Gave The Silent Stranger my first viewing, expecting quite a bit from it.
While it was enjoyable, and well worth tracking down, I was a tad let down. Somewhat slow moving for the first hour, and the non-gun involving action is nothing too interesting too look at, while the action sequences involving guns seemed lacking to me. It seemed like thereâs some cut footage from the action. Was also not digging the big rifle gun⌠I realize this is a silly complaint, but it just wasnât working for me. Things pick up toward the last segment, in standard Stranger fashion and at last, people are being shot (with a real gun)
This one rates highly on the talking points, quirk factor, and general novelty⌠however I canât honestly say I enjoyed it nearly as much as I hoped to. Perhaps an uncut release would cure some of this.
This was one of the absolute worst movies (regardless of genre) I had ever seen. I canât imagine 15 minutes making an improvement on anything in this dismal picture. Major regret on spending the $25 for this mess.
Tony Anthony compensate that (if you like him)
The movie cant keep abreast of the other two stranger movies,of course.
After all i enjoy it and especially the stoic sound,wich exist in all stranger movies
I seriously doubt I will ever watch it again, although if it proves true that there was footage cut from the picture, I may give it another look. Here are some comments I had about it on the Leone boardâŚ
Just finished watching this. Thought this was one of the worst, most brutally awful westerns Iâve ever seen. The movie seemed rushed with scenes beginning and ending abruptly at a near constant rate. That may account for all the narration from Anthony. It started off fine but rapidly went downhill from there. The Japanese run around yelling âKill!â for much of the running time and the âsword fightsâ do the film no favors and are laughable compared with Samurai films made 10 years prior. I liked Anthonyâs first two âStrangerâ movies much better. The dispute that resulted in the films belated release may have been because of how terrible this flick really is. The music is pretty bad too save for the main theme, which itself is derivative. Heard lots better from Cipriani. The film bears a copyright notice of 1974 and should have stayed shelved for that matter, IMO.
For me all 3 Stranger films are very close in terms of quality. I cannot see a great difference between them, but would prefer the 2 precedessors for a tiny bit.
I am a huge fan of Asian cinema so the way in which the Japanese portion of the film was handled was terrible, IMO. I found the first two films, especially THE STRANGER RETURNS, to be superior to this. I have the others as well but havenât gotten around to watching them. Not sure on the quality of the other two Anthony films as I havenât checked them out yet. BLINDMAN is the best movie he ever did in my estimation.
I saw a widescreen clip of one of the others, GET MEAN I think it was, and it was pretty bad. I donât think the one I have for it is wide, though. Anthony also did another really bad movie in the early 80âs called TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS.
I agree with you Angelface, I loved the first two stranger films, pure classics in my opinion, especially the second one. Stranger in Japan AKA âShrecken Kung fu etcâŚâ LOL was decent but Iâm not really into samurai movies so the Japanese setting didnât quite do it for me. Get mean was hilariously entertaining but didnât make any sense at all and was a bad movie period. I havenât seen Comin at ya yet. Is that any good?
I like Tony Anthony alot. Curiously, I didnât really like Blindman, a bit too wierd for me. I prefer my SW"s somewhat conventional.
Iâm with Angelface in that I love samurai movies and Stranger in Japan was completely laughable in comparison to the real stuff⌠it made it harder to enjoy watching, so if youâre not into them- that should be working in your favor
Iâve had Comin At Ya for years but have not watched, because I have the Rhino 3D dvd, and no 3d glasses⌠not too keen on watching a red&blue movie thatâs not suppose to be that great in the first place
As you probably know, Anthony based BLINDMAN off the hugely popular ZATOICHI series of films in Japan. Which is one of the reasons I like the film so much. ;D A lot of cross pollination was going on between Europe and Japan. The ultra violent Japanese tv show MUTE SAMURAI was clearly inspired by THE GREAT SILENCE even retaining the downbeat nature of the film.
I havenât watched either GET MEAN or COMINâ AT YA! yet.
Interesting bits there. I love what Zatoichi Iâve seen and was not aware of that. Iâm still pretty new to the genre of samurai films, will definitely have to check out Mute Samurai- have not heard of this and the connection with TGS sounds quite appealing
