HEN ASKED ABOUT his collabo- rations with Mario Bava, actor Cameron Mitchell recalled that
they worked together on six different films, though their official filmographies include only three. According to Mitchell, another of their secret alliances was Minnesota Clay, in which he gives an appealing performance in the unusual role of an aging master gunfighter who must somehow rid his hometown of two opposing gangs though handicapped by incipient blindness. Minnesota Clay was the first Western di-
rected by Sergio Corbucci, a contributor to the scripts for Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei and Il ladro di Bagdad, who would mature into an Italian Western specialist second only to Sergio Leone.
Corbucci was one of those fellows who in- creased his chances for advancement in his profession by keeping a lot of irons in the fire. Before Minnesota Clay went into production, Corbucci was set to make his directorial de- but with Danza Macabra/Castle of Blood, based on his original screenplay, but he was forced to withdraw when a previous directo- rial obligation (1963’s Il figlio di Spartacus/ The Slave, starring Steve Reeves) was suddenly green-lighted. Consequently, he entrusted his horror film to his friend Antonio Margheriti, who had just completed his own first foray into horror with La vergine di Norimberga/Horror Castle (1963), starring Christopher Lee and Rosanna Podestà, which he directed as “Anthony M. Dawson.”
