MAY GOD FORGIVE YOU… BUT I WON’T! (1968)
“The Second Coming of Cjamango: May God Forgive You… But I Won’t! (1968)”
May God Forgive You… But I Won’t! (1968)
Directed by Vincenzo Musolino (billed as Glenn Vincent Davis)
also known as: Chiedi pardon a Duo… non a me (Italy); Django - Den Colt an der Kehle (Germany); Cjamango The Revenge (US)
Although not another of the countless, retitled exports to bear the name Django (at least everywhere else but Germany), May God Forgive… does trade-in on some audience association for a lesser-known Italian western creation with a similar name. Vincenzo Musolino, co-writer of 1967’s Cjamango, takes the reins on this “vengeance-over-slaughtered-family” retread, with George Ardisson replacing Ivan Rassimov as the laconic cipher known as Cjamango.
The lede is severely buried that it’s a semi-sequel, even if the idea is so cursorily applied. (The change in actors doesn’t help.) Here, Musolino reconfigures his hero to carry a filial duty to his father (Armando Guarnieri), but also protective affection over sister Jane (Czech-born Susanna Martinková) and brother (uncredited). After the fiery abstract imagery in the opening credits that jibe together well with the adequately upbeat score by Felice Di Stefano, this edit (more on that later) opens with a cheerful Cjamango greeting the day and enjoying morning pleasantries with Jane and the rest of the family. He’s on his way to town to make the final mortgage payment on the MacDonald Ranch - unaware that there are some venal actions in play courtesy of the wheelchair-bound Stuart Ranch patriarch (Luigi Pavese).
Stuart (Pavese) was crippled after losing a quick-draw with Cjamango’s father, and so he’s been (understandably) nursing a grudge for the MacDonalds ever since. And there’s the added drama of Stuart’s daughter - Virginia (Cristina Iosani, from Corbucci’s Navajo Joe) - being Cjamango’s true love. Cjamango’s father shooting her dear old dad put a damper on any impending nuptials, so he keeps a fair distance, even when they randomly meet on the main stretch of town. It’s a typical Hatfield and the McCoys scenario - MacDonald vs. the Stuart clan. But the Stuart clan wipes out the MacDonald’s in one fell swoop, murdering them while Cjamango is out conducting business.
Cjamango discovers the massacre upon his return, but the film abruptly cuts to the next day. He visits the Stuart Ranch to rightfully claim the MacDonald Ranch deed, and inform them of the bad news, unaware that it was Stuart and right-hand-man Scott (Jean Louis) who had everything to do with it. Luckily for our hero, a jocular Mexican bandit named Barrica (Ignazio Spalla) was traveling through the mountains, overheard the bloodshed, and stuck around to see who the culprits were. Barrica soon makes Cjamango’s acquaintance and gives him the information, clearing the way for Cjamango to seek revenge on the parties who have wronged him.
Like several spaghetti westerns before and after, the two set out on a series of encounters.
At a saloon-set poker game, Cjamango buys in. Barrica points out a petulant man (Omero Gargano) with a spider-like mustache as one of the offenders. Cjamango keeps everyone at the table in suspense but doesn’t waste time. After the first hand, he claims to be the winner of the pot. The other players look and see he hasn’t even glanced at his cards. Instead, in his left hand, he brandishes a photo of his massacred family. The players slowly stand, but the mustachioed man knows what’s coming. Cjamango stays seated and blasts away at everyone in a cold-hearted swift move of vengeance. As everyone’s actions are purely profit-motivated in these films, Barrica is revealed to be a conniving vulture, out collecting the bodies shot down by Cjamango. Before they’re even cold, he’s got them at the undertaker’s, ready to be measured.
Tableau Two: Another outlaw crucially involved in the murder of Cjamango’s family - Chico (Tano Cimarosa) and his girlfriend rapturously roll around in bed, laughing at nothing in particular. Nothing too graphic - this is 1968 after all - but Cjamango breaks it up. He questions the man, almost appears to have mercy before Chico throws a knife at his head. Ducking, he reverts to his newfound blood-thirst - offering a “Take a good look, it’s your last” and the defiant delivery of the movie’s title. Cjamango brandishes a gun and brutishly sticks it in his mouth. He unflinchingly pulls the trigger, there’s an awkward cutaway, and Chico’s body falls, bloodily, at his feet. When he departs, Barrica appears, offering crocodile tears to the woman who was with Chico, unsure as to hurriedly grab the body or ogle her sizeable breasts.
The third scene with another heretofore unseen character: Jack Smart (Peter Martell) is filthy drunk at a bar, insisting the bartender get him another bottle. He resembles nothing so much as David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider with a similar leather look. His ex-girlfriend (Lilli Lembo) is upstairs with brother Dick Smart (Serbian actor Dragomir Bojanic-Gidra, aka Anthony Ghidra), and it’s predictibly making him nasty. Dick Smart soon comes down the stairs, exits, and then there’s the sliver of opportunity for him to take his place with the girl. But it’s not to be: Cjamango enters, shoots him at the top of the stairs. The body falls. Next, Musolino clears things up: he reveals Stuart paid the Smart Brothers to take care of Cjamango and his family, to ensure MacDonald Ranch isn’t secured. Now, Dick Smart shoots Stuart, paving the way for a possible reunion with Cjamango and Virginia but also narrowing the field of who Cjamango will need to cross off on his to-be-avenged list.
Cjamango visits Virginia at her father’s funeral. He’s too late, she tells him, but we know where this is going. The complications - her father’s objections - have been removed. Dick Smart almost gets the better of him, and like similar business in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Cjamango precariously burns the rope that’s been used to tie him up. He rides to safety, greets an old friend we haven’t met before - Sam - and borrows his machine gun from the civil war. He’s not going to be “hunted down like a rat.” The rest is a protracted but relatively tame machine gun battle, with Cjamango taking all comers. There’s a tense confrontation with Dick Smart, but Cjamango is the victor. Damage is surveyed. Barrica, Cjamango, and Virginia are the only survivors; the latter two reestablish their reunion, joyously.
But only in this cut. In another, more extended variant, there was an entirely new opening with an older Cjamango befriending a small Mexican boy (mirroring his relationship with Barrica), and speaking of his past regrets over having caused so much violence in the world. There’s a similar wraparound finale of the same with a moralistic voice-over. These simple additions change the meaning of so much. In the uncut version, there’s a haze of sadness over what we’ve just witnessed. So many lives lost to inflict pain in the heart of the elder Cjamango. But in the more commonly seen cut version, Cjamango, and Virginia ride away. Content. (But not before a cow defecates in the corner of the frame - no time/money for reshoots, I guess.)
Ardisson looks like an off-brand Neville Brand, and sports bleached blonde locks, not unlike Marlon Brando in The Young Lions. He’s more Klaus Kinski than a Hollywood type like Eastwood or a Mark Damon and is easily a third or even fourth-tier spaghetti western regular. He appeared in Massacre at Grand Canyon (Sergio Corbucci, 1964), and would later top-line further genre efforts, like Django Defies Sartana and Chapaqua’s Gold, both from 1970. He bent with the times like most low-budget performers, appearing in ninja movies by the end of his career (the late 1980s/early 1990s), just like the more well-known Richard Harrison. He passed in 2014.
Musolino breaks up the monotony of coverage with high, low, and canted angles, plus zooms and other typical embellishments of the day. Visual punctuations to switch up character POVs, with most adhering to your film motivation 101 - Dick Smart looking down at pathetic brother Jack Smart, after having already secured his girlfriend. It tells you all you need to know about that power dynamic. Musolino is credited under his own name as Producer but adopts Glenn Vincent Davis for both Writer/Director, that Americanized moniker giving it just that much more saleability elsewhere in the world. It’s a shopworn tale briefly elevated with style by Musolino - but even if it were to display massive amounts of promise for future feature films, it was not to be realized anyway. Musolino died the next year, in 1969, at the tragically young age of 39.