I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected although it is far from anything great. It is light hearted for the most part rather than a flat out comedy and apart from the occasional silliness avoids the kind of slapstick I really dislike. Hill suits the role quite well I thought and is probably more convincing here than in some of his more serious roles.
As mentioned above the music is recycled from Arizona Colt Returns and although recycled music is not uncommon in some of these later, lower budget affairs it is still beyond me why anyone would opt to reuse a song that goes “Bing bang, beng bong, giddyup eeyay” for any reason at all. Still, as Silver Wolf says, it does strangely seem to fit this movie better somehow.
Not a classic by any means but an OK time passer if you enjoy a load of double crossing, gold chasing and occasional silliness. In fact some of the jokes even made me smile.
On a separate note, on checking the database I was surprised to see we have Ignazio Spalla listed as appearing in this film in the role of ‘Dog’. This is clearly an error and, on checking Giusti’s Dizionario and imdb, seems to be a pretty consistant one, although Giusti has him down as playing Louis Donovan. Either way, Spalla is definitely not in this flick in any capacity.
So I put my detective head on (I actually get a geeky kick out of these little cross reverencing investigations) and believe I have figured out the basis for the recurring error. According to the credits on the version of the film I have there is an actor in the film, in a reasonably major role as he was billed quite high up, called Pedro Maria Sanchez. As we all know, Ignazio Spalla was often billed as Pedro Sanchez. I suspect that someone, somewhere along the line, (presumably someone who never actually saw the film or recognised anyone involved) has assumed that these are one and the same person. They’re not. However, Pedro Maria Sanchez was new to me too so I scanned the old interweb thingy for images that might help nail him down and believe I found him here:
He seems to go more commonly under the name of Pedro Mari Sanchez these days and has become a pretty well respected and serious theatre actor. (Maybe some of our Iberian members will recognise hime more than me) He is obviously older in these photos but on comparing him to the guy who plays Lou Donovan in the film I think this is definitely the guy.
So…to put things straight, I believe that “Dog” is played by Rosario Borelli not Ignazio Spalla and that “Lou Donovan” is played by Pedro Maria Sanchez not by Borelli and that Ignazio Spalla is not in the thing at all. If anyone disagrees shout out. If not, I’ll be changing the database accordingly today.
With a wiki based site I know these things can easily happen and that’s why we have editors but it still amazes me how often mistakes like this sit unnoticed for so long and how easily misinformation gets adopted as a result. Giusti’s book, for example, is very good indeed but the more I check, the more errors I find, specifically in the cast lists, and I can only presume that he copied his info from an unreliable source himself. For us, the lesson is to be even more vigilant as I know from recent experience our site is becoming seen more and more as the font of all knowledge in regards to Spaghetti information. So these days, whenever I watch a film, I check our page for it and check the info as best I can.
