Apache Kid (1987)
Dir: Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso
Mattei and Fragasso made a couple of very late westerns in 1987, this and Scalps. Both are brutal and gory for westerns, but neither really cross the line into horror like Cut-Throats Nine. Apache Kid is some silliness about a blonde boy saved and raised by natives. It does contain Mattei's patented "small child awkwardly slumps to the ground after being shot" scenes like in Hell of the Living Dead.
Mild oater, without the edge or creativity that mark good eurowesterns. Stranger come to town Nebraska (not Ringo, and not Sartana) gets involved in a range war.
The sexy picture on Amazon is a titch misleading, which placed this movie in the also-boughts of a bunch of sex comedies. This isn't a sex comedy or a comedy at all. It's an Italian comedy.
I thought it was going to be one of those insufferable silent movie homages, but they just didn't bother with much dialogue for long stretches. No jokes, no sight gags, just people mugging for the camera for the first twenty minutes.
Then we finally get what we came to see - Happy Days' Tom Bosley and a robot gunslinger in a Spaghetti western. While I'm glad they didn't completely cop out and have an actor just perform stiffly, I was disappointed the robot was just a guy in a Tom Bosley fright mask instead of a stack of cardboard boxes painted silver. Mostly I'm disappointed in myself for thinking there was any reason this movie would be entertaining.
But when you find out that Tom Bosley was in a Spaghetti western with a robot gunslinger, you can't not watch it.
Here's the Amazon link, though it currently isn't available. If you buy something else through the link, you can support our questionable business model of reviewing movies nobody should watch.
Starting with 1967's God Forgives...I Don't, Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill formed a comedy team of a grumpy big guy and agile good looking guy, making mediocre Italian comedies into the 80s.
Starting with 1974's Caramblo!, there was an imitation duo of Paul L. Smith and Michael Coby. Paul L. Smith is the big beardy guy who looks out of the corner of his eyes a lot in movies like Dune and Crimewave, and is perhaps best known as playing Bluto in the Popeye movie.
Couldn't ask for better casting, given that I thought Bud Spencer was Paul L. Smith before I paid it any attention.
Anyway, Carambola!. Fake Terrence Hill is pool shark who is blackmailed into catching gun runners, so he tricks Bluto into helping him. It's not very good or very funny. The best part is a running gag of fake Bud Spencer being unable to drink milk because he keeps breaking the glass. Hilarious.
There's also a rip-off of the slap/quick-draw/slap sequences from the Hill/Spencer Trinity movies, only it makes less sense.
Then there's the theme song, which plays about twenty times through the film. This stupid thing's been running though my head for a month, made worse by my only being able to figure out half the lyrics.
This, along with a zillion other spaghetti westerns, are currently available on Amazon Prime.
