Place Called Glory City (1965) User Reviews

Average and slow-moving Chorizo/Schnitzel Western co-produced by Spain and Germany

[ma-cortes · 5/10 · 9 September 2012]

In Glory , ¨the fastest growing city in the West , only the fastest guns square off in¨ , as population pay to see a man kill gunfighters . Today, founder's day they'll pay to see a man kill another man . There appears former rancher Clint Brenner (Lex Barker) and the younger Reese (Pierre Brice) , his equal in skill at gun-fighting to participate in ¨Brenner versus Deakes¨ duel . Both of them help farmer Seth Grande (George Rigaud) free the locals of Manitoba town Glory City from land baron Jack Villaine's (Gerard Tichy) and his hoodlums (Antonio Molino Rojo, Aldo Sambrell) who rule a kingdom of terror. Needing money , both of whom arrange a showdown for paid entrance and the winner take all . They're got to face a gunfight once more to live up to their legend once more to win just once more time and more money . The two gunmen get a friendship on the job but ignore they'll be pitted as adversaries in the town's founder's day popular duel by last-minute blind substitution . The excitement starts at the duel when the hands point straight up . They've nothing like'em together in a duel but in the heat and hate of the small town nothing can tear'em apart . Thus, a little town square will become the scenario of the most spectacular duel ever attempted . Two men who faced many guns together , now face each other . In Glory You Either Ended Up In The Money.. Or In The Ground! Who will survive and what will be left of them? .

Die Weiße Hölle Von Manitoba or Sfida a Glory City is a Paella/Schnitzel Western produced by Miguel Echarri and Artur Brauner , it concerns upon a gun-battle pits among two individualist characters . It is an average story with excessive dialog and in Tortilla Western sub-genre style , but the movie follows more the US models than Spaghetti wake . As it results to be a familiar film , with no much violence , exception some brief shootouts . It's a serious German/Spanish Western with particular character studio about two gunslingers become friends, but also seeking money and unable to avoid their reputation and the duel-challenges . The film was starred by two intimate actors , Pierre Brice , famous Winnitou , and his endearing partner Old Shatterhand /Lex Barker , both of whom unforgettable starring of German Karl May series . The lion's share of the acting meat deservedly goes to George Rigaud and Gerard Ticy , the good guy and bad guy respectively . Many other familiar faces from Chorizo/Spaghetti , there appears ordinary secondaries in Spanish/Italian Western such as Aldo Sambrell , Carlos Casaravilla , Luis Barboo , Santiago Ontañon , Angel Del Pozo and Victor Israel , among others . Furthermore , three secondary players from Leone's A fistful of dollars as Marianne Koch , Wolfgang Lukschy and Antonio Molino Rojo . Acceptable cinematography by Federico G. Laraya , filmed on location in Almeria , Andalucía, and Balcázar western village, Barcelona, Cataluña , Spain . Atmospheric musical score by Angel Arteaga following American style more than Morricone sounds . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Sheldon Reynolds . He produced and directed some episodes about Sherlock Holmes , as he acquired a license to produce and direct adaptations of the Sherlock stories, and successfully formed a consortium which acquired the rights at auction. Reynolds also filmed some thriller as ¨Assignment kill¨ , ¨Carnival's killer¨ and ¨Foreign intrigue¨ . ¨A place called Glory¨ resulted to be his only and mediocre Western .

Slow-paced Spanish western with a big anticlimax

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 21 September 2017]

A PLACE CALLED GLORY is a somewhat tame and slow-paced western adventure made as a collaboration between West Germany and Spani. Lex Barker is the dashing hero of the piece, a top gunslinger called in to rescue a town from the machinations of an evil ranch owner and his big gang of gunmen. Barker teams up with a fellow marksman to do the job, but the two are to be pitted against one another in a fateful competition.

This nondescript western has the requisite action scenes but they come few and far between. Barker is on autopilot as is the director, who often lets the pace flag with boring romantic discussions and the like. The worst part of the film is the ending, a complete anticlimax which dashes all of the viewer's best expectations.

Brice and Barker outside of May

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 12 July 2016]

"Die Hölle von Manitoba" or "Glory City", and there are many more German-language and English-language titles for this film, is a West German 90-minute movie from 1965, so this one had its 50th anniversary last year already. The two stars in here are both familiar faces as this film came out when Pierre Brice and Lex Barker starred in the Winnetou / old Shatterhand franchise. This film here is also a western, but has nothing to do with Karl May. The writers who adapted the novel are Spanish and that's why it is also a Spanish co-production. The original writer as well as the director Sheldon Reynolds are American. As a whole, I would say that this was a pretty generic western film. Nothing about it stands really out, even if I must say that Barker is as charismatic as always and Brice is probably giving a better performance than in the Winnetou films. However, the story is just very stereotypical and offers little that is not entirely forgettable. A lot of the film has to do with friendship. The relationship between the two protagonists is one of the better aspects of the movie. On the downside though, the antagonist(s) and most of the plot are entirely forgettable. The ending also feels like style over substance. And just like the Winnetou films, this film here also lacks shade completely in terms of the characters. They are either all good or downright evil. I do not recommend the watch, except you are a real die-hard western fan. Thumbs down from me. Oh yeah, final note: It's a color movie, not to be taken for granted half a century ago, but Barker/Brice weren't doing black-and-white films, at least not at this point.

A PLACE CALLED GLORY - Euro-western with two charismatic stars

[BrianDanaCamp · 24 November 2002]

A PLACE CALLED GLORY is a European western, produced by Spanish and German companies, starring an American and a Frenchman, with Germans, Spaniards and Italians in the cast, under the direction of an American director working with a largely Spanish-Italian crew. It played theatrically in America in 1966 some months before Sergio Leone's groundbreaking A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, starring Clint Eastwood, became the first "spaghetti western" to get wide release in the U.S. (In New York City, A PLACE CALLED GLORY opened at a 42nd Street theater on a double bill with MINNESOTA CLAY, an earlier Italian western which starred Cameron Mitchell.)

As Euro-westerns go, A PLACE CALLED GLORY is fair to middling entertainment, offering a simple plot, two appealing heroes, some rough-edged villains, and just enough confrontations, shootouts and fistfights to keep the audience's attention until the cop-out ending. The plot comes in two distinct parts. The title town, Glory, sponsors an annual gunfight between two top gunslingers. A mysterious Frenchman (Pierre Brice) shows up to tell the Mayor that he has recently killed one of the scheduled gunfighters and now intends to take his place in the contest. The action then shifts to another town, Powder City, where the Frenchman goes to bide his time. He befriends one Clint Brenner (Lex Barker) without knowing that Clint is the other contestant in the gunfight. The two gunfighters are reluctantly enlisted in the cause of rancher Seth Grande, who has opened up his land to homesteaders and now faces the wrath of rival landowner Joe Vallone, who has hired killers and thugs to push the homesteaders away. Clint had once romanced Seth's daughter, Jade (Marianne Koch), who is now involved with Vallone. Eventually, Clint and the Frenchman take on Vallone and his gang. During all this time, the upcoming gunfight is never mentioned and seems to have been forgotten about entirely.

At about the 65-minute mark, the situation in Powder City is resolved and the action shifts back to Glory and the impending showdown, staged amidst thousands of bloodthirsty spectators. There is some clever staging on display in scenes of the townspeople scrambling for prime viewing spots as the two gunmen slowly stride down the town streets until they turn around the corners from which they'll face each other, presumably for the first time, building up to a contrived, unsatisfying ending. The fact that such a public gladiatorial event, a battle to the death, has absolutely no precedent in western history did not deter the filmmakers. In fact, the idea was later picked up by Hollywood for a western entitled A GUNFIGHT (1971), starring Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash.

The film gets by largely on the charms of its two rugged stars, Lex Barker and Pierre Brice. Curiously, Barker walks around for the entire film without a hat, something no other self-respecting western star ever did. Brice, clad in black, has handsome continental looks and bears a passing resemblance to Dean Martin. Barker, a former Hollywood Tarzan, had by this time become a top star in Germany and had co-starred with Brice in a popular series of German westerns based on the novels of Karl May in which Barker played pioneer Old Shatterhand while Brice played his Indian sidekick, Winnetou.

Among the other cast members of A PLACE CALLED GLORY are a few performers who were also in Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (which was filmed in 1964, but not released in the U.S. until 1967). Marianne Koch, who plays Jade here, was the female lead, Marisol, in Leone's film. Wolfgang Lukschy had played the patriarch, Baxter, in FISTFUL and plays the watchful bartender here. Another FISTFUL alumnus, Italian western regular Aldo Sambrell, is on hand as one of Vallone's ill-fated gang. Veteran Eurocult actors Jorge Rigaud and Gerard Tichy appear as the rival ranchers, Grande and Vallone, respectively.

Stupid

[christopherlogan-20923 · 2/10 · 17 October 2021]

This is a stupid movie. C'mon a padded gunfight for a town celebration.?

Can't even tell good guys and bad guys half the time

What idiot wrote this Garbage.

Preparing to Kill or be Killed

[Equinox23 · 10/10 · 13 June 2017]

The thing that intrigued me about this movie was the character of Clint Brenner and Lex Barker's portrayal of him. Of course there are the usual Western clichés like a range war, the loner coming to town, one man facing a whole gang of hired guns or even the gunslinger fight at the end. Though this one has a nice twist, in that it is an annual prize fight leaving one contestant dead held by the obviously sensationalist, voyeuristic and bloodthirsty population of the town of Glory.

Back to Clint Brenner, one of the gunslingers: He is the essential loner who in a rather funny dialogue verbatim expresses that he chooses not to get involved with other people. Nevertheless he is no sociopath, he has got humour and he gets along with people, he even helps them if it cannot be avoided. What might be a deficit, the fact that it is never explained how and why he got to dislike human company, (there are some hints though) is rather an advantage because the focus is now on how opens up again. In the end there is one, maybe two or three relationships he has got. Two scenes are really outstanding in this context. The first is when the wounded Jade tries to ask him to abandon the fight and Lex Barker's facial expression, especially his eyes, grows suddenly very hard and unforgiving when only the moment before he was very soft. His whole demeanor is saying that he won't discuss this with anybody. The second scene is him lying on the bed just before the fight staring at the ceiling and giving the impression that he is pretty well aware of the fact, that this whole business will boil down on either him killing somebody or him being killed, with every implication this might hold. I also love how this is contrasted with Reese', his opponents, preparations. He is almost carelessly easy and light-hearted about it.

A big bore of a Euro western

[Wizard-8 · 17 May 2015]

"A Place For Glory" was picked up for American theatrical distribution by a major Hollywood distributor. After watching it, I am at a loss as to try and explain why and how this movie got such special treatment. Normally I love Euro westerns, but I found this one to be a gigantic bore, probably because no Italians were involved (the movie was a co-production between Germany and Spain.) If you are looking for action, you better forget it - it takes more than half of the movie before the movie has its first scene that could be considered a true action sequence. And none of the action is particularly exciting under the direction of Sheldon Reynolds. In fact, the material between the action sequences is also tough to sit through since it's so slow and boring. In fairness to Reynolds, the script he had to work with was badly written. The story moves at a crawl, and although I read the plot synopsis on the back of the DVD case before watching the movie, I was more often than not bewildered and wondering what exactly was going on. The credits state that Fernando Lamas was one of the screenwriters. I can only say thank goodness that Lamas' son Lorenzo was not the writer.