White Fang and the Gold Diggers (1975) (orig. La spacconata) - Director: Alfonso Brescia - 3/10.
First things first, film’s English dub is genuinely heinous and seems to have been slapped together by a bunch of random people taken off the street with no real feel for voice acting whatsoever, doing guttural or affected voices and all other manner of ridiculous elocutions; if you really must see this, try getting a version dubbed in Italian or in Spanish or whatever, otherwise you’re in for a bona fide cringe ride, though you are in for a cringe ride either way. Even if the storyline here, by and large, reworks such familiar plot devices as that about a land grabber attempting to drive away a newly arrived gold prospector by resorting to underhanded means, the plot likewise includes a couple of novel details, though these do more to discomfit rather than to engross: what with the newcomer having entered into an arranged marriage with someone he hasn’t seen since he was a child, he anticipates bride’s arrival at his small cottage.
The local bigwig, on the other hand, sniffs out a chance to finally make him regret his stay and orders one of his henchmen to impersonate the groom and having done so, to take advantage of the bride. Not only is this plot point ludicrous on the face of it in view of that neither of the newly-weds seems to have a photo of the other person, but also nasty and tasteless given that its intended purpose seems to be partly humorous as well; the project bears the name of Brescia, so that entirely checks out. Aside from that cute little tidbit, loads of animal cruelty and slapstick padding to top it all off, the movie also features plenty of kiddie action which is so rife with cutesy interactions and so saccharine in nature it is likely to make your teeth hurt for days. On the whole, even if the flick remains weirdly watchable in spite of its outrageous antics and overall asininity, it is tough to determine at whom this was aimed in light of its internally conflicted content, it being neither fully adult nor fully juvenile and consequently, falling through in the end.