Unfortunately for God's Gun that is not meant in a good way. God's Gun is not an awful film but at best it's mediocre, with talented people on board and some great ideas on paper it could have been a good film but the potential is not properly used.God's Gun has its merits with the film having some gorgeous scenery and well-tailored costumes(Lee Van Cleef's wig is just atrocious though). The music score is derivative of Ennio Morricone somewhat but it's a clever, atmospheric one that suits the film well. A few performances are decent, the best being from a charismatic and intensely steely Lee Van Cleef in a double role. Sybil Danning doesn't have much to do but she does bring compassion and heart to her character and to the film. Apart from acting like he was drunk in the final scene, Jack Palance is an entertaining villain, he does bring a menace to the role but an enjoyable hamminess too.Most of the acting however is very weak. Leif Garrett's Johnny really fails to engage, in some scenes he overdoes it and in others he appears completely disengaged, while the secondary and extra roles look under-rehearsed. But in the acting stakes the biggest disappointment was the complete waste of Richard Boone, his character is barely in the film and Boone sleepwalks his way through it. The amateurish dubbing doesn't help, for most of the actors dubbed the voices do not fit the actors or the characters, the worst offenders being for Boone and in the church scene towards the end, it's even out of sync with the mouth movements and in a sloppy way. Nor do the uninteresting caricatures that passes for characters(only Van Cleef's vengeful brother character intrigues a little) or the stilted script which also has a lot of padding and corny melodrama. There were some great ideas in God's Gun but not much interesting is done with them in the storytelling, a lot of it having a muddled and trying-to-do-too-much effect, with an embarrassingly overwrought ending and overlong, unneeded and overdone rape scenes(especially the one in the saloon). God's Gun is stodgily paced and apart from the scenery it does look as though it was made on the cheap, the camera work was distractingly bad with jerky movements and shots that are too wide and too long in places, at its worst at the end which was enough to make one sea-sick.Overall, not awful but strange and rather mediocre. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Steely-eyed clergyman Lee Van Cleef (as as Father John) lords over the peaceful, law-abiding and Christian town of "Juno City" with open-shirted boy pal Leif Garrett (as Johnny) as his sidekick. The respectable town gets roughed-up when smirking Jack Palance (as Sam Clayton) and his gang of cutthroats stop by for some booze and broads. Handsome brother Robert Lipton (as Jess Clayton) starts a chain reaction of big trouble. Young Garrett takes care of business by very quietly finding Mr. Van Cleef's twin brother in Mexico, to help settle the score. A startling secret involving beautifully-figured Sybil Danning (as Jenny) thickens the plot. "God's Gun" is a misfire, but does have an attractive cast and bawdy quality.**** God's Gun (3/7/75) Gianfranco Parolini ~ Lee Van Cleef, Leif Garrett, Jack Palance, Robert Lipton

This film is not as bad as it seems, considering few people heard about it and it has two titles G-d's Gun and Diamante Lobo, which will mix you up. The story is better than most spaghetti westerns, about a priest (Van Cleef) who is killed. So Van Cleef is the good guy, Jack Palance the bad one and Richard Boone the sheriff who does not want any trouble. Sybil Danning is the saloon girl with a good heart. So besides the story, the actors are good, so what goes wrong? In my opinion, the shootouts which are poorly made trying to make up with the sound and slow motion what it lacks in the technical aspect. It took me a long time to decide to see this film and I could not stop watching it after I started. I ended up liking it.

Kramer's GOD'S GUN is a very clumsy gunmen melodrama; one of the clumsiest. The cast is notable (Van Cleef, Palance, Mrs. Danning), and Van Cleef is even doing a double role—as a rightful priest and then as his vengeful brother. About the roles one thing can be said—Van Cleef is as enjoyable as usually, while Palance is as nasty and exasperating as ever with his overacting and simian air. He has the tendency to overact and burden any role, instead of just playing it straight. He mainly wishes to give the impression that he is masterful and is having so much fun—but this almost never works.Van Cleef, on the contrary, is very good. To me, GOD'S GUN was strong fun, and I liked it. What can a Van Cleef leading role in a European western be, other than a joy? Even if the movie is basically bad, Van Cleef changes it and makes it likable. His performances are as cool and simple, straight, minimalist, as they are efficient. There is a sharpness and virility, a quiet force and authority in them , that makes them so peculiar. He seized the opportunity of the European westerns in the '60s and '70s, and he used it. He is my favorite gunman.As I already mentioned, he manages two roles in GOD'S GUN. As a movie, this outing is simply slapdash, where much is left to guess. Its director handled it extremely clumsily—and also almost comically so. Van Cleef alone rescues what is savable in this missed opportunity. God's Gun looks often unintentionally parody and funny. The plot is as simple as it can be—yet it looks like a too greater defy for the severely incompetent director. Compared to other similar flicks of the same bent, it's less elegiac and more cruel and brutal (but not exceedingly so).It catalogs several devices of the genre—the stirring music, the acoustic underscoring of the presumably notable moments, odd camera movements and angles, flashbacks, a rape scene in flashback, funny citizens, hearty whores, and, despite the fact that it looks very much like a parody, it seems it is not one, but a straight thriller. Despite all the deficiencies, I tend to find a Van Cleef leading part rather endearing. (I shall add that I prefer a clumsy Italian gunmen melodrama over a boring, insipid USA western.) It is significant that Van Cleef's crediting recommends any movie he's in, and I spontaneously seize any movie that boasts in his performance. In the Leone diptych (from the point of view of Van Cleef's presence), I enjoy over and over only his performance; and since we are discussing the subject, let me state that, from the four actors mainly involved in the two Leone movies (Van Cleef,Eastwood,Volonté and Wallach), I consider Van Cleef's role to be the very best (there are, in fact, two roles); Volonté's role to be almost as good; Wallach to be the third. Yes, Leone knew to adorn his movies with some extraordinary actors (we may add Kinski's bit part). And putting it bluntly, Van Cleef is the opposite of everything Eastwood means. Which is no small achievement. In the triumphant gallery of the European westerns, Van Cleef has a large share, together with Gemma, Nero , Gian Maria Volonté, Klaus Kinski, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Tony Anthony—a very fine league, I should say;and he was enviable as a man of good looks, in the class of Stamp and Clift. As an actor, Van Cleef was cool, very efficient, and ironic in a way that boosted his roles and did not dissolve them; he looked like an intelligent and firm person. In USA, he was more of an outsider, though the fact should perhaps not be exaggerated.If I am quite kind to this flick, it is in great part because of Van Cleef's leading part. Despite the monumental incompetence of the director, the movie is worth seeing—for Van Cleef's performance ,one as cool as it gets within the given conditions—which were rather inappropriate, it seems.When the priest played by Van Cleef was murdered, I was disappointed—yet such is not the case, as the actor comes back as an able gunman, the priest's dear brother.For me and the European westerns, it was an ideal match—once I have liked one of them, I spontaneously liked them all. Van Cleef is to me (as a western buff) what R. Scott means to Teachout ( as a western buff).