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“Don’t Turn The Other Cheek”: Eli Wallach & Franco Nero pal up in this 1971 action-comedy spaghetti western The Spaghetti Western went through a transition that represented the feelings of the time in keeping with the politically tumultuous nature of the late ‘60s. No longer were the targets of the individual (“the lone gunman who rides into town and cleans up” made popular by Leone’s Dollars trilogy in 1964 and was subsequently aped by every Italian genre filmmaker) important. Instead, the circumstances of the folks, the group, was seen as way more commercially feasible (at least by some producers, straight shoot ‘em ups were still the general order of the day). Thus the filmmakers determined to allegorically establish their politically-charged vehicles during Mexico’s early 20th century revolution. DO NOT TURN THE OTHER CHEEK 7 Unlike the vicarious fantasy of the avenging angel oaters most of these, so-called “Zapata westerns” prided themselves in telling no nonsense narratives about peons taking up arms against their corrupt authorities, typically with a roughish foreign character (usually a mercenary) managing the proceedings, who, by picture’s end, has either shed his skeptical approaches towards “the cause” and sided with the common folk or doesn’t …and pays the price for it (see 1966’s A Bullet For The General). DON'T TURN THE OTHER CHEEK 11 The daddy of the genre himself, Sergio Leone got in on this fleeting fad when he unwillingly (but that’s another narrative) helmed the sadly underrated Duck You Sucker (1971), a Zapata Western that condemns the revolution and violent confrontation but nonetheless manages to be political with its loud apolitical stance. The most accessible of these Italo Zapata entries are Sergio Corbucci’s (the director behind Django) The Mercenary (1968) and its lighter but however program filled remake, Compa