Coolā¦Iāll check it out and see what I think.
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A few observations:
- whatās this with Gunfight at Red Sands. There is no red sands. The town is called Carterville. I guess Gunfight at Carterville doesnāt sound as good.
- everyone calls the hero āGringoā which is generally an insult. Even his āsisterā. The town is in America and is full of gringos. Whatās wrong with his name, Ricardo?
- what ācivil warā is he fighting for in Mexico. Who are the guerillas and what is he fighting for? The town sign mentions 1869 so it canāt be any earlier. There was no Mexican Civil War between 1867 and 1910. Is this supposed to be as late as 1910? Or are we supposed to think that Mexico is in a permanent state of civil war?
- at the end (spoiler!!!) Gringo finds the critical horse without a shoe. But the sheriff who owns it is riding his own horse chasing after Maria at the time. Why does the sheriff own two horses? A second one for when he has to disguise himself as a Mexican to murder people?
- Morricone comes up with quite a lot of different cues for this given itās a cheap B movie. Although some of them arenāt very good. I could sense some of the incidental music from Fistful (eg when Eastwood crawls away from the Rojos house) trying to come out.
- Sara Lezana appears to have been only 15 when this was shot. Harrison was 27 and Daniel Martin was 28. Not sure how sheās supposed to have āgrown upā with Gringo especially as heās been gone for 4 years. Odd casting - I guess Lisa must be supposed to be about 18-20 and maybe heās supposed to be about 23 or so.
Overall, though, this was better than I expected. I donāt rate Harrison that highly (he must have been chosen for his peplums because he looks like Stephen Boyd) but Rossi Stuart was good as the bad guy, oozing corruption.
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That always irked me about this one. I just found it silly that everyone was calling him that, it became rather annoying in the end.
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āThereās just one kind of man that you can trust,
thatās a dead man, or a Ricardo like meā¦ā?
I donāt know. I just donāt think Ricardo has the same ring as gringo. I believe Morricone made the right call here. 
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Does he f**k! 
Harrison is a fairly plain Jane, verging on ugly, Iād say ā¦ no way does he even vaguely resemble Boyd.
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Stephen Boyd
Richard Harrison
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Other way around. Top is Harrison and bottom is Boyd.
Works fine in the song. Its his friends and family calling him Gringo that is weird.
That was deliberate
Why?
To catch someone out?
I was taking a shot at humor. Obviously, I missed. 
As far as Harrison being called āGringoā, if we are going to take it so seriously, I really donāt find it that strange as we donāt know how he got the name. Perhaps there was a story behind it.
While it can be used in a derogatory sense, it all depends on how it is being used. I had an uncle who was in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Texas. When he was in his 20s, his wife died in a car accident and left him with three children to raise. After they were grown and on their own, he married the most beautiful Latina girl about half his age, retired from the service, and returned to the town where we lived. They never had any children together so, when she was feeling motherly (which was quite often), she would invite me and three of my cousins over on Saturdays for games of hide and seek, kickball, badminton, and a wonderful meal of traditional Mexican food. Even after I outgrew her, she used to refer to me, with a smile on her face, as āmi querido pequeno gringoā (my darling little gringo). I never took offense as I know she meant it with a mixture of humor and affection. She passed away about three years ago and left explicit instructions that we three nephews and one niece were to be her pall bearers. She didnāt care who the other two were as long as we four were there. I think, in a way, she considered us the children she never got to have.
For me, when I hear āgringoā, it always brings a smile to my face as it reminds me of Aunt Adriana. And it is probably why I never had a problem with this character being named Gringo and also have such an affection for Morriconeās song.
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The new Blu-ray from Explosive just landed in my mailbox, so I gave it a brief spin.
While it is most certainly the best looking version I have so far, itās not exactly a stellar 2023 hi-def release. The credits sequence looks especially weak with quite a bit of compression artefacts such as visible ācolour bandingā in the sky. Need to have a closer look when I have more time.
The disc has German, Italian, and English audio. The main extra is Wild Eastās 55 minutes long interview of Richard Harrison.
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Yeah doesnāt look amazing at all, but itās a step up from DVD and all in all watchableā¦
Thatās the blurb they want for the cover 
As far as I understand these Explosive Media spaghetti westerns are a mixed bag of his and misses.
well itās not like EM has much control over whatās available, like 99% of companies out there, they trade in licenses and material, what you see is what they were able to obtain. Only few companies may do their own scanning (Arrow, Criterion, ā¦) or team up with a lab or cinemateque to that end, but thatās the exceptionā¦
So in the above case somebody did a scan that resulted in color banding and misc artefacts to be a part of the scanned result?
In the end it really doesnāt matter to me as an end customer where they got their material. If who they have partnered up with continually does a bad job maybe they should start licensing from somebody else.
All in all Iām just sad that the quality control is so bad with some of these releases. Would love to just be able to blind buy them
Well at least the movie is a helluva lot better than I remembered
Think itās alongside Minnesota Clay as my favourite of the early spaghetti fliksā¦ Even A Gringo Like Me has grown on me
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That song gets worm holed in my brain and sometimes wonāt leave for days. 
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One of the few spaghetti flicks that had two different English dubs. My guess was the original English version was so poor that Walter Manley had to have it redubbed when he bought it for distribution directly to American television.