5000 Dollars on an Ace Review

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5000 DOLLARS ON AN ACE (1964)
Cast:
  • Robert Woods
  • Fernando Sancho
  • Giacomo Rossi Stuart
  • Helmut Schmidt
  • Maria Sevalt
  • Antonio Molino Rojo
  • Lorenzo Robledo
  • Hans Nielsen

Director:

  • Alfonso Balcázar
  • (Romolo Guerrieri?)

Music:

  • Angelo Francesco Lavagnino

5000 Dollars on an Ace (Los Pistoleros de Arizona)

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One of the very first paella/spaghetti westerns, and the first western production of the Balcázar Studios, founded by the brothers Alfonso and Francisco Balcázar in 1951. The German International Germania and the Italian Fida studios were minor associates, but the film was entirely shot on Spanish soil, within the confines of the Balcázar Studios and on location in the province of Aragon (1). It was also the first Spanish western to be sold to MGM (even before MGM's purchase of A Fistful of Dollars). The brothers had picked up Robert Woods in Paris, where he was doing some modeling and stage acting at the time (2). The brothers probably asked him because he was an American and could ride a horse. Being an American, and being able to ride a horse, were two major assets in those early days of the European western production. At the first screenings of the movie, Woods noticed that they had left the S off the end of his name. It was too late to change things, and he did several films as Robert Wood.


Woods also made some changes to the script, based on a story written by Italian screenwriter Sandro Continenza, who was known to be a great fan of the western genre. The final script is a typical mixture of influences, a sort of Shane meets Fernando Sancho, with Bobby Woods playing Shane and Fernando playing Sancho. The finale has some similarities to Hawks’ Rio Bravo. The story is as follows: Woods wins 5000 $ in a poker game and also becomes co-owner of a ranch. He quickly loses the money when he’s robbed by a Mexican called Carrancho, whose life he had saved only a few minutes earlier. The ranch doesn’t bring him much luck either: it is coveted by a corrupt landowner, whose henchmen, led by the sadistic Jim il Nero, terrorize the people who refuse to sell their property. Along with the two other owners of the ranch (a brother and a sister) and Carrancho (who isn’t a bad guy after all) he faces the evildoers in a series of shootouts.


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5000 Dollars on an Ace isn't great. Julio Alberto is a very categorical in his (Spanish language) review on his blog 800 spaghetti westerns (3): “Bad film. Bad script, bad direction, bad editing.” He also complains about bottles breaking before hitting (or being hit by) an object, and crew members being visible in certain scenes. Maybe this is all true, but I still don’t think the film is that bad. There are a few cute camera angles, and the cinematography of the Aragon landscape is quite impressive. Woods’ marches bravely through his first Euro western adventure and Schmidt is enjoyable as Jim il Nero, a sort of German Jack Palance with a whip. Sancho is Sancho and of course the right man to play Carrancho, a rascal who may have a good heart, but nevertheless is as trustworthy as a rattlesnake. However, there’s one problem: his character doesn’t seem to belong in the movie. We first meet him tied to poles in the middle of the desert, after he fell out with some of his partners in crime. It the first of several surprise appearances, he comes and goes, as if his character was an afterthought, a lucky strike to save an unsalvageable movie. It probably was.


I saw a fandub version of the Spanish DVD, or better: a brave attempt to create one. Some scenes were in Spanish, with English subtitles, others in English, with an enormous amount of background hiss, a few were even mute (except for that terrible hiss). Video quality was excellent, but with a running time of a little under 80 minutes, it felt hopelessly chopped-up. Maybe an uncut version would improve things, but the film feels like a patchwork movie anyway. Some of the action scenes are acceptable, others look particularly clumsy. Romolo Guerrieri was assistent director, and according to some he did entire parts of the movie, so maybe different directors were responsible for different scenes. In the international English language version Don Powell sings ‘A Gamblin’ Man’, but for the German language version, the title song ‘Die Gejagten der Sierra Nevada’ was sung by Ralf Paulsen. Apparently a song by Ronny Berger, 'Kein Gold im Blue River’ was also linked to the movie, although the lyrics have nothing in common with the film’s content. To most people’s surprise, it did well at the box-office and apparently was one of the main reasons that the brothers would produce western movies on a regular base in the years to come.



Notes:


--By Scherpschutter

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