Last Saturday afternoon(the 28th), Encore westerns uncharacteristically showed a full-length trailer, and it
turned out to be a new-to-me, beautiful widescreen print of
what must have been either Columbia's or the De laurentis'
studio's original trailer for A MAN CALLED SLEDGE. There's
no hint of the nonsensical "S.O.B. - Savage, Ornery, Beautiful!" campaign Columbia used to market the film(not as
bad as the "Mr. Big Boots" posters Columbia had originally devised for THE BIG GUNDOWN; did those ever escape from the pages of the pressbook?), using instead the theme song "Other Men's Gold" to punctuate the scenes at different moments.
Also included in the trailer is yet another unused angle - at least in the U.S. version - of Bice's fall from
the church tower after being shot by Sledge. The U.S. trailer shows a quick and close low-angle shot of Bice falling after being struck, and this new trailer adds a shot
of his body crashing into a glass-topped coffin or case. These two shots at least vindicate Vic Morrow of staging the
death of an ultimately nasty villain so routinely and blandly, as seen in the U.S. cut.
I assume that Tom Weisser's comments on SLEDGE in his
infamous book are bullshit - like so many other parts, but
does anyone know if there are different versions of SLEDGE
floating around? Is even the aforementioned death of Bice - as seen in the trailers - more detailed.(Another scene which looks conspicuously cut is the death of Ria.)