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“Don’t Turn The Other Cheek”: Eli Wallach & Franco Nero pal up in this 1971 action comedy spaghetti western In keeping with the politically tumultuous nature of the late ‘60s, the Spaghetti Western went through a transition that reflected the feelings of the time. No longer were the targets of the person (“the lone gunman who rides into town and cleans up” made popular by Leone’s Dollars trilogy in 1964 and was later aped by every Italian genre filmmaker) significant. Instead, the plight of individuals, the group, was seen as means more commercially feasible (at least by some producers, straight shoot ‘em ups were still the general order of the day). Hence the filmmakers determined to allegorically set their politically-charged vehicles during Mexico’s early 20th century revolution. DON'T 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 stories about peons taking up arms against their corrupt authorities, normally with a roughish foreign character (generally a mercenary) managing the proceeding, who, by picture’s ending, has either shed his cynical attitudes towards “the cause” and sided with the common people 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 dad 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 nevertheless manages to be political with its loud apolitical stand. The most accessible of these Italozapata entries are Sergio Corbucci’s (the director behind Django) The Mercenary (1968) and its lighter but nevertheless agenda filled remake, Compa