And God said to Cain (E Dio Disse a Caino) is directed by Antonio Margheriti, who also co-writes the screenplay with Giovanni Addessi. It stars Klaus Kinski, Peter Carsten, Marcella Michelangeli, Guido Lollobrigida and Antonio Cantafora. Music is by Carlo Savina and cinematography by Riccardo Pallottini and Luciano Trasatti.When Gary Hamilton (Kinski) receives a pardon from his sentence at a prison work camp, he has only one thing on his mind; revenge on those responsible for his unfair incarceration.A ghost returns and he'll have, he'll have only one desire in his heart, only one thirst: Revenge.How wonderful, a Spaghetti Western/horror hybrid with scary Kinski as an avenging angel good guy! For the first 30 minutes the film looks to be building up a head of steam for a standardised Spaghetti Western, but things shift once Hamilton approaches town and night begins to fall. From here the film plays out as a Gothic horror involving Western characters, resplendent with big creepy mansion set in a shifty looking town that is cloaked in murky moonlight.The whole town teeters on the edge of panic as they know who is coming to visit on this dark night. Atmosphere is tightly coiled as things move in the shadows, windows blow open, strange sounds emanate on the impending storm, and the stench of death is everywhere. A bell tolls ominously, birds flee the vicinity, all while Hamilton moves about the town with deadly silence, even using a network of catacombs under the town that were left over from an aged Indian cemetery.The production value isn't high, but Margheriti maximises what is at his disposal to great ends. The sound effects work is simply terrific, with the shrill of the birds and the dripping water in the caverns playing a tune being particularly striking. There's inventive deaths, sublime scenes (love that rider less horse sequence and the Orson Welles mirror homage) and Kinski being ace as a ghoulish phantom taking a string from the bow of the Count of Monte Cristo.It's also great to find that Margheriti and Addessi give strength to the picture by way of psychological smarts within the characterisations. This is not merely a spooky revenge story, a chance to pile the bodies up, there is substance to the main players, their motives and means, their frailties and family fractures brutally laid bare. The dialogue is sometimes naff, the cliché's of Spaghetti Westerns rife, and of course not all the visual effects work like they should, but this is one moody and memorable movie that is well worth seeking out if you can see a decent enough print of it. 8/10

And God Said to Cain (1970) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Spaghetti Western has Gary Hamilton (Klaus Kinski) being released from a prison after serving ten years for a crime he didn't commit. The Civil War vet gets released and that same day he goes to the town of the man who put him behind bars to seek revenge. He gets to the town at the same time as a tornado, which just adds more to the revenge plot. This is a pretty interesting film for a few reasons but it's not totally successful in the end. What really hurts the film is the middle section, which features Kinski's character taking out all the gunmen hired by the man he is after. This leads to some pretty boring action as most of the fighting is being done off camera or having Kinski fire his gun through a window. The film has other pacing problems, which means the film could have lost ten minutes and it probably would have been better. The violence itself is pretty PG-rated and overall there's really nothing too offensive for even the most sensitive viewers. What does work is having the film set during a tornado, which adds a lot of atmosphere to the film. The more Spaghetti Westerns I watch I begin to notice that each of them tries to have something fresh and this one here adds the tornado, which does the film good. Kinski is very good in his role and makes for a wonderful good guy so to speak. He's certainly easy to watch even though the guy dubbing him doesn't do that good of a job. Peter Carsten plays the man Kinski is after and does a good job as well. The low budget nature of the film probably hurts more than it helps but in the end this is a mildly entertaining film if you're a fan of the genre.

Antonio Margheriti's "E Dio Disse A Caino" aka. "And God Said To Cain" is a very dark and excellent Spaghetti Western with a great leading performance by Klaus Kinski in an untypical role. Kinski, who was usually typecast as a crazy and/or extremely cold-blooded villain plays the (anti)hero in this, an innocent victim, who becomes a merciless avenger.Innocently imprisoned, Gary Hamilton (Kinski) is pardoned after 10 years of heavy labor in a stone pit in the desert. After loosing ten years of his life for a crime he did not commit, Gary only has one thought on his mind - to take bloody, pitiless revenge on those responsible for the crime he was charged for and who blamed him for a crime they committed.Klaus Kinski (once again) delivers an excellent performance in the lead, and although the role of Gary Hamilton is unusual for Kinski, I could hardly imagine anybody else to fit in this role as perfectly as he does. Peter Carsten also does a very good job as the villainous Acombar, and the supporting cast contains Gino Lollobrigida, who fits into his role as one of Acombar's sidekicks very well, and beautiful Marcella Michelangeli, who is lovely to look at and who also plays her role well (allthough it did not require a lot of acting). The movie has a lot of horror influences and the atmosphere in "And God Said To Cain" is a very dark one, and resembles the atmosphere of a Horror flick at times (unsurprisingly, since director Margheriti is best-known for his horror movies). The score by Carlo Savino is very good, it mixes the Spaghetti Western sound with a sound that resembles the soundtrack of Thrillers and Horror movies. Furthermore, the score contains a stylish, chanted gospel-style song in the beginning. I usually prefer soundtracks without singing in Spaghetti Westerns, but I have to say that this one fits very well in the opening scene in the desert prison. The cinematography is also very good and quite original, as it underlines the dark atmosphere and intensifies the suspense."And God Said To Cain" is an excellent, dark and very suspenseful Spaghetti Western that I highly recommend. Spaghetti Western and/or Kinski fans can't afford to miss this.

This was the first movie I'd seen with Kinski in a starring role, and unfortunately I had to see a bootleg copy as that was the only option available to me. And I don't know if it was the quality of the bootleg or maybe a lazy director of photography, but three fourths of this movie are as dark as a poorly-edited, moonless night!Besides Kinski's charisma (that you can't even see in this movie anyway) and the cool way he's filmed in the beginning, with the camera roving and encircling and following him like he's a God himself, And God Said to Cain has nothing going for it. Story wise it plays all its cards right away, with the big confrontation/reveal being just about as quaint as anything you could imagine. Immediately our hero, "Gary", knows who his foe is and what he wants to do to him, and the entire movie is his monotonous advance toward doing it. There are some bad guys who stand around in the dark (at least I think they were guys; I'm not kidding about it being dark) who Gary shoots every once in a while, but mostly the movie consists of Gary taking half an hour to walk through a cave, and a priest being shot, then getting up and pounding on the organ, then getting shot, then getting up and pounding on the organ, then getting shot... at this point in the movie I was finding my fingernails pretty interesting (and well lit).The atrocious lighting and boring story are the fundamental flaws, but there are pet peeves I have with it, too. "Gary" isn't exactly a mythical, awe-inspiring name. One of the big sub-plots is an impending tornado that everyone seems able to predict. "How long do you think we have before it gets here," Gary says to an old man who obnoxiously slurps every bite of his food LOUDLY, and for what seems like HOURS. Here, the director decided that pointing the camera directly at the sun might make a good contrast to the rest of the movie being filmed in the coat closet, but to me it didn't make any sense. "Say, where are you going with that mattress?" "Why, I'm taking it to the saloon, to cover the whiskey so it won't be destroyed by the tornado that's coming tonight!" Yep, an uncanny meteorological sense, even among the drunks.I wanted to see it because it seemed obscure, I like what I've seen of Klaus Kinski, and "And God Said to Cain" is a really cool-sounding title. What it was, however, was a movie not only mundane and plodding, but frustrating in that you can't see what's happening. Oh, and there was also the slurping.