«On a Violent Note» by Gianfranco Pellegrini

In the Old and wild West, the regulars of a saloon are always ready to draw their Colts at the sight of a troublemaker.
What they aren’t prepared for is a dangerous woman with a haunting voice and a mysterious past.

In On a Violent Note, directed by Gianfranco Pellegrini, nothing is as it seems at first. It starts as a classic western, veers into horror, flirts with legend, and culminates in a duel where bullets are replaced by rhymes. A short film that disorients, entertains, and leaves the audience with the feeling of having witnessed something truly unexpected.

At the heart of the story are Horace and Billy—two armed men, but not in the way one would expect. Their enemy is no ordinary outlaw but a malevolent deity, an ancient entity that enforces its will with the cruelty of a relentless god. The stakes are not just their survival but the very possibility of defying a predetermined fate. But here’s the twist: the showdown is not won through violence, but through art. Writing and singing become weapons, subverting the logic of the duel and overturning the very notion of power.

The film’s originality doesn’t lie in its individual elements—western, horror, musical—but in the way it seamlessly blends them into a story that never ceases to surprise. Its narrative structure is a continuous game of reversals, an escalation where each scene sets the stage for something even more outrageous. And it works. Because On a Violent Note never seeks spectacle for its own sake, but instead builds a believable world where the absurd becomes inevitable.

The idea that art can be more powerful than violence is at the core of this unconventional tale, but the film never indulges in easy metaphors or didactic tones. Instead, it carries its message with a subtle irony, turning every twist into a small act of defiance against convention.

 And yet, this is precisely the film’s strength—a constant challenge to expectations, an adventure that follows no rules but its own.