This movie was the final instalment in the Sabata series. The first two films, Sabata and The Return of Sabata, both starred the inimitable Lee van Cleef as the titlaur character: a bounty hunter, soldier of fortune and all-round ultimate anti hero. The third and final instalment had Yul Brynner taking the lead, and although Brynnner's idea of the character was somewhat different to Cleef's interpretation, it nevertheless made for an entertaining performance.

The musical reins for this third outing also changed. The first two movies were scored by Maestro Marcello Giombini, who provided the films with bouncy and catchy sounding scores. For Indio Black, however, director Frank Kramer (Gianfranco Parolini) decided to engage Bruno Nicolai. At this time Nicolai was at the height of his musical prowes, working more than steadily both composing his own scores and also conducting music for composers such as Ennio Morricone, Carlo Rustichelli, Luis Bacalov and Nino Rota.

Nicolai's score is completely different in style to Giombini's works, although it does contain a fairly light and lively guitar theme to accompany the central character. In fact, Nicolai's score is basically made up of assorted themes for all of the characters to be involved in this unlikely but enjoyable scenario romp. It's text book spaghetti western music, containing many of the stock sounds and musical trademarks that are associated with the genre: shrieks, trumpet solos, Alessandro Alessandroni's flawless whistling, tense sounding strings, electric guitar solos and the odd saloon piano along the way. It all comes together as a solid and accomplished work, also featuring many little trills and squeaks to give scenes that extra bit of musical punctuation.

I think I would not be wrong to say that this is possibly one of Nicolai,s best Spaghetti Western scores, packed full to bursting with delightful themes and a real pleasure for any collector of Italian film music. Alessandroni's IL CANTORI MODERNI are also very prominent within the score, working overtime to give Nicolai just that right amount of distinctive vocalising. This is a release that I cannot recommend enough.

Review by John Mansell