Adios Gringo (Giorgio Stegani, 1965)

What was the English title of Whittingham’s novel Adios?

Wikipedia can’t identify anything called Adios. Possibly titled differently (I know a lot of Edgar Wallace novels had completely different titles in Germany).

According to my German copy of the novel (which is called “Endlose Fährte”) the title of the original is “High Fury”.

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Yes - found it.

Back cover synopsis:

“Brent Landers rode into the town of Sage Crossing carrying a half-demented girl whose tortured body was evidence of what had happened to her at the hands of some man, or men, high in the badlands country where she had been left for dead. The town was grateful to Landers for bringing in the Tillson girl. And they were curious too. Landers couldn’t afford their curiosity - because he was an unconvicted murderer who had killed, not from choice but because he’d had to …”–Back

Wikipedia incorrectly have this as a 1970 novel which is probably why the author of the entry can’t identify it as the source for Adios Gringo (plus the fact that he thinks the novel is Adios). Originally published in 1964.

Sort of novel that would have made an Audie Murphy movie.

I found an English language copy of High Fury on line.

As noted earlier, the film follows the novel virtually scene for scene. Adios Gringo resembles an American western because it’s a faithful adaptation of an American novel. The novel is very wordy, repetitively so, and obviously much of this has been trimmed. The novel has only a body count of three and no fist fights and therefore ‘George Finley’ has had to add a gunfight after Lucy is found and a big shoot-out at the end to spice things up as well as the obligatory beating-up and a very long Mano a Mano punch-up. Without those it would be all words and little action.

Here is the link:

Near the beginning of this film there is a really great line of dialogue when Clevenger gets riled up and tells Brent that ‘My butt’s a boiling’.

I need to use this in every day speech.

Does anyone know what he says in Italian as I saw the Wild East DVD.

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The actor playing the evil son seemed a bit too old for the role (gave me the “Steve McQueen in The Blob” vibes), so I checked it and it seems he was older than the actor playing his father!

You’re mistaken on this - Massimo Righi was 11 years younger than Pierre Cressoy. Is younger but not young enough. That struck me also that the age difference was wrong. I don’t know why they would have done that. Maybe Cressoy was imposed by the French producer and should have been older.

There’s quite a few other examples in Italian westerns as well, the most obvious one from Fistful of Dollars where Margarita Lorenzo doesn’t look as if she can be Bruno Carotentuto’s mother and can’t be as only 10 years older.

In The Man Who Shot Billy the Kid, Gloria Milland who was only about 7-8 years older than Peter Lee Lawrence plays his mother under middle aged makeup! Why didn’t they just cast an older actress?

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Thank you for clearing this up. Must’ve made a mistake checking actors’ ages.
Massimo Righi sure looked too old for this role.

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‘Adiós Gringo’ premiered in the UK at the Alexandra Theatre, Coventry on 28th May 1967. Another surprisingly wide release: initially as a Golden Era presentation with Vincent Price’s ‘The Last Man on Earth’, then as a feature on late night bills into the early 70s.
Source below: (2) (Birmingham Evening Mail, 5th August, 1967)

In the U.S. it opened in Albuquerque (NM) and San Angelo (TX) in January 1968. By the end of the year it was already being aired on television.
Source below: (The Albuquerque Tribune, January 20, 1968)

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Man, I watched this on Amazon as it was in HD but it was just a total upscale of the existing master. They even cut off the first 5 seconds because it starts with print damage and they wanted to hide it apparently.