VCI Entertainment's New 4K Film Restoration Of Director Julio Buchs' A Bullet For Sandoval Heads Home As New DVD And Blu-ray Product Offerings On Nov. 07

VCI Entertainment has tabbed Nov. 7 as the street date for the new 4K film restoration of director Julio Buchs’ 1969 (domestic, 1970) Spaghetti Western, A Bullet for Sandoval, teaming Ernest Borgnine with Spaghetti Western superstar George Hilton.

 

Both DVD and Blu-ray editions will be available.   Restored from the original 35mm negatives and featuring two versions of the film — the English-dubbed theatrical release and a Spanish-language version that clocks in with an extra ten minutes worth of footage.

 

After Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood and Rick Dalton’s (DiCaprio) monologue about making Spaghetti Westerns in Europe, one can’t help but imagine the conversation that took place between Ernest Borgnine and his agent after The Wild Bunch was released in 1969.   Borgnine’s very next film saw him jetting off to Spain to film A Bullet for Sandoval, a classic Spaghetti Western.

 

He was teamed up with George Hilton (aka: Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara), who was starring in one action film after another during the period (every other month there was something new hitting theatres worldwide).

 

The film itself is somewhat anachronistic in that Hilton plays a rebel soldier by the name of John Warner, who, with the help of his friends, deserts the cause and heads south to Mexico to be with his mistress, Rosa, who is about to give birth to their child.   It was all about the action — of which there is plenty — with little regard for the common weaponry for the period (Civil War versus 1880s).

 

That aside, Warner arrives too late, Rosa died during childbirth … and soon the child will die as well.   This sets up a revenge tale against Rosa’s father, Sandoval (Borgnine as the heavy, but a grieving father nonetheless) and anyone else who hit a part in the tragedy. Warner reunites with his buddies to form an “outlaw” gang, is eventually double-crossed (bounty on his head) and must face Sandoval.

 

The extended Spanish-language cut (with English subtitles) may fill in some of the gaps — Rosa, Warner’s Confederate commander out to bring him to justice, etc. … all seem to have been trimmed for the shorter domestic theatrical cut of the film.

 

Bonus features, in addition to the two view options, include commentary by filmmaker Alex Cox.