Massacre Time

Lucio Fulci’s Massacre Time opens with a mounted hunting party pursuing a fleeing man across rugged terrain. Not for justice or bounty, but for sport. It’s a striking image that announces both Fulci’s cynical worldview and his eye for visual storytelling. Here is a director who understands that the Western genre is about more than gunfights and horses—it’s about the thin veneer of civilization barely containing our animal instincts.

But the somersault pulled me right out. More on that later.

The film stars Franco Nero as Tom, a prospector summoned home by cryptic correspondence, only to discover his brother Jeff, played by George Hilton, has become a lush and sold their family ranch. The town cowers under the boot of land baron Scott and his psychopathic son Junior, played with unsettling intensity by Nino Castelnuovo. It’s familiar territory, but Fulci and his screenwriters have something more ambitious in mind than a simple revenge tale.

What makes Massacre Time compelling is how it subverts our expectations of the Western hero. Nero begins channeling Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” archetype, but when he marches into Scott’s ranch for what should be a climactic showdown, he gets thoroughly beaten. It’s a bold narrative choice that transforms the film from a power fantasy into something more psychologically complex. By the third act, Nero’s performance has shifted toward Bill Holden’s weathered everyman quality, creating space for Hilton to emerge as the film’s true physical and charismatic force.

Throughout, Fulci demonstrates considerable visual flair. His camera work during the opening hunt—tight close-ups alternating with sweeping wide shots—establishes the landscape as a supporting character that both dwarfs and defines the men who traverse it. The director’s famous penchant for violence is already evident here, years before his horror masterpieces. Blood doesn’t just appear—it trickles, streaks, and oozes with tactile reality. Yet Fulci deploys this brutality with purpose, using it to underscore the story’s themes about civilization’s fragility.

The film’s visual peak comes in a masterful shot that frames the two brothers through a window as they prepare for battle. It’s a moment that captures both their newfound unity and the film’s transition from character study to conventional Western showdown. Fulci proves he can handle intimate drama as skillfully as he stages action.

Where Massacre Time stumbles is with the script’s tendency to introduce figures only to kill them minutes later in service of establishing Junior’s villainy. It’s a shortcut that robs these deaths of emotional impact. This approach feels especially wasteful given Castelnuovo’s performance, which communicates psychopathy through subtle physical choices like his off-kilter head tilt—a simple gesture that conveys volumes about his unbalanced mind.

But the film’s most grievous misstep comes during its climactic raid, when Nero rides a wagon down a ramp toward gunmen taking cover behind an upturned table. The wagon hits the table and suddenly—inexplicably—Nero is airborne, somersaulting through the sky with the grace of an Olympic gymnast and the plausibility of an 80’s Cannon ninja picture. It’s a moment so tonally incongruent that in a genre where authenticity matters, this cartoonish flourish feels like a betrayal of the story’s grounded brutality.

Despite these flaws, Massacre Time succeeds more often than it fails. Fulci demonstrates that the Spaghetti Western can be both visceral entertainment and thoughtful character study. The film’s willingness to humble its hero and explore themes of family, responsibility, and moral compromise elevates it above routine genre fare. It’s a promising early work that shows even when Fulci stumbles, his vision remains compelling.