Expatriate American actor Craig Hill plays a urbane bounty hunter with a beard in writer & director Juan Bosch's "And The Crows Will Dig Your Grave," a drawn out, routine Spaghetti western, co-starring genre stalwarts Fernando Sancho, Frank Braña and Antonio Molino Rojo. Like typical European sagebrushers, this trigger-happy tale shows lots of guys getting gunned down. There is a scene where the chief villain wraps up a bare-chested hombre with barbed wire to torture him. This looks like a medium budget oater. We never see a train or railway tracks. Long-time Ennio Morricone collaborator Bruno Nicolai provided the orchestral score, but this doesn't rank as one of his better efforts. Furthermore, the action doesn't occur on sun-drenched deserts but instead on sagebrush covered hills. The main theme is revenge because the hero is out to kill the dastard who murdered his wife. This issue comes up about three-fourths of the way through when our hero's adversity appears.
The Wells Fargo Company is furious that outlaws have been terrorizing their coaches on a regular basis, with no end in sight, so they obtain government authorization to hire guards. The desperado Glenn Kovac (Frank Braña of "Once Upon a Time in the West") has been the scourge of the company, and Jeff Sullivan (Craig Hill of "Siege at Red River") bribes a contractor who uses prisoners to release an inmate, Dan Barker (Ángel Aranda of "From Hell to Victory"), into his custody. As it turns out, the guards had brutally beaten up Barker when he came to the aid of a fallen prisoner. Meantime, another prisoner took advantage of the distraction that Barker created and tried to flee from the work gang. Unfortunately, a sharp-shooting guard shot him down. Jeff tells Ted Solomon (Joaquín Díaz of "Dynamite Jim"), the man who works the prisoners, to report Barker as dead, shot down like the other prisoner in an attempt to escape. Initially, Jeff has trouble holding onto Barker. Barker escapes and Sullivan must recapture him on more than one occasion. The first time Barker disarms Jeff while the latter is trying to offer him a drink of water after he has gotten him out of prison. These two tangle on a repeated basis. Afterward, Barker sets out to find who informed on him and had him sent to jail. Pancho Corrales (Fernando Sanchez of "A Pistol for Ringo") is also on the trail of Kovac for Wells Fargo. He captures Barker at one point and interrogates him. Corrales uses barbed wire which he has strapped across Barker's chest will loosen his tongue. The reason Sullivan paid Solomon a thousand dollars for Barker's release is Barker is Kovac's half-brother. Clearly, if anybody can find Kovac, Barker is the right man.
The primary problem with "And The Crows Will Dig Your Grave" is the delayed entrance of Kovac. Most of the time is spent on the repetitive back and forth action, with Sullivan losing and then recovering Barker. This reminded me of the Lee Van Cleef & Tomas Milan western "The Big Gundown." The narrative focuses to a greater depth on Ángel Aranda's Barker instead of either Sullivan or Kovac. "And The Crows Will Dig Your Grave" qualifies as a high plains potboiler for Spaghetti western completists. Sancho is at his loquacious best as a secondary villain. only.
The Wells Fargo Company is furious that outlaws have been terrorizing their coaches on a regular basis, with no end in sight, so they obtain government authorization to hire guards. The desperado Glenn Kovac (Frank Braña of "Once Upon a Time in the West") has been the scourge of the company, and Jeff Sullivan (Craig Hill of "Siege at Red River") bribes a contractor who uses prisoners to release an inmate, Dan Barker (Ángel Aranda of "From Hell to Victory"), into his custody. As it turns out, the guards had brutally beaten up Barker when he came to the aid of a fallen prisoner. Meantime, another prisoner took advantage of the distraction that Barker created and tried to flee from the work gang. Unfortunately, a sharp-shooting guard shot him down. Jeff tells Ted Solomon (Joaquín Díaz of "Dynamite Jim"), the man who works the prisoners, to report Barker as dead, shot down like the other prisoner in an attempt to escape. Initially, Jeff has trouble holding onto Barker. Barker escapes and Sullivan must recapture him on more than one occasion. The first time Barker disarms Jeff while the latter is trying to offer him a drink of water after he has gotten him out of prison. These two tangle on a repeated basis. Afterward, Barker sets out to find who informed on him and had him sent to jail. Pancho Corrales (Fernando Sanchez of "A Pistol for Ringo") is also on the trail of Kovac for Wells Fargo. He captures Barker at one point and interrogates him. Corrales uses barbed wire which he has strapped across Barker's chest will loosen his tongue. The reason Sullivan paid Solomon a thousand dollars for Barker's release is Barker is Kovac's half-brother. Clearly, if anybody can find Kovac, Barker is the right man.
The primary problem with "And The Crows Will Dig Your Grave" is the delayed entrance of Kovac. Most of the time is spent on the repetitive back and forth action, with Sullivan losing and then recovering Barker. This reminded me of the Lee Van Cleef & Tomas Milan western "The Big Gundown." The narrative focuses to a greater depth on Ángel Aranda's Barker instead of either Sullivan or Kovac. "And The Crows Will Dig Your Grave" qualifies as a high plains potboiler for Spaghetti western completists. Sancho is at his loquacious best as a secondary villain. only.