Lee Eisenberg
Sergio Corbucci's "Minnesota Clay" puts a spin on the spaghetti western genre. Here the protagonist (Cameron Mitchell) is losing his sight as he escapes jail and seeks revenge on the man who wronged him. There's a lot of the stuff that we expect to see in spaghetti westerns. To be certain, Corbucci went on to direct "Django", which inspired Quentin Tarantino's 2012 homage. But the important point is that the European* westerns - depicting a gritty, dismal Old West - were a rejection of the John Wayne mold (which made the Old West look immaculate and wholesome). I suspect that "Minnesota Clay" was a fun movie to make.*It wasn't just western Europe that made westerns. The Eastern Bloc also made them. An example was "The Sons of Great Bear" from East Germany.
TankGuy
I am reviewing Minnesota Clay,it's my eighth spaghetti western review in the new series.Minnesota Clay is one of the very first spaghetti westerns,being released at the time of Sergio Leones dollars trilogy.This is ironic since it uses the same locations as A fistful of dollars (notice the town) and the plot is nearly the same(two rival outlaw gangs fighting each other and a lone gunslinger in the middle of it all),but this is a very entertaining cowboy picture that never fails to disappoint.The photography is brilliantly done and the shots of horses running and roaming around the country side are excellent,such shots makes this 1960s spaghetti western fell like a 1950s American B western,but that's a good thing.The acting is good and Cameron Mitchell is excellent at playing Clay,the character of Clay is similar to Clint Eastwoods man with no name and Mitchell plays Clay with brutal bitterness which is nearly the same as how Clint Eastwood plays in the dollars trilogy.There's a decent amount of action including a large shootout at a ranch which showcases a lot of kills from the main characters and there's a brilliant duel at the end in which Clay takes down the bad guys.The story does drag a little bit and the ending is quite abrupt,but still very good.I highly recommend this to any western fan,if you can ever get your hands on it,then do.Keep checking my account for more spaghetti western reviews.
JohnWelles
"Minnesota Clay" (1964) was one of the earliest Spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Corbucci; in two years time he would make the iconic and notorious "Django" and in 1968, he made the best non-Sergio Leone Spaghetti: "The Great Silence". But this is early days for the director, before cynicism and boredom seeped into his love of making Westerns. Shot around the same time as Leone's groundbreaking "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), but released later, it shares the two gangs warring over a town theme, as well as the bandits being separated by race: the white, American Fox (Georges Riviere) and the Mexican Ortiz (Fernando Sancho); but this is the only similarity (which had been copied from Akira Kurosawa's samurai film "Yojimbo" [1961], which in turn had been inspired by the pulp writings of the brilliant Dashiell Hammett and his novel "The Glass Key" [1931]) and while nowhere near the greatness of Leone's Western, this is still a remarkably good movie.The plot (by Adriano Bolzoni and Corbucci) though, is clichéd ridden: Minnesota Clay (Cameron Mitchell) escapes from prison after being framed by the devious Fox; returning to his hometown, Clay discovers that it is overrun by two gangs: Fox's and Ortiz's and then proceeds to clear the place up, even though his eyesight is failing terribly.However, despite these script constraints, Corbucci directs some brilliant action, in particularly the climatic gunfight in the dark. He seems to be having fun with scenes like this, and it's not hard to see why. Riviere and Sancho honourably excused, the acting is mostly very poor. Mitchell is variable throughout, although his performance during the finale is very good. The music by Piero Piccioni is however, excellent and the photography by Jose Fernandz Aguayo is also pretty good. It may be finally floored, but this is still a worthy addition to the Spaghetti Western genre.
FightingWesterner
Quick draw Cameron Mitchell escapes a federal hard labor camp and returns to his old stomping ground to find the man who could have exonerated him of murder charges, where he reconnects with his estranged daughter, and tangles with two rival gangs, all while contending with his own failing eyesight.The second western directed by Italian favorite Sergio Corbucci, this isn't as good as some of his later work. Still, it's a solid western that's handsomely produced and a lot of fun to watch, with some good gun-play and a memorable title character, effectively portrayed by Mitchell.The climax where Minnesota Clay battles the heavies using only his sense of hearing is quite entertaining.
AD
