3 colpi di Winchester per Ringo (1966)
I couldn’t post in the Spagvemberfest posts as I’m a new user, so I posted this here.
Milklos “Mickey” Hargitay left Hungary in 1947 to get out of being drafted into military service by the Soviet Union. He settled in Cleveland, where he worked as a plumber and carpenter. Can you imagine Hargitay coming to your house to fix your toilet? He’d already been in an acrobatic act with his brothers, a football player, a champion speed skater and a freedom fighter. He was just 21 by the time he made it to America and he started an acrobatic act with his first wife, Mary Birge. Steve Reeves inspired him to start bodybuilding and just a few years later in 1955 Hargitay won the National Amateur Body-Builders’ Association (NABBA) Mr. Universe. Jayne Mansfield demanded that he be in her movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The two became lovers, appearing in movies like The Loves of Hercules, Primitive Love and Promises! Promises! together. After they were divorced in 1963, Hargitay kept acting in Italy, appearing in Revenge of The Gladiators; Stranger in Sacramento; The Sheriff Won’t Shoot; Bloody Pit of Horror; Sette donne d’oro contro due 07; Cjamango; Ringo, It’s Massacre Time; Lady Frankenstein; Black Magic Rites and Delirium.
o deal with the rough kids in his neighborhood. He was in the Battle of the Bulge and taken prisoner and when he got back to America, he became a high school teacher and guidance counselor in Los Angeles. He was reenlisted for the Korean War and when he came home, he acted in Prisoner of Wa r, The Man with the Golden Arm and The Ten Commandments in which he drags Moses to meet the pharaoh. Before going to Italy to be an actor — the success of Steve Reeves brought every bodybuilder there — a psychic asked him if the name Gordon Mitchell meant anything to him. When he got to Italy, that was the name that he was given. He would appear in everything from Fellini’s Satyrcon to crime movies, horror, sexploitation and post-apocalyptic films.
Both Mickey Hargitay and Gordon Mitchell started their show business careers as part of Mar West’s Muscleman Review. Other bodybuilders who appeared with West included Reg Lewis (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules), Charles Krauser (who later became Paul Novak, the love of West’s life), Armand Tanny (a Muscle Beach bodybuilder who often wrote about weight lifting; he organized a strike when West attempted to reduce pay of the group), Dan Vadis (Hercules the Invincible), Mission: Impossible), George Eiferman (The Devil’s Sleep; George of the Jungle was based on him), Irvin “Zabo” Koszewsk (Tommy Chong’s stunt double; he’s also in Spartacus), Dick Dubois (Athena), Dominic Juliano and Joe Gold (the founder of Gold’s Gym). Krauser and Hargitay even had a fight at a press conference in 1956 over West.
Anyways…
This movie is the one time that Hargitay and Mitchell would be in a movie together. Ringo Carson (Hargitay), Frank Sanders (Mitchell) and Tom (Spartaco Conversi) are hired by Walcom (Amedeo Trilli) to rescue his daughter Jane (Milla Sannoner). She falls for Ringo and that splits the friendship between him and Frank.
After the Civil War, Ringo becomes the town sheriff of Stone City and has a son with Jane. Frank is the leader of an outlaw gang who is hired by Daniels (Ivano Staccioli) to terrorize his hometown and drive down the price of ranches. Ringo is blinded in an accident and Frank takes over as the law, which allows him to go wild. Eventually, he kills Ringo’s mother and kidnaps Jane, which is not how you repair a friendship. There’s even a voodoo scene in this oddball Italian Western.
This was directed by Emimmo Salvi and written by Ambrogio Molteni (who I love, because he was also the lunatic who gave me Enter the Devil, Crazy Desires of a Murderer, Violence In a Women’s Prison, Black Emanuelle, Yellow Emanuelle and Sister Emanuelle) and James Wilde.