Database page: Centomila dollari per Ringo - The Spaghetti Western Database
This film has great music by Bruno Nicolai, but unfortunately I’ve only heard the score and not seen the film. Has anybody here seen it?
I watched in very bad source quality… Well, a very confusing plot. Ward Cluster or a strange came to town and take that identify (what for?) he takes care a kid, not his but he take cares, and starting solving a problem with a drunk man and a girl against a town boss.
No SW feeling at all.
Fernando Sancho in my opinion does the better, but can’t save the film… too bad :-[
Apparently this was a pretty successful film in Italy. It alone among Richard Harrison’s Spaghettis made it into the top grossing Italian Westerns between 1964-1975 (according to Burt Fridlund’s book).
Must have been trading on that “Ringo” name I guess.
Otherwise pretty undistinguished I guess, no?
I’ve never seen it.
Action packed early SW which mostly is a routine entry, but also has a few interesting deviations from the standard plot. Richard Harrison is quite convincing in the lead and is accompanied by Fernando Sancho in one of his few good guy roles.
Alberto De Martino is a competent director for westerns, but that’s not enough to create an exciting film, his next one Django Shoots First is far superior in every respect.
This rather unknown SW was a very successful one in Italy, #6 in 1965 (behind FaFDM and the 4 Gemma films) and #21 of all SWs (on the inflation adjusted list). More successful than every Corbucci.
It seems that every of the minor prolific SW stars had one great success in the early days of the genre, which led to a row of leads in less successful films with continuous descending budgets.
This one was Richard Harrison’s biggest SW hit.
[quote=“stanton, post:4, topic:473”]This rather unknown SW was a very successful one in Italy, #6 in 1965 (behind FaFDM and the 4 Gemma films) and #21 of all SWs (on the inflation adjusted list). More successful than every Corbucci.[/quote]statistics like this makes me understand why there was so many sw’s made during those years. It looks like people just wanted to see westerns and it was a matter of luck which one became a box office hit. I haven’t seen this film though.
$100’000 For Ringo.
A woman (with a baby) is pursued by Indians. Sending the baby on ahead (in a basket strapped to her horse), she stops to fight and is saved by a man who then kills her himself, with an Indian spear. The man and his brother wanted her land (or rather her husband’s, but he is away at war) and later incites racial hatred and an attack on the local, peaceful Indians, some of whom escape, with the baby from the film’s beginning. Years later, Richard Harrison turns up, picking up a sidekick of sorts along the way (Fernando Sancho, in a rare “gringo” role), and there is immediate suspicion that he is the dead woman’s husband, leading to confrontations between himself and the villainous brothers…
God…there was a hell of a lot going on in this film, and thanks to some choppy editing, some of it was quite confusing at times. Harrison’s character first denies being the husband, then claims he is, then it transpires that he isn’t and nor is he as honourable in his intentions as it first appears. There’s a subplot involving gunrunning and the Mexican army, lots of double crossing, a love triangle of sorts and a very irritating brat who believes Harrison is his father. The part of the plot involving a pair of thwarted lovers bears no real relevance to the overall storyline and it seems they are there only to be picked on, abused, tortured and finally murdered. The woman gets a whipping (almost totally offscreen) before being shot, while a tied up Harrison can do nothing to help. At the film’s end i really didn’t understand why Harrison would want to take the brat with him since they weren’t related and he’d have been happy staying where he was. Also, the title and song seemed out of place…no-one referred to him as Ringo. Anyway, Sancho was the best thing in this one for me. Overall, lots of action and fights, some surprisingly grim scenes, nothing special, but never slow.
[quote=“Silver, post:6, topic:473”]$100’000 For Ringo.
A woman (with a baby) is pursued by Indians. Sending the baby on ahead (in a basket strapped to her horse), she stops to fight and is saved by a man who then kills her himself, with an Indian spear. The man and his brother wanted her land (or rather her husband’s, but he is away at war) and later incites racial hatred and an attack on the local, peaceful Indians, some of whom escape, with the baby from the film’s beginning. Years later, Richard Harrison turns up, picking up a sidekick of sorts along the way (Fernando Sancho, in a rare “gringo” role), and there is immediate suspicion that he is the dead woman’s husband, leading to confrontations between himself and the villainous brothers…
God…there was a hell of a lot going on in this film, and thanks to some choppy editing, some of it was quite confusing at times. Harrison’s character first denies being the husband, then claims he is, then it transpires that he isn’t and nor is he as honourable in his intentions as it first appears. There’s a subplot involving gunrunning and the Mexican army, lots of double crossing, a love triangle of sorts and a very irritating brat who believes Harrison is his father. The part of the plot involving a pair of thwarted lovers bears no real relevance to the overall storyline and it seems they are there only to be picked on, abused, tortured and finally murdered. The woman gets a whipping (almost totally offscreen) before being shot, while a tied up Harrison can do nothing to help. At the film’s end i really didn’t understand why Harrison would want to take the brat with him since they weren’t related and he’d have been happy staying where he was. Also, the title and song seemed out of place…no-one referred to him as Ringo. Anyway, Sancho was the best thing in this one for me. Overall, lots of action and fights, some surprisingly grim scenes, nothing special, but never slow.[/quote]
How did the print look that you viewed? Widescreen?
Thanks
The picture quality itself was pretty good, i’d say 3.5 to 4 out of 5. It’s fullscreen though.
Thanks. VOSM (I think) has a widescreen version that I have not bought yet. But I don’t know if the picture quality is that great.
Thanks. I liked your synopsis/mini-review.
My fullscreen copy was rather bad.
Thanks…btw, is this widescreen release in english?
A bit of a hodge podge but I quite enjoyed this none the less.
The plot meanders unneccesarily but Harrison is Ok and the Spanish locations look good. Plus it has Fernando Sancho which never hurts. It also has a climactic scene where the Indians arrive to save the day. Now you don’t see that too often in a Spaghetti Western.
The best feature of the film though, without doubt, is the score. Catchy theme song along with some rousing incidental stuff makes this a score fit for a better movie really.
I wouldn’t neccesarily recommend it to anyone but it was ok in my opinion. I’ve seen far worse.
I agree with Phil here. I didn’t get much of the plot (i fell a sleep at some point though), why Harrison wanted the kid to believe he is his father?
Music by Bruno Nicolai is good and the final fight with indians and all is pretty good. It’s a long scene but well made and entertaining.
My rating: 5/10
Neat, little B-Western with lots of shooting and torturing but confusing plot.
The theme song “Ringo, Come to Fight” sung by Bobby Solo is to my liking and would really fit a better movie (as Phil has already pointed out).
Richard Harrison looks like a mixture of Lou Castel and PLL in this one…
All in all 5/10
I was trying to put my finger on it a while back on who Harrison looked like in this, and see what you mean.
Yeah this was a huge hit in the early days of SWs. If you consider inflation, its one of the most successful SWs ever in the Italian box office. I don’t quite know why though why it was so popular. I guess it was during the early days before the market got saturated and people justed wanted to see a western, any western.
Back in those days, anything with Clint, LVC, or Gemma was box office gold, but Harrison had his day in the son for a brief moment too.
I have it in my inflation adjusted list at # 21.
19 La collina degli stivali
20 La resa dei conti
21 100 000 dollari per Ringo
22 Per pochi dollari ancora
23 Arizona Colt
The other 4 films are pretty close, especially the 2 before it.
I watched this last night - and was pleased to be back in spaghettiland after a brief sojourn into Grindhouse territory. Although this is never gonna come anyway near breaking into my top 50, this early sw entertained and confused in equal measures. Richard Harrison looked good stabbing a bloke in the hand and showd some cool gunslinging, and there was good support from Fernando … but Indians I can usually do without for the most part.
Can’t see the PLL/Castel thing, but I thought he looked instead like Garko off the Blood at Sundown poster - looking up through his hat and mad eyes.
It’s from the bottom half of the sw barrel imo, but did the job all the same.
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/$100,000_for_Ringo_Review
There’s a review of this movie, but for some reason the link won’t work (review accessible from the Main Page)
It was Colonel Douglas Mortimer (the real one, not the guy from that picture) who drew my attention to this movie, with a post on the thread of One Silver Dollar:
“One Silver Dollar was a huge hit box office wise, I think it actually outgrossed the Ringo films, although over time the Ringo films have gone on to be more famous. Another surprisingly historically relevant film is 100,000 Dollars for Ringo, which was a routine film, but a huge hit. Surprisingly, it is relatively obscure now, but it was hugely popular back in the day. Richard Harrison never achieved that status ever again.”
Like that Japan poster.
Try this link:
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/$100,000_for_Ringo_Review