Chapaqua’s Gold / L’oro dei Bravados (Giancarlo Romitelli, 1970)

[Mickey13]

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2022 thread:

@Mickey13

It’s odd that so few people mention the great score by Bacalov in this one, I find the main theme to be incredibly catchy. As for the movie itself, this is just the kind of quick-and-dirty hack job that I like: it distills all the right flavors without bothering much with the niceties of sophisticated writing or anything along those lines; it just supplies the most essential, indispensable narrative devices and then proceeds to provide rapid shootouts, fast cuts, decent photography and epic duels with some good music to boot.

In other words, the film is a cheap and dirty cash grab and nobody involved in it seems to have made any bones about it which intriguingly enough, lends it a refreshing air of guilelessness and candor in the process. Hence, while there is no denying that the material lacks much in the way of originality, the self-aware nature of it informs it with a certain charm which is hard to resist, a kind of post-spaghetti or meta-spaghetti. Furthermore, its immediacy and brevity additionally drive the point home and make it appealing in the grubby sort of way if that makes sense. One mighty fine piece of junk. Okay, the last 15 minutes get sorta protracted, but that’s what the fast-forward button is intended for, press it and exuberate.