Review of The Stranger and the Gunfighter

This Spagnetti Western treasure hunt movie hit the bottom. By bottom, I meant the whole plot of this movie by Antonio Margheriti with help from the Shaw Brothers is having a gunfighter Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) and a martial artist Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh) search for treasure by searching for tattoos marking on the bottoms of naked women. I would tap that ass of a movie! How weird is that! Still, it's one over the top entertaining movie, just a little crappy. That's if you can find this rare film. The movie goes by many titles from "The Stranger and the Gunfighter", 'East meets West" to "Blood Money" due to the movie being translate from Italian to whatever language, its being shown. The English dubbing isn't that great in my opinion. I know some of it was lost in the translation, but gees, the synchronization is bad. Also, some of the characters English names is pretty laughable. Ho Chiang's fat bald uncle name happens to be Wang, and he has four mistresses that hide his hidden long treasure. How can you not find something funny about that!? Anyways, the 1970's Kung Fu craze was still in high gear, but Lo Lieh isn't no Bruce Lee. The fight scenes are just awfully choreographed with over the top rewind film jumping and not even near close kicks and hits. Lo Lieh is nothing special playing the stereotypical Chinese guy who happens to be a kung-Fu master. At less, he's a bit charming, even if I can't understand what he is saying in some scenes. While, not fighting random people. Ho Chiang and Dakota are chased by over the top Bible-quoting madman Yancey Hobbitt (Julian Ugarte) and his Indian sidekick. Julian Ugarte reminds me of Roger Rees from 1993's Robin Hood: Men in Tights with his delivery. He was just interesting to watch. Dressed all in black with a long leather duster, gloves, and wide brimmed hat, looks like mix with Al Pacino and Jesus. The character is just as quick to use a gun as quote passages from the bible to any sinners, he seek unfit to live his lifestyle. He has cool bad guy written all over him. While, Lee Van Cleef looks pretty old in the film, as his hair plug is barely hanging on his head. It really does like Lee Van Cleef is just having fun overacting. What other Western movie has the main character autograph a woman's butt? The women in the film, Erika Blanc, Femi Benussi, Patty Shepard and Karen Yeh were pretty sexy in their roles, but this film doesn't had anything, more to the female characters than parading their sexy butts and had the girls sexually frustrated that men only have interest in the map. The movie makes them into young, dumb, female with little to no personality. If you like pointless nudity, you might like this film. The music is by Carlo Savina, nothing interesting. It gets annoying when the same theme plays over the action. The music sounds like some type of Blaxploitation film. The sound effects like whistles, bells, and whip cracks seem really canned. The print is surprisingly good, considering the film's age and obscurity, and fans of more lighthearted Spaghetti Westerns should be pleased. Still, in some versions of the film depending if you're watching it on DVD, on the internet, or just had on VHS. A few scenes are missing like the basement distillery fight. Most DVDs should have this scene. Still, if you don't. You're not missing much. It was badly shot, anyways with it being too dark. The running time is only 102 minutes, but after a while watching it; it does get kinda boring due to the hammy material. The humor is hit and miss. We get forced obligatory jokes about cultural differences and confront the racism at the time. I do like, the dog scene a lot. Overall, this was Shanghai Noon (2000) of its day. Just a little bit more obscure low-brow tongue-in-cheek comedy western.