In short: The Stranger Returns (1967)

aka A Man, A Horse, A Gun

Original title: Un uomo, un cavallo, una pistola

The Stranger (Tony Anthony) rides into another spot of bother. This time around, he's trying to steal a coach full of gold that a group of bandits captained by a sadist known as En Plein (Dan Vadis) has set their own eyes on.

As always, the Stranger has a plan to steal the stolen gold that might look good in his mind but quickly collapses under the stress of reality, leading to his capture and torture. Of course, our dubious hero escapes and the usual hither and yon around the gold ensues; until it all ends in a grand finale in which the Stranger picks off his enemies one by one but loses his ultimate prize.

Unlike the first Stranger movie I talked about yesterday, this second adventure of Tony Anthony's weird-faced wearer of blankets is already half on the way to the bizarre comedy stylings of the later entries in the series. Some of the film's humour is even funny.

Unfortunately, the silly parts collide with the usual Spaghetti Western scenes of sadism that are part of the film to prove the bad guys are even worse than the anti-hero in rather unpleasant ways, leaving behind an aftertaste of unnecessary and ill-considered mean-spiritedness. That this mean-spiritedness is especially directed at women might be par for the course for the Spaghetti Western genre, but shoe-horning scenes of female suffering between comedic scenes really pushes the film towards outright misogyny.

As it is, The Stranger Returns is not light-hearted enough to exclude the nasty parts, and not interested enough in the unpleasant depths of humanity to make effective use of its lighter moments as a good contrast. It just hangs somewhere in the middle.

Luigi Vanzi's direction is less interesting than his work on the first film. It's all very routine, watchable Spaghetti Western by numbers, without even a single scene as tense or spirited as the nearly dialogue-less middle part of the first film.

The Stranger Returns certainly is an alright Spaghetti Western (aka "I've seen worse"), but its transitional position just before the Stranger series becomes really silly and imaginative makes it a less successful film than I'd hoped for.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,tony anthony,in short,spaghetti western,luigi vanzi,dan vadis

A Stranger in Town (1967)

aka A Dollar Between The Death

Original title: Un Dollaro Tra I Denti

A nameless stranger (Tony Anthony) rides into a small, very dusty town in Mexico. The gunman arrives just in time to witness the bandit leader Aguilar (Frank Wolff) and his men slaughter a group of soldiers. The bandit has gotten wind that the army troop he's just gotten rid of has been ordered into town to accept a princely sum in gold the USA are borrowing to the bedraggled Mexican government.

Now Aguilar and his men only have to put on the uniforms of the dead and can accept the money in their stead. And if need be, the nice new Gatling gun the bandits just scored as a bonus to their new clothes will certainly come in handy.

The Stranger - who has changed from Clint Eastwood's old musty poncho into a cavalry uniform - makes himself known now. After a bit of threatening staring and other forms of blustering, the nameless one manages to convince Aguilar that he's the ideal man to help the bandit get the gold from their US counterparts without a fight. He knows the officer of the cavalry unit guarding it, after all (which is a lie) and so will be able to vouch for Aguilar's authenticity to him. Aguilar agrees. If need be, he can still attack the Americans. The plan works out well, surprisingly enough. The North Americans know that something's not right, but are in no position to fight, and so the gold lands in the hands of the bandits and their new friend.

The problems begin afterwards, when the Stranger decides that he'll be wanting half of the gold for his services. Aguilar disapproves and counter-offers one gold coin, a little roughing up and potential death. The Stranger doesn't like that offer too well, and just barely manages to escape with his life and the gold.

This starts the expected cat and mouse game between our hero and the bandits, with the gold changing owners a few times and the Stranger getting tortured for a time, until the decisive shootout leaves only one man standing.

Unlike the later adventures of the stranger I have seen, this first movie about the character isn't a whacky to completely insane comedic yet still violent take on the Spaghetti Western, and Tony Anthony isn't mugging like a loon. Instead, the film is closely shaped after the first film of Leone's dollar trilogy and Sergio Corbucci's Django. Anthony's character is a virtual carbon copy of A Fistful of Dollar's Joe, just played by a much less charismatic actor then Eastwood. Anthony's later turn to scenery chewing now makes much more sense to me. It's overcompensation for his excessive woodenness here.

Trying to mould one's film after two excellent models like director Luigi Vanzi does here isn't such a bad thing, at least when it is done with the appropriate style. At first, Vanzi plays it a little too safe, trusting in Wolff's proven abilities at playing a charismatic bad guy, Anthony's sleepy lids and reams of mediocre dialogue to carry his film, while not doing anything beyond routine pointing and shooting  himself, leaving a viewer acquainted with as many Spaghetti Western as I am by now dreading a competent yet unexceptional final hour with the movie.

Then, very suddenly, Vanzi changes his tune. The dialogue dies down nearly completely and is replaced by gazes and small gestures. A film of people talking (and very seldom shooting) at each other turns into one of people looking, and watching and very regularly shooting each other; the camera lingers and glides and waits; actual tension grows. Although the film might still use the basic structures taken from Leone and Corbucci, it now develops a breath and a rhythm of its own. If a film is like a dance - and this one surely is - Vanzi has gone from stumbling over his own feet to an unexpected display of unassuming virtuosity.

A Stranger In Town's plot stays rather thin, of course. There are no surprises, no unexpected or expected political or moral messages waiting for the viewer. There's just violence with an undercurrent of suppressed sexuality, and the threat of more nastiness than the film is actually going to deliver. A Stranger In Town is not a film out to explore any new depths or to find out some hidden truths about the concept of the frontier. Rather, it's a cheaply done cash-in on the Spaghetti Western wave whose director somehow stumbles into making a cheaply done cash-in that at times works so well it can delight and surprise.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,spaghetti western,tony anthony,luigi vanzi,frank wolff,reviews

In short: The Silent Stranger (1968)

A nameless gunman (Tony Anthony) tries to safe an Asian man from three thugs. His help comes a little too late, and the dying man begs him to bring a small scroll to Japan. His master there will pay well.

So the Stranger and his horse "Pussy" get on the next boat to Japan. Having hardly even arrived, the gunman stumbles into the battle between two shady characters and their small private armies, both very interested in his scroll, and a festival of double-crosses, triple-crosses and quite a few fights. That's what happens when you don't speak the language.

There's a book waiting to be written on the connection between the Spaghetti Western and the Chambara and about the way these genres influenced each other. One of the chapters of this imaginary book would have to be about The Silent Stranger and would hopefully explain how this Italian-Japanese co-production came to life.

The Silent Stranger is one of the better movies that try to combine the Spaghetti Western and one or the other form of Asian action cinema. Thanks to the involvement of actual Japanese money, we have Japanese characters played by Japanese actors speaking actual Japanese - a cornucopia of authenticity. The biggest difference between this and many other Italian/Japanese cross-over films is that it's set in Japan, though, affording director Luigi Vanzi to have a lot of fun with a hero who basically doesn't have a clue what the things going on around him mean.

Tony Anthony's Stranger is obviously based on a certain character from some Leone films, but he looks and acts more like Clint Eastwood's goofier brother. A man who's not as clever as he thinks himself, he mostly gets by on a certain charm and a softer heart than other Italian Western heroes can afford. Anthony's muggy way of playing the role seems a little too over the top at first, but soon his slightly dopey grin turns out to be the ideal embodiment of what the film is trying to do.

While there are certainly enough dead bodies and moments of brutality here, the film mostly tries to be (and even is!) good fun. It certainly lacks the depth of a film by Leone or Corbucci, but it makes up for this through charm and playfulness.

I very much liked the way Vanzi plays out the disorientation that comes with Anthony's inability to communicate, perfectly shown in a scene where he uses a drawing to discern if he is actually paid in the right kind of coin, all the while trying to keep from looking as clueless as he really is.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,japanese movies,spaghetti western,chambara,in short,luigi vanzi,tony anthony