Vitals

Franco Lantieri as Sanchez, dangerous Mexican henchman

Mexico, circa 1890

Film: Bastard, Go and Kill
(Italian title: Bastardo… vamos a matar!)
Release Date: March 6, 1971
Director: Gino Mangini
Costume Credit: Teresa Miccinelli (credited as seamstress)

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Like so many new parents, I always have plenty of time on my hands to idle away by watching movies I know little about. For those who recognized the sarcasm in that last sentence, you’ll also recognize what a gamble it was when I decided to spend just over an hour with the little-known 1971 Spaghetti Western Bastard, Go and Kill, knowing little about it other than it was called Bastard, Go and Kill and that some guy wore a sick red leather jacket in it.

Said guy turned out to be Franco Lantieri—a Sicilian actor who bears quite a resemblance to Gian Maria Volonté (from the first two films of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars trilogy”)—in the supporting role of Sanchez. Sanchez serves as a henchman for ruthless Mexican landowner Don Felipe Morena (Furio Meniconi), often placing him at odds against the wily, mischievous Chaco (George Eastman). While hardly among the best Spaghetti Westerns, Sanchez’s style alone made Bastard, Go and Kill worth the fistful of minutes I spent watching it earlier this year.

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What’d He Wear?

I have no idea if anyone in the Old West could realistically have found a studded red leather jacket, but I would have respected—and likely feared—the man who did. Sanchez invariably wears a cropped brick-red leather jacket, cut boxily to the waist and worn open without any visible conventional front fastening. The narrow shawl collar is decorated with rows of large faceted silver studs before tapering toward four oversized silver grommets on either side of the lower front. The set-in sleeves are topped by short cape-like shoulder flaps, each studded to match the body, while the cuffs are finished with another pair of studs.

The combination of glossy red leather, pyramidal hardware, and exaggerated grommets gives the jacket a flamboyant, almost proto-rock-and-roll character that feels far more 1960s spaghetti Western than 19th century frontier wear.

Sanchez’s printed charcoal shirt features a tightly arranged all-over foulard of small gray four-square boxes. The loosely cut shirt has a band-collar, two open-top breast pockets, and a full-length front placket with large charcoal plastic buttons that Sanchez wears with the top two undone.

He covers his waist with a plain black matte fabric sash, resembling a straight tuxedo-style cummerbund more than the flashier silk faja associated with traditional Californio dress.

Sanchez wears calzoneras, a distinctly Mexican trouser style that increasingly began to replace vaqueros’ breeches in the 1830s. Typically made from broadcloth wool, velvet, or cotton, these tight-fitting trousers are characterized by decoratively fastened outer seams worn open below the knees, allowing greater freedom of movement on horseback. Sanchez’s black wool calzoneras are trimmed with two rows of wavy red galón flanking the side seams, appropriately left open below the knees and secured by two short silver chains hooked between ornamental rosettes across each split lower leg. The openings reveal his white cotton calzoncillos—essentially long underdrawers, here finished with a slightly ruffled appearance—beneath them.

As the don’s feared henchman, Sanchez never dresses without his gun-belt: a broad black leather rig worn low and slightly canted around his hips, fastened with a silver-toned single-prong buckle. Closely spaced cartridge loops run around much of the belt’s circumference, each carrying a brass-cased round. His six-shooter rides on the right in an anachronistically low-slung buscadero-style holster, suspended well below the belt and fitted with a buckled retention strap and narrow leather thigh tie.

For all the pomp and circumstance distinguishing the rest of his outfit, Sanchez wears surprisingly subdued riding boots. The plain brown leather uppers have been weathered and worn to a dusty patina, shaped with squared toes and secured to low-heeled soles.

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The Guns

Sanchez’s long arm is a Winchester Model 1866 lever-action carbine, affectionately nicknamed the “Yellow Boy” for its brass alloy receiver and barrel band. Originally chambered for the rimfire .44 Henry round, this improvement upon the earlier Henry rifle became the first repeating rifle from Oliver Winchester’s newly established Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Even as Winchester refined the design with iconic steel-framed models like the Model 1873, 1892, and 1894, the Model 1866 remained in production through the end of the 19th century. Modern replicas from firms like Uberti are offered in less obsolete chamberings like .38 Special, .44-40 Winchester Centerfire (WCF), and .45 Colt.

Like subsequent Winchester lever-actions, the Model 1866 was offered in several configurations, most notably a 24″-barreled Sporting Rifle and the handier 20″-barreled Carbine, as well as a long 27″-barreled Musket. Sanchez carries the carbine, whose shortened tubular magazine reduced capacity to thirteen .44 Henry cartridges.

Sanchez carries a fascinating revolver, best seen during the finale. It has the hinge of a top-break revolver while also being rigged with an ejector housing tube running nearly the entire length of the barrel, offset below and to its right. Such housings were familiar on loading-gate revolvers like the Colt Single Action Army, enclosing a manually operated ejector rod used to punch spent cases from the cylinder one at a time. They were generally unnecessary on top-break revolvers like the Webley series or Smith & Wesson No. 3, whose opening action simultaneously extracted the spent cases.

Aside from this peculiar ejector housing, the large-bore, double-action revolver closely resembles a Trocaola military revolver. Trocaola, Aranzabal y Cía was one of several gunmakers based in Eibar, Spain, producing derivatives of Smith & Wesson’s .44 Double Action hinged-frame revolver that had been introduced in 1881. These Spanish designs became militarily significant during World War I, when Britain—short of service handguns—turned to Eibar manufacturers for large-frame S&W-pattern top-breaks chambered in .455 Webley. In November 1915, the British approved the Gárate, Anitua y Cía version as the Pistol O.P. [Old Pattern], No. 1 Mk I and the similar Trocaola version as the Pistol O.P., No. 2 Mk I. Both were five-inch, six-shot, double-action top-breaks, and the patterns remained approved until being declared obsolete in 1921.

The two were extremely similar, though surviving examples show subtle differences in grip-frame profile and in the contours of the barrel rib and frame. Sanchez’s revolver appears closer to the Trocaola pattern, particularly in the way its raised sighting rib drops toward the frame above the cylinder.

The World War I production timeline may explain why a propmaker fitted Sanchez’s wooden-gripped top-break with that conspicuous SAA-style ejector housing, perhaps hoping to make a Great War service revolver read more immediately as an Old West six-shooter. But, alas, that unfortunate Italian propmaker never considered that his greatest enemy was yet to be born: a style blogger with too much time on his hands!

Earlier in the film, Sanchez keeps a more recognizable Single Action Army holstered in his gun-belt, perhaps best seen when staging Don Felipe’s suicide. During the same scene, he takes an over/under (O/U) double-barreled derringer from Don Felipe’s safe. The miniature chrome-finished pistol appears to be a more modernized copy of the 1860s-era Remington Model 95, perhaps an Italian-made copy in .22-caliber.

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How to Get the Look

Sanchez’s look blends the swagger of Mexican vaquero dress with the heightened theatricality of a spaghetti Western villain: fitted calzoneras, a waist sash, and weathered riding boots anchor the outfit in tradition, while the patterned shirt, low-slung gun rig, and flamboyant studded red leather jacket push it into something tougher, flashier, and unmistakably cinematic.

• Brick-red leather waist-length jacket decorated with silver pyramidal square studs, with narrow shawl collar, four oversized pairs of front grommets, caped shoulders, and dual-studded cuffs
• Charcoal and gray box-printed shirt with band-collar, front placket, two open-top chest pockets, and button cuffs
• Black matte fabric waist sash
• Black wool calzoneras with wavy red galón-trimmed side seams and two short silver chains over split lower legs
• White cotton calzoncillos (long underwear)
• Brown weathered leather plain square-toed riding boots
• Black leather gun-belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle, cartridge loops, and low-slung buscadero-style right-side holster

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.