Kung Fu nel pazzo west (1973) - Director: Ban-Yee Yeo - 1/10.
The movie basically constitutes poor man’s Shanghai Joe, except that it substitutes gore with slapstick and resolutely plunges into pure parody and unabashed absurdity with some superficial references to the Watergate scandal and the assassination of JFK. Out of all spaghetti western productions, it probably incorporates the most abrasive, incohesive soundtrack which recycles themes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Dr. No (yes, the Bond flick), apart from some other material including circus music, Hammond organ riffs and something which sounds an awful lot like Tirol accordion noodlings. At one point before bandits ride into town, there is a scene in which the sound of hundreds of raspberries (or evacuations) is layered on top of the hubbub of multiple toilets being flushed all at once.
As if that were not enough, there is very little continuity in the way most sequences are spliced together, the framing and composition exhibit so much shoddiness and choppiness that it is often tough for the viewer to piece the action together on the basis of provided shots which is not remedied in the slightest by the ferociously vertiginous camerawork. If self-inflicted torture is your idea of having a good time, this might be right up your alley. Possibly one of the most ramshackle trainwrecks this genre ever saw, the filmmaking here is of such contemptible quality the words inevitably fail to reflect the thoroughgoing decrepitude of the execution the likes of which may be seen only in a handful of other projects helmed by genre’s worst directors such as Crea or Lattanzi. In other words, it has to be seen to be believed, though familiarizing oneself with the content of this so-called production is highly inadvisable.
I bandoleros della dodicesima ora (1972) - Director: Alfonso Balcázar - 2/10.
There are several issues blighting the motion picture: firstly, even though the flick is supposed to be yet another Trinity clone, our central duo neither resembles Hill and Spencer in appearance nor in terms of charm and overall charisma; as much as I abhor the Carambola movies, at the very least those flicks got the basics right and did not stray away from the originals too much, the same cannot be argued about this outing. Secondly, most of the jokes simply turn out nugatory, hackneyed and tiresome: neither is there much vim in the way the humor is prefigured and eventually delivered, nor is the said humor particularly inventive or dignified in the first place. Thirdly, the storyline, albeit initially digestible, essentially grinds to a halt in the middle section and then proceeds to flounder towards the climax in a remarkably laggard, cumbersome fashion.
In a certain sense, the composition feels like a compilation of tropes extracted from various subgenre examples and then slapped together in an otiose attempt to cash in on the contemporary comedy hysteria. The story totally runs out of steam and ideas in the second half and in what appears to be a display of scripting helplessness, avails itself of the climax involving razing the entire town to the ground with the use of explosives. None of the aforementioned factors is remedied by Balcazar’s flaccid direction which impassively drifts from one scene to another, framing the action in an utterly nondescript manner. The flick might not be so absolutely loathsome on the face of it, notwithstanding, the want of novel ideas, the languishing narrative in the middle, the sluggish pacing as well as the featureless execution render the film-viewing experience immensely soporific and listless.