aka Get Mean
The always weirdly grinning and mugging gunman we only know as the Stranger (Tony Anthony) returns. And what a return it is! He is being dragged behind a riderless horse into the dustiest Western ghost town in all of Spain, um, I mean America. There he meets a bunch of people I can only describe as gypsy pirates. They have been waiting for him as the promised hero who shall return their princess Elizabeth (Diana Lorys) back to Spain and help her regain her throne from the invading barbarians. While our dubiously heroic hero is still haggling about the price of his services, a group of black clad cowboys led by a Viking attack. The Stranger disperses these guys pretty fast and it does only take a little line on a map until the he and the princess arrive in Spain. Once there, they witness a bizarre battle between the barbarians (a bunch of people with melee weapons, dressed as Persian, Vikings, traditional Spanish courtiers, or just in the pelts of movie barbarism) and Elizabeth's people (who are white Moors? Spaniards?), wearing either the gypsy pirate style things or movie Moorish clothing circa from the Crusades era, as well as anything else the director thought he could get away with (that is, everything). By all rights, Elizabeth's guys should win, what with them having firearms (and bows) and such, but the barbarians have a secret weapon. It's an early version of a tank in form of a cart carrying four cannons on a turning disk and it makes short work of Elizabeth's army.
Well, so much for the good guys. Afterwards, the leaders of the barbarians go for a little chat with the Stranger and Elizabeth. It turns out that Elizabeth's tendency to tell everyone, even the leaders of her enemies, who she is and the Stranger's helpful explanation of her monetary worth can only lead to trouble. So Elizabeth ends up kidnapped while our hero sees the world hanging from his feet while the barbarians are shooting their cannons at him.
This is where the plot (such as it is) starts to get complicated with a nonsensical series of double crosses between the leaders of the barbarians (Diego-who-dresses-like-Genghis-Khan-and-is-dubbed-with-a-near-impenetrable-accent, The Gay Courtier, and Richard III's number one fan) and the Stranger himself, kidnappings, escapes, and a little questing for a hidden treasure.
Among the further indignities that are visited on our hero are:
- invisible ghosts hitting him and possessing him into imitating wolf howls (very badly, at that)
- a black face bomb
- people stuffing an apple into his mouth and trying to roast him on a spit
- the local semi-lesbian warrior women trying to do him sexual harm until they are distracted by each other's awesomeness
and more insane shit than one could possibly list.
For those among us who thought The Stranger's outing in Japan was weird, Get Mean is a true eye opener. Its glaring and completely conscious ignorance of things like logic, characterization, history (if not time itself) and plain human sanity is bound to show everyone what the word "bonkers" really means. It is surprisingly unmysterious how the film came to pass, though (and yes, I am passing wild speculation based on my intimate knowledge of Italian filmmaking by way of watching way too many Italian films as fact here). You see, director Ferdinando Baldi and his star Tony "Mugging Mug" Anthony promised their producers to make a Western only to find that they didn't have any Western costumes except for the single one that was part of Tony's private wardrobe. Buying or making some was completely out of the question after most of the budget had already been invested in drugs during the script writing phase (a wild party in Baldi's house during which no script was written), but what luck! Baldi still had some moth-eaten rags "borrowed" during his stint as director of peplums and historical adventure films stashed away in his cellar! Nothing was more obvious than to just put them all on random actors and improvise something along the lines of Maciste's adventures in China, just with a gunman instead of Maciste and even less of an idea when exactly the damn thing was meant to take place.
Which brought this film into existence, a real prime piece of what the hell filmmaking that for once is as fun as its elements promise. There was most definitely neither a real script nor a plan nor any sane idea involved, but damn, this thing is moving along with nary a minute that is not filled to the brim with stupid, inappropriate and goofy scenes of inexplicable meaning, be it the indignities inflicted upon our hero or just a mass of dubious details (like the silver spheres which seem to observe the beginning and the end of the film, or our hero's love for the taunting of dead enemies or or or).
This just might be the film the Italian movie industry was made to create. Thanks, God!
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I. Want.
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