WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.960 So imagine for a second that a movie studio spends 00:00:04.960 --> 00:00:08.199 millions of dollars engineering, like the perfect 00:00:08.199 --> 00:00:10.660 hero. Right, the ultimate good guy. Exactly. 00:00:10.939 --> 00:00:13.000 But then, you know, they put it in theaters and 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:16.000 the audience just stages a complete mutiny. Like 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.760 you sit there in the dark watching a film that's 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:21.019 totally designed to make you cheer for justice 00:00:21.019 --> 00:00:23.260 and instead you find yourself rooting for the 00:00:23.260 --> 00:00:26.660 bad guy. Yes. You are completely captivated by 00:00:26.660 --> 00:00:29.280 the ruthless, down -controlling villain, and 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:31.620 the studio's carefully crafted moral narrative 00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:34.399 just, well, it completely collapses because the 00:00:34.399 --> 00:00:36.799 crowd simply refuses to play along. It really 00:00:36.799 --> 00:00:39.520 is the ultimate cinematic subversion. I mean, 00:00:39.880 --> 00:00:42.100 the creators dictate the story, sure, but the 00:00:42.100 --> 00:00:44.179 audience ultimately decides who actually matters. 00:00:44.479 --> 00:00:46.679 And today, we are pulling from a stack of notes 00:00:46.679 --> 00:00:49.399 centered on a Wikipedia article about a 1966 00:00:49.399 --> 00:00:52.340 Italian -German spaghetti western called Blood 00:00:52.340 --> 00:00:55.469 at Sundown. A classic. Yeah. And our mission 00:00:55.469 --> 00:00:58.530 for this deep dive is to explore this really 00:00:58.530 --> 00:01:01.270 bizarre cinematic phenomenon. We're looking at 00:01:01.270 --> 00:01:03.890 how a single completely disposable movie villain 00:01:03.890 --> 00:01:06.730 accidentally hijacked an entire film's legacy. 00:01:06.829 --> 00:01:09.170 And forced the whole industry to pivot. Right. 00:01:09.450 --> 00:01:12.569 And spawned this massive multinational anti -hero 00:01:12.569 --> 00:01:15.689 franchise. Yeah. Okay, let's unpack this because 00:01:15.689 --> 00:01:18.769 to really understand the sheer scale of how wild 00:01:18.769 --> 00:01:21.930 this legacy becomes we have to start by establishing 00:01:23.389 --> 00:01:26.069 the baseline of what Blood at Sundown was actually 00:01:26.069 --> 00:01:27.989 built to be before things went completely off 00:01:27.989 --> 00:01:30.049 the rails. Yeah, we have to look at the mechanics 00:01:30.049 --> 00:01:32.530 of the European film industry at the time. So 00:01:32.530 --> 00:01:35.329 the film was released in Italy on December 18th, 00:01:35.329 --> 00:01:37.989 1966. Okay, so right in the golden age of the 00:01:37.989 --> 00:01:40.629 genre. Exactly. It was directed by Alberto Cardone 00:01:40.629 --> 00:01:44.150 and shot in Almeria, Spain. And Spain was, you 00:01:44.150 --> 00:01:47.269 know, the quintessential dusty, sun -bleached 00:01:47.269 --> 00:01:50.609 backdrop for almost every major spaghetti western 00:01:50.609 --> 00:01:52.329 of that era. Right, because it offered those 00:01:52.329 --> 00:01:55.030 incredible sweeping landscapes on a budget. Precisely. 00:01:55.189 --> 00:01:57.790 And crucially, this was Italian and West German 00:01:57.790 --> 00:01:59.310 co -production. I mean, these co -productions 00:01:59.310 --> 00:02:01.409 were massive financial undertakings. They were 00:02:01.409 --> 00:02:03.010 designed to just blanket the market, right? Yeah, 00:02:03.010 --> 00:02:05.049 they would pull resources from different countries, 00:02:05.269 --> 00:02:08.110 shoot the film, dub the final product into multiple 00:02:08.110 --> 00:02:10.250 languages, and just distribute it all over the 00:02:10.250 --> 00:02:12.389 European market. Which is wild to think about. 00:02:13.409 --> 00:02:16.669 And the original Italian title was $1 ,000 Sul 00:02:16.669 --> 00:02:20.439 Nero, which translates literally to... $1 ,000 00:02:20.439 --> 00:02:23.060 on the black. It's a great title. It is. It has 00:02:23.060 --> 00:02:26.219 that gritty, high stakes casino table vibe. But 00:02:26.219 --> 00:02:29.219 beneath that stylish title, the plot itself was 00:02:29.219 --> 00:02:31.740 incredibly traditional. It's just a classic sibling 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:34.419 rivalry. The classic brother versus brother trope. 00:02:34.460 --> 00:02:36.580 Yeah. You have the quintessential hero, this 00:02:36.580 --> 00:02:38.840 man named Johnny Liston, played by Anthony Stefan. 00:02:39.599 --> 00:02:43.180 And Johnny has just spent 12. grueling years 00:02:43.180 --> 00:02:46.580 in prison. Before a crime he presumably was set 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:49.000 up for, at least paid his debt for. Right. So 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:51.180 he finally gets out, heads back to his hometown 00:02:51.180 --> 00:02:53.800 looking for a fresh start, only to discover the 00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:56.479 entire town has been like violently taken over. 00:02:56.639 --> 00:02:58.759 And the man running the town with an iron fist 00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:01.360 is of course his own brother, Sartana Liston. 00:03:01.479 --> 00:03:03.319 Played by Gianni Garco. Played by Gianni Garco, 00:03:03.319 --> 00:03:06.340 yes. And the narrative architecture here is incredibly 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:08.800 deliberate. I mean, the screenplay, the camera 00:03:08.800 --> 00:03:11.349 angles, the emotional beats, every Everything 00:03:11.349 --> 00:03:14.030 is engineered to build Johnny up as the ultimate 00:03:14.030 --> 00:03:16.449 moral center. He's literally the guy on the poster. 00:03:17.270 --> 00:03:19.610 Exactly. Johnny has to battle his evil brother 00:03:19.610 --> 00:03:22.750 to bring him to justice and, you know, redeem 00:03:22.750 --> 00:03:24.889 his family name. And the studio threw real weight 00:03:24.889 --> 00:03:27.090 behind this, too. You've got a solid supporting 00:03:27.090 --> 00:03:30.990 cast, like Erika Blank playing Joselito Rogers, 00:03:31.210 --> 00:03:33.990 fleshing out the drama. It proved this was a 00:03:33.990 --> 00:03:35.810 proper full -scale production. It wasn't a B 00:03:35.810 --> 00:03:38.430 -movie. Right. It was meant to be Johnny's epic 00:03:38.430 --> 00:03:41.590 story of redemption. and Sartana was just supposed 00:03:41.590 --> 00:03:43.759 to be the hurdle. What's fascinating here is 00:03:43.759 --> 00:03:46.099 the complete disconnect between the intended 00:03:46.099 --> 00:03:48.919 narrative gravity and the actual outcome. Yeah. 00:03:49.199 --> 00:03:51.740 The audience simply rejected the moral binary 00:03:51.740 --> 00:03:53.800 they were being spoon -fed. I mean, they watched 00:03:53.800 --> 00:03:56.199 this sweeping epic of justice and redemption, 00:03:56.620 --> 00:03:58.599 and they collectively decided that Johnny was 00:03:58.599 --> 00:04:01.180 boring. Which is brutal for the leading man. 00:04:01.259 --> 00:04:04.120 It really is. But Johnny Garcos -Sartana, the 00:04:04.120 --> 00:04:06.539 ruthless antagonist, he just completely absorbed 00:04:06.539 --> 00:04:08.860 the gravity of the film. It's exactly like professional 00:04:08.860 --> 00:04:11.669 wrestling. Oh, how so? Well... You build up the 00:04:11.669 --> 00:04:13.889 ultimate baby face, right? You give the hero 00:04:13.889 --> 00:04:16.269 the grand entrance and the righteous storyline. 00:04:16.970 --> 00:04:20.410 But the heel, the bad guy, is just so charismatic, 00:04:20.889 --> 00:04:24.829 so unapologetically cool, that the crowd hijacks 00:04:24.829 --> 00:04:27.110 the narrative. Oh, I see. Yeah, they start cheering 00:04:27.110 --> 00:04:29.910 the bad guy and booing the hero. And suddenly, 00:04:30.449 --> 00:04:32.949 the writers are trapped. They're scrambling to 00:04:32.949 --> 00:04:35.009 rewrite their entire playbook because the audience 00:04:35.009 --> 00:04:36.990 has basically made their choice for them. That's 00:04:36.990 --> 00:04:39.670 a perfect analogy. And the studio couldn't just 00:04:39.670 --> 00:04:42.670 ignore this theater mutiny because, well, in 00:04:42.670 --> 00:04:45.170 the film industry, a hijacked narrative isn't 00:04:45.170 --> 00:04:47.709 viewed as an artistic failure. It's a gold mine. 00:04:48.009 --> 00:04:50.370 Exactly. It's recognized as a massive financial 00:04:50.370 --> 00:04:53.350 opportunity. The audience reaction fundamentally 00:04:53.350 --> 00:04:55.870 altered the economic trajectory of the property. 00:04:56.189 --> 00:04:58.850 And that becomes incredibly clear when we look 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:00.910 at the international market reaction. Right. 00:05:00.910 --> 00:05:03.329 Because the fallout from this didn't stay contained 00:05:03.329 --> 00:05:06.399 as just some, like, local Italian quirk. The 00:05:06.399 --> 00:05:08.720 reaction from international audiences, specifically 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:11.620 in Germany, is what threw gasoline on this fire. 00:05:11.939 --> 00:05:14.779 The German market was huge for these films. It 00:05:14.779 --> 00:05:17.480 was. And when the film crossed the border into 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:20.459 Germany, the distributors saw the audience data 00:05:20.459 --> 00:05:23.819 and made a completely unhinged decision. Unhinged, 00:05:23.980 --> 00:05:26.220 but brilliant. Yeah. They dropped the title, 00:05:26.519 --> 00:05:29.199 Blood at Sundown. They dropped a thousand dollars 00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:31.959 on the black. They retitled the entire movie 00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:35.920 simply, Sartana. They literally named the film 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:38.779 after the villain. It's crazy. It really illustrates 00:05:38.779 --> 00:05:42.579 the raw power of market demand. I mean, the distributors 00:05:42.579 --> 00:05:44.740 didn't care about Alberto Cardone's intended 00:05:44.740 --> 00:05:47.199 artistic vision or Johnny's 12 year redemption 00:05:47.199 --> 00:05:49.399 arc. Right. None of that mattered. They looked 00:05:49.399 --> 00:05:51.459 at what the audience was paying for and they 00:05:51.459 --> 00:05:54.959 rebranded the entire multimillion dollar co -production 00:05:54.959 --> 00:05:57.319 to highlight the antagonist. It's as if, you 00:05:57.319 --> 00:06:00.470 know, 20 years from now. People look back at 00:06:00.470 --> 00:06:02.930 the first Batman movie and officially retitled 00:06:02.930 --> 00:06:05.089 it, The Joker, just because he's the only part 00:06:05.089 --> 00:06:07.089 people liked. That's actually a really good way 00:06:07.089 --> 00:06:08.870 to frame it. And the industry took immediate 00:06:08.870 --> 00:06:11.350 notice of that kind of market power. Italian 00:06:11.350 --> 00:06:13.610 producer Aldo Attabati teamed up with a German 00:06:13.610 --> 00:06:16.350 producer because they saw the undeniable dollar 00:06:16.350 --> 00:06:19.209 signs attached to Gianni Garco's portrayal. They 00:06:19.209 --> 00:06:22.709 moved fast. Very fast. They rushed to Garco with 00:06:22.709 --> 00:06:25.209 a contract to make a whole series of films centered 00:06:25.209 --> 00:06:29.189 entirely around Sartana. But, um... Here's where 00:06:29.189 --> 00:06:32.250 I have to push back on the studio's logic, because 00:06:32.250 --> 00:06:35.050 they offer him this massive contract with one 00:06:35.050 --> 00:06:38.430 massive catch. They want Sartana to return not 00:06:38.430 --> 00:06:41.149 as a villain, but as a hero. Yes, the classic 00:06:41.149 --> 00:06:43.829 pivot. But if audiences fell in love with this 00:06:43.829 --> 00:06:46.269 character, specifically because he was a ruthless, 00:06:46.649 --> 00:06:49.189 town -controlling villain, doesn't making him 00:06:49.189 --> 00:06:51.670 a good guy completely ruin the appeal. Like, 00:06:51.689 --> 00:06:54.089 why fix a formula that is clearly printing money? 00:06:54.279 --> 00:06:57.279 Well, it gets to the very core of cinematic franchising 00:06:57.279 --> 00:06:59.420 and the mechanics of risk management. Risk management. 00:06:59.620 --> 00:07:01.680 Yeah. From a producer's standpoint, villains 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:04.540 are inherently chaotic. Their narratives are 00:07:04.540 --> 00:07:06.639 destructive. And traditionally, they have to 00:07:06.639 --> 00:07:08.839 die or go to jail or be defeated at the end of 00:07:08.839 --> 00:07:10.639 a story to restore order. Right. The bad guy 00:07:10.639 --> 00:07:13.339 has to lose eventually. Exactly. So you cannot 00:07:13.339 --> 00:07:16.319 build a recurring, sustainable franchise around 00:07:16.319 --> 00:07:18.699 a character whose primary function is to be defeated. 00:07:18.939 --> 00:07:21.879 Heroes, however, are bankable. Heroes survive 00:07:21.879 --> 00:07:24.680 to see the sequel. Ah, okay. So the studio needs 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:27.000 the character to be sustainable. They need someone 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:29.620 who can carry a five -picture deal without getting 00:07:29.620 --> 00:07:32.540 killed off in Act 3. Exactly the issue they faced. 00:07:32.779 --> 00:07:35.600 Producers inherently want to sanitize villains 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:38.819 to make them safe long -term investments. But 00:07:38.819 --> 00:07:41.899 doing so requires an incredibly delicate balancing 00:07:41.899 --> 00:07:43.860 act. Because you don't want to make them boring. 00:07:44.060 --> 00:07:46.279 Right. If you soften the character too much, 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:48.740 you strip away the dark edge that made the audience 00:07:48.740 --> 00:07:51.240 love them in the first place. You risk turning 00:07:51.240 --> 00:07:54.540 a magnetic rogue into a boring boy scout, which 00:07:54.540 --> 00:07:57.500 just alienates your core demographic. And usually 00:07:57.500 --> 00:07:59.959 the studio just steamrolls the actor, right? 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:02.259 They water the character down to make him palatable. 00:08:02.120 --> 00:08:05.040 for a wider audience, and then the sequel flops. 00:08:05.339 --> 00:08:07.120 Happens all the time. But here's where it gets 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:10.100 really interesting. Johnny Garco didn't just 00:08:10.100 --> 00:08:12.060 sign the contract and let the producers ruin 00:08:12.060 --> 00:08:15.120 what he built. Because Adabati and the German 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:17.420 producers were so desperate for this specific 00:08:17.420 --> 00:08:21.459 character, Garco suddenly held, like, unprecedented 00:08:21.459 --> 00:08:23.920 leverage. He had all the cards. Yeah. He wasn't 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:26.240 just a hired gun anymore. He was the primary 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:30.000 asset. And Garco recognized his position immediately. 00:08:30.279 --> 00:08:32.559 I mean, when he accepted the contract to return, 00:08:33.179 --> 00:08:36.539 he secured one crucial game -changing clause, 00:08:37.059 --> 00:08:38.980 and that was script approval. Which is huge. 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:42.240 It's massive. For an actor in the 1960s spaghetti 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:44.259 western machine, a system known for churning 00:08:44.259 --> 00:08:47.340 out movies at breakneck speed with very little 00:08:47.340 --> 00:08:50.440 actor input, having total veto power over a character's 00:08:50.440 --> 00:08:53.679 evolution was virtually unheard of. And he used 00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:56.330 that power. incredibly strategically, like he 00:08:56.330 --> 00:08:59.509 knew exactly what he did not want to do. Because 00:08:59.509 --> 00:09:01.710 before stepping into the booths of Sartana, Garco 00:09:01.710 --> 00:09:04.169 had actually starred in two other films, Ten 00:09:04.169 --> 00:09:06.809 Thousand Dollars for a Massacre and Vengeance 00:09:06.809 --> 00:09:09.409 is Mine. Both very classic westerns. Right. And 00:09:09.409 --> 00:09:11.549 both of those films relied heavily on classic 00:09:11.549 --> 00:09:14.110 vengeance themes. They featured standard emotionally 00:09:14.110 --> 00:09:16.429 driven plots where, you know, the protagonist 00:09:16.429 --> 00:09:19.169 is wronged and spends the entire film seeking 00:09:19.169 --> 00:09:21.809 violent retribution. And crucially, those films 00:09:21.809 --> 00:09:23.990 did not resonate with audiences. They flopped. 00:09:23.850 --> 00:09:25.970 Basically, yes, there were commercial disappointments. 00:09:26.269 --> 00:09:28.190 And Garco analyzed those failures and realized 00:09:28.190 --> 00:09:30.409 that emotional, revenge -driven narratives were 00:09:30.409 --> 00:09:33.009 becoming stale. So when the studio handed him 00:09:33.009 --> 00:09:36.049 new Sartana scripts that tried to force the character 00:09:36.049 --> 00:09:38.929 into a standard revenge plot, like maybe avenging 00:09:38.929 --> 00:09:41.789 a wronged family member, he just outright rejected 00:09:41.789 --> 00:09:43.769 them. He wouldn't do it. He refused to let the 00:09:43.769 --> 00:09:46.570 studio turn Sartana into just another angry cowboy. 00:09:46.970 --> 00:09:49.049 He held out until the breakthrough finally happened. 00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:52.360 Garco accepts a script written by Renato Izzo 00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:54.500 for a movie that would eventually be called, 00:09:54.779 --> 00:09:57.519 If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death. What 00:09:57.519 --> 00:10:00.460 a fantastic title. I know, it's so good. But 00:10:00.460 --> 00:10:02.960 beyond the marketing, Izzo and Garco used this 00:10:02.960 --> 00:10:05.899 specific script to completely reinvent the character's 00:10:05.899 --> 00:10:08.539 core profile. And if we connect this to the bigger 00:10:08.539 --> 00:10:11.559 picture, this reinvention is a watershed moment 00:10:11.559 --> 00:10:14.019 for the evolution of the spaghetti western anti 00:10:14.019 --> 00:10:17.000 -hero. How so? While Sartano was no longer the 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:19.379 power -hungry, emotional brother from Blood at 00:10:19.379 --> 00:10:21.840 Sundown, Izzo and Garco stripped away all the 00:10:21.840 --> 00:10:24.340 melodrama. They transformed him into a highly 00:10:24.340 --> 00:10:26.940 intelligent, completely non -sedimental character. 00:10:27.100 --> 00:10:30.090 He was cold. Very cold. His primary motivation 00:10:30.090 --> 00:10:33.009 was no longer emotion, revenge or even traditional 00:10:33.009 --> 00:10:35.690 frontier justice. His singular motivation was 00:10:35.690 --> 00:10:39.289 profit. Yes. The notes describe his new method 00:10:39.289 --> 00:10:42.330 brilliantly. He basically profits by putting 00:10:42.330 --> 00:10:45.970 himself directly between two rival groups. The 00:10:45.970 --> 00:10:49.629 reinvented Sartana is essentially a modern freelance 00:10:49.629 --> 00:10:51.950 corporate consultant. I love that comparison. 00:10:52.269 --> 00:10:54.409 It's so true though. He walks into the middle 00:10:54.409 --> 00:10:56.950 of a hostile corporate takeover or in this case 00:10:56.950 --> 00:11:01.320 a dusty town paralyzed by two rival gangs. He 00:11:01.320 --> 00:11:04.200 assesses the leverage, plays both boards of directors 00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:07.379 against each other, secures his fee, and walks 00:11:07.379 --> 00:11:09.639 out without ever raising his heart rate. Or even 00:11:09.639 --> 00:11:11.720 better, he's like an arms dealer selling to both 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:13.700 sides of a war. Oh, yes. He doesn't care who 00:11:13.700 --> 00:11:16.039 wins the ideological battle, you know, he just 00:11:16.039 --> 00:11:18.539 cares about the profit margin. And that mechanism 00:11:18.539 --> 00:11:21.059 of profit -driven neutrality is what made the 00:11:21.059 --> 00:11:24.259 character so revolutionary. By shifting the motivation 00:11:24.259 --> 00:11:27.759 from hot -blooded vengeance to cold, calculating 00:11:27.759 --> 00:11:30.559 efficiency. They completely changed how the audience 00:11:30.559 --> 00:11:32.899 interacted with the protagonist. This new Sartana 00:11:32.899 --> 00:11:35.440 was untouchable. He was always one step ahead, 00:11:35.639 --> 00:11:37.740 manipulating the chaos rather than just reacting 00:11:37.740 --> 00:11:40.559 to it. Right, pulling the strings. Exactly. He 00:11:40.559 --> 00:11:42.799 wasn't burdened by the moral weight of being 00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:45.360 a traditional hero, but he also wasn't a chaotic, 00:11:45.659 --> 00:11:48.659 destructive villain anymore. He existed entirely 00:11:48.659 --> 00:11:51.539 in the gray area of personal gain. And audiences 00:11:51.539 --> 00:11:54.480 absolutely devoured that gray area. I mean, they 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:56.960 devoured it so aggressively. that the franchise 00:11:56.960 --> 00:12:00.259 completely exploded. Which brings us to the final 00:12:00.259 --> 00:12:03.799 chaotic chapter of this story. The universe expansion 00:12:03.799 --> 00:12:06.820 and the ultimate brand dilution. It was inevitable. 00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:09.740 It was. Johnny Garco's carefully curated reinvention 00:12:09.740 --> 00:12:13.700 was almost like too successful. The character 00:12:13.700 --> 00:12:16.500 completely outgrew the man who played him. Well, 00:12:16.620 --> 00:12:19.000 Garco's official timeline is a string of highly 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.879 successful main films. And the naming conventions 00:12:21.879 --> 00:12:24.259 for these official releases are just a master 00:12:24.259 --> 00:12:26.539 class in evocative, aggressive marketing. Oh, 00:12:26.580 --> 00:12:29.820 they are incredible. In 1969, we get, I Am Sartana, 00:12:30.059 --> 00:12:32.360 Your Angel of Death. See, the titles alone are 00:12:32.360 --> 00:12:34.279 spectacular. Yeah. You just don't get poetry 00:12:34.279 --> 00:12:36.639 like Sartana's. Yeah. Trade your pistol for a 00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:38.679 coffin in modern cinema. You really don't. And 00:12:38.679 --> 00:12:40.940 then 1970, they released Have a Good Funeral, 00:12:41.080 --> 00:12:44.350 My Friend, Sartana Will Pay. Amazing. Followed 00:12:44.350 --> 00:12:46.509 immediately by light the fuse, Sartana is coming. 00:12:47.450 --> 00:12:49.570 But, you know, the reality of the international 00:12:49.570 --> 00:12:52.529 film market in the late 1960s and early 70s was 00:12:52.529 --> 00:12:54.809 that intellectual property laws were incredibly 00:12:54.809 --> 00:12:57.330 porous across European borders. It was the Wild 00:12:57.330 --> 00:13:00.590 West, literally and figuratively. Right. If you 00:13:00.590 --> 00:13:02.450 struck gold with a character, the bootleggers 00:13:02.450 --> 00:13:04.269 were going to set up camp right next to your 00:13:04.269 --> 00:13:06.850 mine and start digging. And the market was instantly 00:13:06.850 --> 00:13:09.940 flooded with unofficial cash -ins. Competing 00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:12.460 producers and directors realized a fundamental 00:13:12.460 --> 00:13:15.039 truth about the franchise. Which was? That you 00:13:15.039 --> 00:13:17.840 didn't actually need Gianni Garco and you didn't 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:20.480 need Aldo Adabati's permission. You just needed 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:23.519 to slap the name Sartana on a movie poster and 00:13:23.519 --> 00:13:26.500 the audience would buy a ticket. It's so brazen. 00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:29.620 The sources list these knockoffs and the blatant 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:32.259 coattail writing is just hilarious. Oh, absolutely. 00:13:32.379 --> 00:13:34.659 You have unauthorized films like Four Came to 00:13:34.659 --> 00:13:37.220 Kill Sartana. You have Sartana Kills Them All. 00:13:37.480 --> 00:13:40.659 And my absolute favorite, Alleluja and Sartana 00:13:40.659 --> 00:13:44.779 are sons, sons of God. That one is a mouthful. 00:13:44.840 --> 00:13:46.620 They were just throwing his name into a blender 00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:49.379 with random religious imagery and violence to 00:13:49.379 --> 00:13:52.139 see what would sell. And the exploitation didn't 00:13:52.139 --> 00:13:54.919 stop at Solo Gootlegs. The industry eventually 00:13:54.919 --> 00:13:57.519 reached the ultimate form of cinematic cross 00:13:57.519 --> 00:14:00.200 -pollination. The crossovers. Yes. They took 00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:02.559 Sartana and paired him up with the only other 00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:05.019 character in the spaghetti western genre who 00:14:05.019 --> 00:14:08.460 had a similarly massive, heavily bootlaid cultural 00:14:08.460 --> 00:14:11.320 footprint. Django. Django. It was a cinematic 00:14:11.320 --> 00:14:14.429 universe crossover. decades before Hollywood 00:14:14.429 --> 00:14:16.929 Studios made it a standard business model. Like 00:14:16.929 --> 00:14:19.710 we get these epic, entirely unsanctioned showdowns 00:14:19.710 --> 00:14:22.610 like Django Defies Sartana and the incredibly 00:14:22.610 --> 00:14:26.190 named One Damn Day at Dawn, Django Meets Sartana. 00:14:26.409 --> 00:14:29.049 The sheer volume of media produced is staggering. 00:14:29.370 --> 00:14:31.450 It really is incredible to think about. So what 00:14:31.450 --> 00:14:34.460 does this all mean? When I look at this sprawling 00:14:34.460 --> 00:14:36.940 chaotic web of official movies curated by the 00:14:36.940 --> 00:14:39.259 original actor alongside fake movies and bizarre 00:14:39.259 --> 00:14:41.440 crossover events, it forces a deeper question 00:14:41.440 --> 00:14:43.500 about intellectual property. Does a character 00:14:43.500 --> 00:14:45.820 even belong to their creator anymore once the 00:14:45.820 --> 00:14:48.480 bootleggers and the crossover cash -ins saturate 00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:50.820 the market to this degree? This raises an important 00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:53.000 question about the nature of cultural legacy 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.039 versus legal ownership. I mean, from a strictly 00:14:56.039 --> 00:14:59.299 legal standpoint, sure, copyright exists. Right, 00:14:59.379 --> 00:15:02.740 on paper. On paper. But culturally, when a character 00:15:02.740 --> 00:15:05.740 is replicated, bootleg, and demanded on that 00:15:05.740 --> 00:15:09.360 massive of a scale, they cease to be just a piece 00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:12.779 of intellectual property owned by a studio. They 00:15:12.779 --> 00:15:15.639 transcend copyright entirely. They become something. 00:15:15.700 --> 00:15:18.080 They become a mythological archetype, much like 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:20.840 Robin Hood or King Arthur. Right, like nobody 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:23.970 owns the concept of Robin Hood. Anyone can tell 00:15:23.970 --> 00:15:26.009 a story about a rogue stealing from the rich. 00:15:26.429 --> 00:15:28.789 Precisely. The fact that rival producers could 00:15:28.789 --> 00:15:31.750 throw the name Sartana onto a poster and guarantee 00:15:31.750 --> 00:15:34.649 box office returns, even if Gianni Garca was 00:15:34.649 --> 00:15:37.450 nowhere near the set, proves that Sartana had 00:15:37.450 --> 00:15:39.870 evolved from a specific character into a universal 00:15:39.870 --> 00:15:43.269 concept. Well, yeah. The name represented an 00:15:43.269 --> 00:15:47.009 idea. the cool, calculating, untouchable anti 00:15:47.009 --> 00:15:50.669 -hero who always secures the bag. Those unofficial 00:15:50.669 --> 00:15:52.909 knock -offs and bizarre jango pairings aren't 00:15:52.909 --> 00:15:55.210 just cheap cash -ins. What are they, then? They 00:15:55.210 --> 00:15:57.830 are the ultimate, undeniable proof of the character's 00:15:57.830 --> 00:16:00.629 massive cultural impact. Taking a step back and 00:16:00.629 --> 00:16:02.809 looking at the whole journey of Blood at Sundown 00:16:02.809 --> 00:16:06.090 is just wild. It really is. We started with a 00:16:06.090 --> 00:16:09.769 1966 Italian -German co -production about a guy 00:16:09.769 --> 00:16:13.080 named Johnny fighting his evil brother. It was 00:16:13.080 --> 00:16:15.460 built from the ground up to be a standard, totally 00:16:15.460 --> 00:16:18.279 forgettable western about moral redemption. And 00:16:18.279 --> 00:16:21.799 instead... Instead, that one ruthless bad guy 00:16:21.799 --> 00:16:24.460 accidentally captured the audience's imagination 00:16:24.460 --> 00:16:26.879 and just handed the keys of the spaghetti western 00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:29.570 kingdom over to the villain. It triggered a remarkable 00:16:29.570 --> 00:16:31.809 chain reaction. I mean, the audience hijacked 00:16:31.809 --> 00:16:34.470 the narrative in the theater. The German distributors 00:16:34.470 --> 00:16:36.649 hijacked the film's title to appease the market. 00:16:36.830 --> 00:16:39.269 The studio scrambled to monetize the chaos. Right. 00:16:39.610 --> 00:16:42.029 And then the actor weaponized his contract to 00:16:42.029 --> 00:16:44.389 completely reinvent the cinematic trope of the 00:16:44.389 --> 00:16:47.269 antihero. And finally, the global market completely 00:16:47.269 --> 00:16:50.070 absorbed the character, stripping him from his 00:16:50.070 --> 00:16:52.429 creators and turning him into modern mythology. 00:16:52.730 --> 00:16:56.149 It resulted in a smartly curated, heavily negotiated, 00:16:56.490 --> 00:16:59.350 and endlessly copied antihero franchise. And 00:16:59.350 --> 00:17:01.730 it was all born from a guy who was just supposed 00:17:01.730 --> 00:17:04.170 to be a temporary obstacle in someone else's 00:17:04.170 --> 00:17:06.569 story. It fundamentally changes how you watch 00:17:06.569 --> 00:17:10.349 movies. It does. And consider a modern application 00:17:10.349 --> 00:17:13.029 of this exact phenomenon. Think about the media 00:17:13.029 --> 00:17:16.359 landscape today. Specifically, with fan cam culture 00:17:16.359 --> 00:17:18.599 and social media algorithms. Oh, that's a great 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:21.420 point. Today, an audience doesn't even need to 00:17:21.420 --> 00:17:23.799 wait for a studio to greenlight a spinoff, you 00:17:23.799 --> 00:17:26.660 know? Within hours of a show premiering, fans 00:17:26.660 --> 00:17:29.220 can take a secondary character, someone meant 00:17:29.220 --> 00:17:31.779 to be a minor villain or a background obstacle, 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:34.799 rip their scenes completely out of the intended 00:17:34.799 --> 00:17:38.279 narrative context, and edit them into viral content. 00:17:38.339 --> 00:17:40.539 Yeah, you see it on TikTok all the time. Exactly. 00:17:40.759 --> 00:17:43.380 The algorithms then push that content to millions. 00:17:43.279 --> 00:17:46.039 effectively crowning a new main character overnight 00:17:46.039 --> 00:17:48.359 and stripping the original creators of their 00:17:48.359 --> 00:17:51.299 narrative control instantly. The mechanics have 00:17:51.299 --> 00:17:53.460 sped up, but the power dynamic remains exactly 00:17:53.460 --> 00:17:55.980 the same. The studio might build the theater, 00:17:56.039 --> 00:17:58.160 but the audience decides who the star is.