Dead Aim starts with a pursuit throw the desert as we have a man chasing the woman he loves on horseback who has fled with his son with another man. The pursuit leaves the two men dead and the mother to die in the desert. The orphaned baby is discovered by John Applebee (James Westerfield) a gravedigger who takes the orphan in and raises him as his own after saving him from a rattlesnake. The boy grows up to be Johnny (Glen Lee) and together they both travel the west making money off of varies corpses. And when business is slow, Johnny begins to generate business himself by shooting people. While Applebee promises Johnny of a rich life were the two will have there own funeral parlor and cemetery, Johnny soon has other plans when he discovers a former prostitute (Venetia Vianello) and her dirty outlaw lover (Virgil Frye), and soon falls in love with her. He soon leaves to find her with the help of a black renegade soldier (Evaristo Márquez).
Apparently this rather obscure little western was a Mexican-Italian co-production witch was best I could tell filmed around 1970-71 and was shown at the 1971 Venice Film Festival as Arde baby, arde and was later re-edited and given a release in 1975. The story itself is defiantly a interesting one and I love the fact that you have two men just roaming the desert looking for corpses to make money off of, the opening pursuit gunfight mixed with the baby and the rattlesnake sets the film up nicely, however it never really manages to extend itself beyond that, at about a half hour in turns into a jumbled up mess of subplots that while eventually they do come together in the final, just turn into a highly in cohesive watching experience, it was almost like they had two or three different screenplays and just molded them together. What is also worth noting is the blaxploitation style soundtrack which is very offbeat for a western, there is also a closing credits song entitled "Where's Love" which is also a very odd music choice for a western film, there is also this rattlesnake sound effect sting which plays every time our protagonist is pressured into a gunfight. The main thing behind Dead Aim is it features the final film appearance of legendary actor James Westerfield who apparently died of a heart attack shortly after it was made. He is rather enjoyable as the offbeat nutty gravedigger. Our main protagonist Glen Lee doesn't show a lot of charisma as our anti-hero, even tho its crazy how much he looks and sounds just like Peter Fonda. And Virgil Frye who was a former boxer and went on to have a decent career in both television and low budget films (most might know him as the father of Soleil Moon Frye aka Punky Brewster) is good here as our bad guy even tho he really isn't given much to do and is sadly probably only in the film for a total of 7 minutes at best.
All in all Dead Aim is a very odd viewing experience, it has a good idea behind it but it suffers from a script that is a mess, bad editing, and poor execution. As a fan myself of low budget b westerns i'm glad I got to see it and own it in my collection, but, normal fans of the genre will probably just find it odd and boring. Its available threw numerous dvd releases, and as of this review its also available on YouTube.
Apparently this rather obscure little western was a Mexican-Italian co-production witch was best I could tell filmed around 1970-71 and was shown at the 1971 Venice Film Festival as Arde baby, arde and was later re-edited and given a release in 1975. The story itself is defiantly a interesting one and I love the fact that you have two men just roaming the desert looking for corpses to make money off of, the opening pursuit gunfight mixed with the baby and the rattlesnake sets the film up nicely, however it never really manages to extend itself beyond that, at about a half hour in turns into a jumbled up mess of subplots that while eventually they do come together in the final, just turn into a highly in cohesive watching experience, it was almost like they had two or three different screenplays and just molded them together. What is also worth noting is the blaxploitation style soundtrack which is very offbeat for a western, there is also a closing credits song entitled "Where's Love" which is also a very odd music choice for a western film, there is also this rattlesnake sound effect sting which plays every time our protagonist is pressured into a gunfight. The main thing behind Dead Aim is it features the final film appearance of legendary actor James Westerfield who apparently died of a heart attack shortly after it was made. He is rather enjoyable as the offbeat nutty gravedigger. Our main protagonist Glen Lee doesn't show a lot of charisma as our anti-hero, even tho its crazy how much he looks and sounds just like Peter Fonda. And Virgil Frye who was a former boxer and went on to have a decent career in both television and low budget films (most might know him as the father of Soleil Moon Frye aka Punky Brewster) is good here as our bad guy even tho he really isn't given much to do and is sadly probably only in the film for a total of 7 minutes at best.
All in all Dead Aim is a very odd viewing experience, it has a good idea behind it but it suffers from a script that is a mess, bad editing, and poor execution. As a fan myself of low budget b westerns i'm glad I got to see it and own it in my collection, but, normal fans of the genre will probably just find it odd and boring. Its available threw numerous dvd releases, and as of this review its also available on YouTube.