Oaks (Piero Lulli) and shot by them alongside some peasants, he is buried alive; the film begins with the "resurrection" of the stranger from underground, much like a Hammer film. Cared for by two Indians, he sets off with gold bullets in his gun, bullets forged for him by the two Native Americans. The town is inhabited by delirious figures, lunatics, good people who do not hesitate to unleash the most heinous violence as soon as the opportunity arises, and under the yoke of the bandit Zoro. The latter (Roberto Camardiel), elegantly dressed in white, has as his militia a group of cowboys all dressed in black. All homosexual.
When Oaks' gang also arrives in town, they immediately face hard times; the inhabitants view the intruders unfavorably, and it doesn't take much to make havoc of them; some will be immediately hanged, some shot through with bullets and hung upside down, bleeding to death. The only one to resist is Oaks, who will be finished off by the Stranger with his gold bullets. In an attempt to keep him alive, Zoro has him operated on the saloon table. The improvised surgeon extracts one of the gold bullets. Soon all the patrons will stick their fingers into the bullet holes to collect them all, causing Oaks to die...
This is one of the most well-known scenes of this film with a very troubled history: at its release during a premiere, the police intervened for immediate confiscation after someone had a heart attack following another heinous scene.
Reissued under the title "Oro Hondo" and mutilated of its more gruesome parts, it would later see a reissue with the old title and with the reintegration of some of the excluded scenes, sourced from scrap copies, as the originals were destroyed. And this is the version still available today: if you ever watch this film, don't be surprised if from time to time red or blue marks appear on the frames or if there are sudden jumps between images. This film is irretrievable in its original format.
What remains is more than enough to get a clear idea about the content and value of "If You Live, Shoot!"; in the film, the director wanted to recount his experiences as a teenage partisan and illustrate, almost as a form of catharsis, all the atrocities he was forced to witness during the fighting. Even though he was compelled by the production to make a western to exploit the golden trend (...) of those years, with the help of the great Kim Arcalli, fellow craftsman, and fighter, Questi recreates the whole climate of insane morbidity of a country wracked by the crazy anarchy of the second conflict.
It takes just a moment for men to become beasts when left unchecked. The most representative scene of the film, that of the scalp, is the most evident proof of this. Murderous fury, lust for possession, hypocrisy, double-crossing, madness as the last refuge from the horror of reality, rare acts of courage nullified by events, hatred for the different. It is indeed the raw and ruthless morbidity that has made memorable a film that drips with blood as with flaws and imperfections. It is constantly evident that Questi is neither a fan nor a specialist of westerns; inconsistencies, neglected details, implausibilities..., certainly, this film does not lack them.
Yet, despite the various flaws that significantly limit a satisfactorily positive evaluation, "If You Live, Shoot!" also, rather, mainly because of this morbid cruelty, is one of the few important titles of our country's westerns that deserves to be remembered. Even today, and imagine in 1967, certain sequences are a punch in the stomach and not just for the blood or the gutting (the Stranger throws a horse loaded with dynamite against Zoro's gang in a race, causing them all to die among the animal's entrails) but because Questi, aware of the masks into which the faces of the tormentors turn while at work, will have seen a thousand and one times the sadistic contortions of those who practice the overpowering of the defenseless.
The collaboration between Questi and Arcalli will be perfected in the interesting "Death Laid an Egg" (1968), a bizarre story of love and death in a high-tech chicken coop, scored on the spot by the great Bruno Maderna. Already in this horrific spaghetti western, language solutions are tested that will develop in the following film, with the ideal patronage of the nouvelle vague. "If You Live, Shoot!" is certainly not a film for everyone; not only for the horrors, which today might make one smile, but for the extreme and morbid style, not to everyone's taste. A fundamental title, however, for those wanting to know more about the more immediate past of Italian cinema.
The initial sequences where Milian and his comrades are wiped out are excellent: the set was a hill that had just been leveled, and the barren, inhospitable landscape, roasted by an unrelenting sun, allows him and Arcalli to achieve distortions of image, haunting backlights, reversals that establish the film's crazy coordinates.
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