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Peter Lee Lawrence, the blond-haired and squinty-eyed German leading man, has bounced around the periphery of my Spaghetti Western film fandom without me ever having seen one of his movies.  I was curious, then, to check out this flick from near the end of his brief but busy career.  The film, also known by such titles as PREY OF VULTURES and UN DOLAR DE RECOMPENSA ("One Dollar For a Reward"), is part of a Wild East two-fer DVD, paired with Lawrence's ONE BY ONE a/k/a RAISE YOUR HANDS, DEAD MAN, YOU'RE UNDER ARREST.

Lawrence portrays Danny, an artistically-inclined youngster who is equally skilled with a pistol as with a pencil and sketch pad.  Danny has been given the blessing of his rancher father to travel to the Big City (St. Louis) to pursue a career in art; Dad even accompanies him on the stagecoach ride out of town.

Peter Lee Lawrence

When their coach is set upon by bandits, young Danny jumps to safety as the other passengers are gunned down.  In the shock of the moment, identifying characteristics of each bad guy are seared into the young man’s memory:  a distinctive spur, the pattern of a hat band, a trigger-finger scar.  Stumbling into the next town, he hurriedly draws detailed sketches of each telltale memory, and the hunt is on for the bad guys.  Danny posts wanted notices for those he suspects, signed “The Resurrected,” hence the film’s title.

From this promising albeit unoriginal setup (see DEATH RIDES A HORSE for a similar plot) you’d be set for a hunt-em-down revenge tale as our hero seeks out and inflicts vigilante justice, one-by-one, on a series of despicable characters.  Unfortunately, the story becomes quite bogged down once Danny settles into town, as he realizes that the bandits may all be upstanding town leaders.  He must seek alliances with the sheriff’s daughter, a blacksmith, the drunken town doctor, and an overly friendly local businessman, all in attempt to figure out the mystery.  The story really loses steam in its middle act, and there is little of the tension of the pic’s opening during a long, somewhat tedious middle stretch.  A confusing finale does not help matters as an apparent reliance on stock footage serves to obscure who is fighting whom during (what ought to be) the picture’s dramatic conclusion.

Peter Lee Lawrence (born Karl Hyrenbach) has a look that is similar to Clint Eastwood:  thin lips, squinty eyes, angular nose.  The main difference in the two men’s appearance is in the hair:  when Clint was hatless, he boasted a suave and handsome combed-back look, whereas Lawrence’s blond locks are worn longer and more hippie-esque, kind of a Peter Tork look in fact.  Lawrence is pretty average as Eurowestern leading men go.  Neither handsome nor charismatic enough to be at the top of the scale, he’s a pretty capable and uninspiring hero in this film.  Sadly, Lawrence had his career tragically cut short by his death in 1974 at age 30 due to a brain tumor.  He made nearly two dozen appearances in Eurowesterns; his most notable mainstream appearance was in 1971’s BLACK BEAUTY.

It’s hard to pinpoint where the movie loses its way, but the frequent use of stock footage and cheap serial-era tricks like sped-up footage might offer one explanation.  Maybe the original story idea, promising as it was, could not be pursued for budgetary reasons, resulting in an abundance of people-talking scenes and pointless sidetracks like the sheriff’s daughter romance and a courtroom scene.  The drawings and wanted posters are kind of tossed aside for this boilerplate melodramatic stuff, to the film’s detriment.  The director is Spaniard Rafael Romero Marchent, whose work I have admired in SARTANA KILLS THEM ALL and DEAD MEN DON’T COUNT, two really enjoyable and lively Spaghettis.  Marchent is off his game here, and whether due to budgetary reasons or not, this pic is a letdown compared to the aforementioned pair of films. 

Nora Orlandi did the film’s score, and the main themes are upbeat and exciting if unoriginal.  Orlandi’s main contribution is the weird musical sting that we hear each time Danny remembers a flashback of the killers.  Intended to be a spooky and eerie cue, it instead has a kiddie-haunted-house feel, and seems more appropriate to The Brady Bunch than a dramatic, violent western.  You get what the composer was going for, but it kind of doesn’t work, and is jarring each time we hear it.

Based on RESURRECTED, I will not necessarily be in a hurry to check out other Lawrence vehicles, although I'm sure I'll take a look at the other title on the Wild East DVD.

REVENGE OF THE RESURRECTED:  6 out of 10 stars