DAY 1:
C’era una volta questo pazzo, pazzo, pazzo West (1973) - Director: Vincenzo Matassi - 1/10
Indubitably one of the genre’s worst. Albeit not as tawdry as Crea’s creations on a purely technical level, this one embraces every single thing you would dread to see in a movie of this sort: slapstick-over-story content, no central storyline to speak of, horrendous acting and generally no originality whatsoever. The reason why it is indeed one of the worst is because this is the most banal, wretched, laziest hack job you could picture in your wildest nightmares. Apart from being bland and puerile, it isn’t even that vulgar and it is outstripped by Più forte sorelle in this regard by a wide margin.
The primary issue appears to be that aside from the general meritlessness, its comedy is so mind-numbingly hackneyed it doesn’t even gratify on the lowliest level either, it even fails to distinguish itself by reason of its crassness, which is the only conceivable way any of this could have worked. Anybody who dares to call this or that Fidani flick the worst entry in the genre should seriously see this and then hang their head in shame. So yes, the reputation is entirely deserved, it’s true, all of it. This is no joke, don’t let your curiosity get the best of you, avoid at all costs (or not, depending on your motives), this one is actually kryptonite. The one review on IMDb from a French critic is pretty hilarious, Fidani vindicated at last.
Su le mani, cadavere! Sei in arresto (1971) - Director: Sergio Bergonzelli - 6/10
Jeepers, what a tremendous opening scene and what a great score courtesy of Alessandro Alessandroni, though I am not sure how the beginning is supposed to be related to the remainder of the story outside of the climax, it seems to be artificially tacked on top in some sense. Too bad the rest of it does not pan out quite as prepossessing as its prologue, that being said, the comedic elements of which I were initially quite apprehensive do not turn out incongruous in the end and are well integrated into the storyline all things considered, no slapstick of any sort is to be found here, which is a relief indeed.
The direction is actually stylish and visually vivid, giving the movie a brisk appearance with multiple diagonal shots and taking advantage of some snappy editing, the film is relatively well paced too; the tale as such is something you have seen many times before in other works, but the material here is rendered in a pretty neat fashion and strikes the right balance between comedy and a more serious oater. This is nothing essential evidently, still, you could do a lot worse than that and the movie makes for lively, unpretentious entertainment, one of the more solid and diverting mid-tier spaghies.