Franco Nero’s mother must surely be able to breathe a sigh of relief now that he’s settled down and put his Django-drifter days behind him and gotten a real job as Texas lawman Burt Sullivan. It’s not long though before the life of the wandering gunslinger begins to beckon again and, after clearing his town of bad guys once and for all, he fucks-off to avenge the death of his father, grudgingly taking little brother Jim along with him. Cisco Delgado is the target, living the high life in Mexico in his big, posh house and keeping his iron grip on the local town with the help of his (typically incompetent) goon-squad. Despite being burdened with his bungling brother, Burt still manages to confront Delgado, only to be told a long-buried secret: whilst Delgado was killing Burt’s father, he took time out to shaft his mother… and that means that Jim is… well, you figure it out!
Not as crazy as Django, not as stylish as Keoma, Texas, Adios is a fairly run-of-the-mill western, with little to distinguish it from others of the genre. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s actually much faster, more exciting than Keoma, but still the fact remains that beyond the blood and bullets, there’s very little there. Burt Sullivan himself is not as mysterious nor as interesting as many of Nero’s other cowboys, despite his occasional bad-attitude traits (putting fags out on people’s hands, putting fags out in people’s drinks etc) and his obsessive adherence to the law (even in places where he himself admits it doesn’t apply) makes him a little bit too predictable. There are a couple of good scenes – gunfights and fistfights – but they are fairly uninspired (an admittedly great moment comes when one bad guy finds a new meaning for the phrase, “pop your cork” – whenever he pops the cork on his tequila bottle, one of his prisoners gets plugged!). There are a couple of interesting characters here too, none of which are used to their full potential – Cisco’s permanently perspiring, arse-licking subordinate who’s English accent, for some reason, makes me think of old Carry On… films, and the huge monstrous Indian with a face like a blind-cobbler’s thumb, sadly exterminated a couple of minutes after he’s been introduced.
Hopefully though, that hasn’t put you off because Texas Adios is still worth watching, it’s just nothing special. I guess for some people, a western is a western. For what it’s worth, director Ferdinando Baldi’s trainload-of-people-tortured-by-a-gang-of-psychos movie Terror Express is much more exciting. But it’s not a western.
Aka Texas Addio, Adios Texas, The Avenger, Goodbye Texas
