Kid, Terror of the West / Kid il monello del West (Tonino Ricci, 1973)

Mickey13 · November 24, 2023, 3:44pm

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2023 thread:

Spagvemberfest 2023 - or the crows will drink our beers

Well, I did finish it in the end, though I cannot say I am proud much of this dubious feat. The biggest issue with the flick undoubtedly consists in the fact that with the exception of some subplot about a loan shark dispossessing indigent farmers and the principal plotline pertaining to the kids robbing the bank, there is no palpable narration to anchor the jejune bafoonery. There are raspberry shootouts, fart jokes, brats flinging manure and serving piss disguised as beer to their adversaries, you know, real classy stuff. All of the aforementioned is exacerbated by the abominably long duration which renders the film-viewing experience all the more execrable and excruciating. The movie feels overlong and protracted even when watching it at 1.5x speed which is actually an accomplishment when you really think about it.

At the end of the day, the worst aspect of the turkey is that the underage actors are required to act in the funny, cute way which basically amounts to the irritating kid syndrome multiplied by however many children this movie has. There is basically no reason to see this unless you find the first five minutes or so engaging, as the rest of the film basically peddles the same scene over and over again with very little variation in the way it is all presented. If you really want to see a kiddie spaghetti western for some obscure reason, viewing L’ostaggio would be a wiser choice in spite of its conspicuously lower budget inasmuch as the kids there do not go out of their way to be funny, simply acting out their roles in a straightforward manner; its story feels a tad more substantive and it is shorter too. As for Kid il monello del west, I find it to be virtually unwatchable. It goes straight into my bottom 20, the only reason why I am not giving it a 1 star rating is because it is framed in a competent fashion and the storyline, albeit fundamentally flimsy, is carried out in a passable manner.