Sometimes You Watch it Just Cause You Have To...
At least there weren't any cows...

No time for an introduction of any sort.

Instead, I'm given an opportunity to discuss the shortcomings of my favorite subgenre.

Let's just dive into:

Between God, The Devil, And a Winchester (1968, d. Marino Giralami)

The Story: A map to a stolen treasure pits a boy against bandits, a surrogate father, and a mysterious preacher. (Ummm...that about covers it.)

The Review: I'm sure I've mentioned the fact that when spaghettis try to do traditional Hollywood Western stuff, I begin to do the opposite of enjoy them. Way back when I did a review of Last of the Bad Men, and the character name Kitosch aside, I complained about all the cows in the movie. Granted, it's not like they spent the whole time effing about with cows, but it was more than in any other spaghetti western. It was more than enough to make me uncomfortable. Luckily, Frank Wolff's way weird villain was enough to sway it safely back into familiar spaghetti territory.

It's the reason I'm scared of A Long Ride From Hell. The fact that it stars former Hercules Steve Reeves is sort of a mixed bag. What scares me is the frequent references to Steve and his fictional brother in the movie as being ranchers. No cows. No farms (unless their being raided or someone's hiding out there). And no...

This weekend's spaghetti featured another convention of sorts, the wagon train. Well, sort of...close enough in my book.

The reason for some debate is the fact that this movie goes the opposite direciton of many movies today. It actually assumes you know too much instead of the modern approach of 'you must be a moron' spoonfeeding. For instance, Chasquisdo (Gilbert Roland) leads expeditions across the mountain passes. Ok. So when our little band gets going, it looks like they've joined some wagon train that Chasquisdo is guiding. Ummm, nope. All those other yo-yo's are just his men. Of course, since we never actually really meet any of them, feel free to label them Cannon Fodder #1, Cannon Fodder #2, #3, etc.

Also, this movie featured an awful lot of groups of people hiking over rocks. That's it. Just hiking over rocks. Somewhere in all that hiking all this weird and clumsily built up double-crossing gets under way. Now that's in addition to the storyline with the crooked Colonel that started at the beginning, brought the bandits in, and eventually roped in Chasquisdo. Of course that part of the story gets dropped about a third of the way in, and doesn't reappear until about a sixth left. The strangest bit is that the for all the time they spend with the renegade Colonel at the get go, they certainly don't waste any time building him up as anything more than a plot device.

Which brings us to Richard Harrison's character, Pat Jordan, our hero. Somewhere, I think someone meant for it to be a shock that he's a priest, but I don't know who and I don't know who they were trying to surprise. It certainly doesn't seem relevant to anything going on in the story. His almost constant vow of inaction doesn't make for much of a hero. About the only implication of his being a badass follows Chasquisdo giving him a pistol which he uses to shoot a match out of Chasquisdo's hand. So he bust some bad moves...you just don't get to really see any...at all. However, the one convention is established: like so many screen priests/monks from spaghettis to kung fu flicks, they're all secretly whoop@$$ killers.

Ultimately, there's not much to recommend in this movie. Though I've liked Gilbert Roland in nearly everything I've seen him, Chasquisdo just doesn't give him much to do. For instance, he's got this weird iron club hand, but later you see him working his fingers inside it. What's the point? Why does he have it? Granted, he uses it to club some dudes, but that doesn't explain why he has it. It doesn't seem terribly convenient to have on. Who knows? This also loses point for the all too often use of a child actor who spends 9/10 of his scenes mugging for the camera. This was in addition to the arleady constantly mugging character, Uncle Pink. At least he mugged in an actorly fashion, the kid just looked like he was over exaggerating every expression. So when the tender moment comes for the mugging kid and Chasquisdo...frankly, I kept hoping Gilbert Roland and this movie would move up a few notches by shooting the kid.

I guess the only plus is that it wasn't The Mug himself, George Hilton, and the mugging kid. Not even Klaus Kinski could've redeemed any aspect of that casting. That's saying something.

Cheers.