Pistol Packin’ Preacher / Posate le pistole Reverendo (Leopoldo Savona, 1972)

[Mickey13]

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2024 thread:

@Mickey13

Outside of a handful of more sophisticated plot devices and Mark Damon’s spirited performance, the movie doesn’t really differ from a slew of other spaghetti western comedies of the early to mid 1970s. While the story about a fake priest performing fake miracles and trying to finagle information about a hidden treasure is unlikely to generate much interest, it also includes a couple of more original moments such as an eclipse and the plot seems purposeful enough in its initial stages at least. Another reason why the production is initially somewhat digestible is that Damon displays a surprising amount of verve and aptitude for farcical acting which goes well with some of project’s more absurd excesses. Either way, none of that amounts to much considering film’s gags take a sharp nosedive past pic’s midpoint with the storyline devolving into the usual string of bland vignettes; suffice to say, the sketches are basically indistinguishable from the kind of content other analogous productions of the era would indiscriminately shower their audiences with. Indeed, the latter half seems deliberately prolonged for want of meaningful plot development which is only exacerbated by banality of successive comedic sequences. On the whole, the flick does not work all that well as a pastiche, nor does its comedy provoke too many chuckles for that matter, growing increasingly repetitious and tiresome towards the end.