“One After Another” Spaghetti Western

One After Another 1968, Italian title: Adios, Caballero

One After Another is an Italian western I recommend over a lot of others, and I’m a fan of practically all spaghetti westerns. Like other Italian movies, it has more than one English title, not to mention various foreign language titles. Its also known to English speakers as Day After Tomorrow. German viewers know it as Von Django – mit den besten Empfehlungen, one of a long line of Italian westerns with “Django” in the title. The original Django(1966) starred Franco Nero and spawned dozens of movies with the name “Django” in the title that had nothing to do with Django. The main character in One After Another is Stan Ross, played by Richard Harrison. Harrison was a cop in another cool Italian movie called Beast with a Gun, aka The Mad Dog Killer.

One After Another has a similar plot to Fistful of Dollars(1964) which, itself, was based on another movie, Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. A stranger rides into town and is hired by two rival factions that he ends up playing against each other. In this movie it’s a crooked bank owner vs a Mexican gang, which Stan Ross becomes partial to. The movie starts out with the bank owner being blackmailed into robbing his own bank to pay off the Mexicans, part of whose share of money he previously ripped off in another heist. The bank owner, along with his own underhanded cronies who disguise themselves in Mexican garb, preempt the scheduled robbery of his own bank and blames it on the Mexicans. In the robbery, a bank teller is shot in the back by the bank owner, and Stan Ross, a mysterious stranger whose relation to the bank employee is unknown, comes into town to avenge his death. Ross is hired by the bank owner to kill the nephew of the Mexican gang leader because he was a witness to the robbery, which Ross is not aware of. When Ross sneaks into the Mexican lair to kill the nephew he ends up striking a deal with the Mexicans.

Usually in movies there are 5 main parts to the story, the inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, conclusion, and resolution. The resolution in One After Another stood out among hundreds of movies I’ve seen in that it wasn’t just an add-on summation but answered questions viewers had throughout the whole movie, had an unexpected twist, and led the ending in another direction. I finished watching the movie feeling that it was an unexpectedly rewarding experience. Watching the trailer above.