Watch And God Said to Cain For Free

Powerful

Just perfect...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

And God said to Cain (E Dio Disse a Caino) is directed by Antonio Margheriti, who also co-writes the screenplay with Giovanni Addessi. It stars Klaus Kinski, Peter Carsten, Marcella Michelangeli, Guido Lollobrigida and Antonio Cantafora. Music is by Carlo Savina and cinematography by Riccardo Pallottini and Luciano Trasatti.When Gary Hamilton (Kinski) receives a pardon from his sentence at a prison work camp, he has only one thing on his mind; revenge on those responsible for his unfair incarceration.A ghost returns and he'll have, he'll have only one desire in his heart, only one thirst: Revenge.How wonderful, a Spaghetti Western/horror hybrid with scary Kinski as an avenging angel good guy! For the first 30 minutes the film looks to be building up a head of steam for a standardised Spaghetti Western, but things shift once Hamilton approaches town and night begins to fall. From here the film plays out as a Gothic horror involving Western characters, resplendent with big creepy mansion set in a shifty looking town that is cloaked in murky moonlight.The whole town teeters on the edge of panic as they know who is coming to visit on this dark night. Atmosphere is tightly coiled as things move in the shadows, windows blow open, strange sounds emanate on the impending storm, and the stench of death is everywhere. A bell tolls ominously, birds flee the vicinity, all while Hamilton moves about the town with deadly silence, even using a network of catacombs under the town that were left over from an aged Indian cemetery.The production value isn't high, but Margheriti maximises what is at his disposal to great ends. The sound effects work is simply terrific, with the shrill of the birds and the dripping water in the caverns playing a tune being particularly striking. There's inventive deaths, sublime scenes (love that rider less horse sequence and the Orson Welles mirror homage) and Kinski being ace as a ghoulish phantom taking a string from the bow of the Count of Monte Cristo.It's also great to find that Margheriti and Addessi give strength to the picture by way of psychological smarts within the characterisations. This is not merely a spooky revenge story, a chance to pile the bodies up, there is substance to the main players, their motives and means, their frailties and family fractures brutally laid bare. The dialogue is sometimes naff, the cliché's of Spaghetti Westerns rife, and of course not all the visual effects work like they should, but this is one moody and memorable movie that is well worth seeking out if you can see a decent enough print of it. 8/10

"And God Said to Cain..." (1969), a Saghetti Western directed by Antonio Margheriti, stars Klaus Kinski, Peter Carsten and Marcella Michelangeli and is the recipient of a startling, innovative script by Antonio Margheriti and Giovanni Addessi that has a hero who prefigures Clint Eastwood in "High Plains Drifter" by being a ghost (or is he?). Even in the transcending, transgressive, aggressive genre splicing of the world of Spagheetti Westerns, this is surprising stuff.The plot has all the hallmarks of tightly-knit Greek tragedy: it takes place in a twenty-four hour time frame as Guy Hamilton (Kinski) mysteriously seeks revenge against the rich, powerful Acombar family.Crows shriek out whenever Hamilton's name is spoken and an ominous storms broods over the landscape; this is not so much a Western as a Horror Western. The explanation, the motivation for Hamilton's insane night of bloodletting is cursory, almost as if the filmmakers felt obliged to try to explain the unexplainable. For the film to succeed then, it has to rest on the strength of Kinski's performance, which is marvelous, a million miles away from his phone-in cameo role in the previous year "If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death". The rest of the cast are admirable and the cinematography by Luciano Trasatti and Riccardo Pallottini and direction are both superb.A Gothic Horror Western that is utterly unexpected, this is diamond that should be displayed much more than it is.

Klaus Kinski is one of the few B list performers I'll go out of my way to see, and this Euro-West feature is a good example of his sinister presence on screen. You'll generally catch him as a villain since he so naturally looks the part, though in "And God Said to Cain' he portrays an anti-hero out for revenge against the man who framed him for a gold robbery during the Civil war. The film is a good one if you stay with the basic premise, but it's sure tough to follow the action as most, probably three quarters of the picture takes place at night. Complicating matters further, Kinski's character, Gary Hamilton, traverses the underground caves of Santa Maria while on his mission of revenge. A conveniently conceived tornado also hits town to lend a further atmospheric dimension to the story, though that doesn't amount to much more than a big wind.The picture provides a couple of cool elements I haven't seen in a Western before, much less the spaghetti variety. The dripping water in the cave in an early scene seemed to provide a natural musical accompaniment to the movements on screen just before Hamilton took out his first victim. Later on, I thought it was pretty clever the way Hamilton made a bell ringer out of Miguel, if you know what I mean.I'm certainly not as well versed on the genre as many of the other posters on this board, and I usually learn a lot about a film by reading what others have to say. What I found most interesting about this film's background was the horror influence inspired by it's director Antonio Margheriti. In the picture, those elements are used to good effect to enhance and build tension in the story. The outcome itself is fairly predictable, so it's up to the ride that gets you there to be as entertaining as possible.

Versatile Italian director Antonio Margheriti appeared as much at home on the range calling the shots on westerns as he did at breeding goose bumps in his horror chillers. Not only did Margheriti helm at least five westerns during his career, including "Dynamite Joe" (1967), "Vengeance" (1968), "And God Said To Cain" (1970), "The Stranger And The Gunfighter" (1974), and "Take A Hard Ride" (1975), but he also made a number of horror movies, too, among them "Horror Castle" (1963), "Castle of Blood" (1964), "Web of the Spider" (1971), "Seven Deaths in a Cat's Eye, " (1973) and "Cannibal Apocalypse" (1980). Mind you, Margheriti did not redefine the western either like Sergio Leone of "A Fistful of Dollars" trilogy or Sergio Corbucci of "Django" did, but he worked within the bounds established by the two Sergios and made some above-average oaters. Margheriti managed something that neither Sergio attempted; he combined western elements with horror elements. All five of Margheriti's westerns are also examples of solid craftsmanship. "And God Said to Cain" stands out as one of his best sagebrushers. This represents the best example of the invincible western hero this side of the grave and spawned Clint Eastwood's supernatural sagebrusher "High Plains Drifter."The Spaghetti western "And God Said to Cain" is a straightforward but powerfully told revenge yarn and its invincible hero wields death with the same finality that Jason and Michael Myers did in the slasher horror movies of the 1980s. This western casts perennial villain Klaus Kinski as its hero. Gary Thompson has been wrongly imprisoned; he has spent ten years of a life sentence in a brutal prison before the U.S. President gives him a pardon. Kinski's performance as a Union officer framed and convicted for a crime he never committed is a portrait in restraint. Since he is the hero of sorts, his dialogue is typically monosyllabic. He totes a Winchester repeating rifle, wears a red shirt, dark pants, boots, and a large black Stetson tilted back on his head like an historic gold rush forty-niner. The Kinski hero here is as inexorable as death itself; his Winchester serves him like the scythe serves Death. He sets out to kill only the bad guys, and he never deviates from his objective. Although he is severely outnumbered, Thompson displays no sign of fear. Somehow, because he is the hero, Gary Thompson manages to be in all the right places at all the right times. He emerges out of nowhere like a Jason or a Michael Myers on the prowl for their next victim and kills without a qualm. Indeed, the West Germany title for "And God Said to Cain" is "Satan der Rache." In the Giovanni Addessi & Antonio Margheriti screenplay, Thompson has payback in mind for Acombar (Peter Carsten of "Dark of the Sun"), the double-crossing polecat who framed him for robbing a stagecoach during the Civil War. While Thompson sweated away in prison, Acombar lived in the lap of luxury. He owns a sprawling house, has an army of henchmen on his payroll, and has enough money to buy off anybody no matter how seemingly influential that they may be. Thompson meets Acombar's son Dick (Antonio Cantafora of "Baron Blood") on a stagecoach and we learn that Dick is fresh out of West Point Military Academy. Young Dick knows nothing about his father's devious past. Once Thompson starts knocking off Acombar's minions, the son discovers that his dad was evil incarnate. From the moment that Thompson launches his attack on Acombar, he never makes a wrong move and he dispatches the villains in cool ways. He exploits the Indian burial caves under the town to appear anywhere and kill. Meanwhile, Acombar earns his villainy. He shoots an unarmed preacher twice in cold blood. He is a son of a bitch. Addessi and Margheriti employ symbolism to good effect. A tornado predicted to be the worst ever experienced sweeps into town about the same time that Thompson arrives; this serves as a metaphorical reference to the inexorable potency of our hero. After Thompson enters town, he jangles Acombar's nerves by having the church bell toll until the white-hat wearing villain is about to go berserk. The bell tolling here is Acombar's conscience just as the heart ticking away to the killer in the famous Poe short-story. These two touches enhance the dramatic value of the film. Furthermore, Margheriti shuns the traditional bells, whistles, and whip crack music that accompanied virtually every Spaghetti western made. The musical cues belong to a horror movie as do the consistently dark interiors and exteriors. Although Kinski is the hero of record, the end credits suggest something entirely different, and the Australian VHS title is "Cain's Revenge." This implies that the heroic Thompson is an anti-hero destined to wander the Earth for an eternity. The chief problem with "And God Said to Cain" is that the DVD versions available in America are abominable. This movie came out as a widescreen film, but the full frame DVD version ruins the artistry of the compositions on every shot. Moreover, the picture quality is abysmal. The action occurs predominantly after dark and the images are so muddy that only the close-ups register with any clarity. If you watch this DVD movie with the lights off, you may not see anything for long stretches. These significant technical flaws aside, "And God Said to Cain" still ranks as a worthwhile western.