Mannaja, l'homme à la hache

Eurocrime regular Maurizio Merli headlines this Italian Western about the title bounty hunter, who wields a hatchet rather than a gun. He comes upon the town of Suttonville, which is presided over by a mining boss, McGowan (Philippe Leroy) who supposedly doesn't allow any sort of "sin" or "vice". Mannaja gets caught up in the affairs of the town, going head to head with the crooked and deadly Voller (European exploitation veteran John Steiner) and seeing to some unfinished business that he has with McGowan.

"Mannaja" is directed by Sergio Martino, who was nothing if not versatile, moving from Gialli ("Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key") to post-apocalypse schlock ("2019: After the Fall of New York"), to the cannibal genre ("Mountain of the Cannibal God"). Martino gives the tale some real style, beginning and ending it with very atmospheric sequences. The violence is pretty vicious, but offsetting a certain grimness is a tendency towards levity at times. A case in point: Johnny-Johnny (Salvatore Puntillo) and his dancing girls. The music further adds to the atmosphere, having been composed by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. Martino gets down to business with an eerie succession of scenes in which outlaw Burt Craven (Donald O'Brien) is pursued by Mannaja.

The charismatic Merli, who does indeed bear a resemblance to the more famous Franco Nero, does a capable job in the lead. He's extremely well supported by Steiner, who looks right at home in this genre; Steiner is a great villain. Leroy, O'Brien, Martine Brochard as dancing girl Angela, and Sonja Jeannine as McGowan's daughter are all fine as well.

Overall, "Mannaja" is pretty good of its type, offering up nice photography, lovely ladies, decent action sequences, a few laughs, and a plot where the hero doesn't always have the upper hand.

Seven out of 10.