Là dove non batte il sole (aka Blood Money, the Stranger and the Gunfighter) is a hyprid movie between Eastern and SW. A chinese Kung Fu Fighter (Lo Lieh) and an Outlaw ( Lee van Cleef) are searching for a treasure in the Wild West. The parts of the Treasure Map are on the bottoms of 4 ladies. There are some good ideas, some good fights and a preacher as scary villain in this movie. Not the best SW or Kung Fu Movie I’ve ever seen, but it was entertaining. Lee Van Cleef was a little underchallenged in this movie, but he had some great moments at the end. He didn’t had as much gunfights as I wished to see. Not boring, but I wouldn’t call it a great movie.
I saw this movie at the drive-in with my Dad when it was first released - Dad was kind enough to take me to quite a few SW features in the theater back when I was a small tyke and he still enjoyed seeking them out as late as this one’s release.
I loved this movie at the time and even though it wasn’t quite the spectacular piece of cinema I remembered it being after I landed a widescreen copy on eBay, it was still quite an entertaining flick nonetheless. It is a better SW than it is a Kung Fu movie though. And the incessant overuse of the main musical cue is a bit overbearing by the end.
After seeing this one bashed for the most time i was surprised how good this movie is. It doesn’t try to pretend it’s a great movie, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I was entertained. Lee Van Cleef displayed his comedic talents, Lo Lieh was good as well and there’s this crazy preacher character that made a colorful villain. Fun ride, but not without a good action scenes, nicely directed by Antonio Margheriti. 8/10
Couldn’t resist giving this a 5 star rating.Very entertaining and LVC’s best 70’s sw,yes better than THE GRAND DUEL.
This was a collaboration with the Shaw Brothers studio and its a shame there weren’t any further sw’s from this partnership.BTW i’ve seen a handful of brilliant Shaw Bros flix that borrow heavily from the sw’s of which THE FUGITIVE (also with the great Lo Lieu) comes to mind making extensive usage of the ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST score.
This movie does what you may expect: Entertain. Definitely a buddy movie that made me think the creators of Shanghai Noon watched this movie. You gotta like the humour in order to like the movie. A lot of ass jokes. I was in the right mood when I watched it. Overall a more than ok comedy spaghetti western. The French dvd I can recommend. Good picture quality and Engish audio.
I think they did. They apparently have a character named Van Cleef in the movie although I didn’t notice it a the time of watching
This is also one of the very highest ranking within its spaghetti western subgenres on my list.
Although the whole ass-checking thing was obviously ‘borrowed’. Watched a Danish movie called Me and the Mob (Mig og Mafiaen) recently which starred a guy checking up on girls behinds for hidden codes That movie was made a year before The Stranger … The Danish movie was a remake though of a British movie from yet another year earlier (1972) called Ooh… You Are Awful which I haven’t seen but which have a similar plot line.
I’m not a fan of this SW / Kung Fu mixtures. Both genre do not fit together really.
Therefore, almost all movies of this subgenre are also provided with comedic parts.
I think a film should be straightforward. And this mix of different genre is only possible with a good story and a good director. Both are very rare.
Or look only the attempt, to mix a SW with a horror movie. Even that worked only rarely. The two films that i am spontaneously reminds are And God Said to Cain and Django The Bastard. And both was only average work.
@ The Stranger. This film however is straightforward. The genres combine nicely, with competent people in the leads. Margheriti is an above average director and made this one work too. I view this one as a buddy movie, and as such it works pretty well. The two main characters become friends basically right away, so you know where you´re heading. The pace is good and so is the humour. It doesn´t let down in the action department either which occasionally has a sharp edge. And it´s about ass. Some nice asses indeed.
7/10
[quote=“Bad Lieutenant, post:11, topic:993”]Coincidentally I watched this again recently.
@ The Stranger. This film however is straightforward. The genres combine nicely, with competent people in the leads. Margheriti is an above average director and made this one work too. I view this one as a buddy movie, and as such it works pretty well. The two main characters become friends basically right away, so you know where you´re heading. The pace is good and so is the humour. It doesn´t let down in the action department either which occasionally has a sharp edge. And it´s about ass. Some nice asses indeed.
7/10[/quote]
For me, the problem is that many Spaghetti Western elements are lost in these mixtures.
Of curse, Margheriti is not a bad director. And yes it’s a buddy movie. But how much SW is still in the film? The location, the costumes. But otherwise not much. And that’s the problem.
Only this film has a very late year of production. The hype around the SW was already past. And then were always undertaken new efforts to breathe new life to the genre. Vanzi had begun with The Silent Stranger. This film was certainly innovative. Or let’s say this mix was very innovative.
But for me, “The Stranger & the Gunfighter/Blood Money” is not straightforward. Here, everything is mixed up. SW, kung fu, comedy, action film. The film will be all in one. In my opinion, but it is not real and nothing whole.
I understand The Stranger’s feelings, but I feel quite the opposite. The film has not too strong a story line, but that doesn’t bother me. Of course it is also predictable and, with the mixture of genres, is quite eclectic. Nevertheless it is clearly made to entertain and there is virutally not a boring moment in the film. Lieh and Van Cleef also make a good duo; to put it in cliches: There is good on-screen chemistry. Margheriti is a broadly talented director who has proven to, basically, cover the whole scope of film genres very well, even when genre blending. And God Said to Cain is also a good example of this, spaghetti with gothic under- or overtones. Here it’s no different, with Shaw Bros. backing him up in the martial arts department. However the film offers neither the best western elements, nor the best kung fu elements. Perhaps this is a problem to some. To me it’s merely a reason that it’s not perfect, hence the not perfect rating, but still very much above average. Simply put, there’s too much fun to be had with The Stranger and the Gunfighter to rate it like The Stranger or Stanton, of whom the latter usually tends to down rate films that are unpretentious.
But I prefer intelligent films to dumb films, and stylish films to bland films. And many non-pretentious films are only uninspired.
And “intelligence” in a film has not much to do with a “message”, but with the way a story is told using the “film language”.
And Margheriti’s westerns are neither very stylish nor intelligent, except for Cain, which is indeed a goodie, but without being great.
And The Stranger a. t. G is not much fun to watch, but not a bore either.
I understand all of that and meant no offense. Sometimes I wonder though why you watch spaghetti westerns. 90% of them are either bland or dumb. They´re b movies with routine plots and routine execution.
I too watched this again quite recently. I got a very cheap Videoasia release, which was a damn site better than my ol’ vid-rip that was quite dark (and yet washed-out) and full-screen (with action happening off-screen). This newer version made the whole experience more pleasurable.
Still, mad reverend and bottoms aside … 3 outa 5 from me.
He he, cause in fact I like unpretentious films, if they have ideas and/or style. And luckily far less than 90 % are dumb and bland.
I was wondering about you wondering, cause the mere fact that I’m watching all these SWs should indicate that I have a soft spot for unpretentious films. But of course I obviously also like damn complicated stuff. Which do many on this board. Maybe you too.
In fact when I started digging deeper into SWs (only 5 years ago) I thought there were a handful extremely good SWs, while about 95 to 98 % of the genre was only boring, dilettantish shit.
I was damn wrong.
Of the 300 I have seen so far only a few are very bad (but I have mostly tried to avoid the presumably very bad). Of course there were enough routine films, but the majority was at least entertaining and fun to watch. The Stranger and the Gunfighter amongst them.
And I have unearthed several exciting films I had never heard of before.
