Acquasanta Joe Review

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In the days after the Civil war a group of soldiers, led by the crazy Colonel Donovan, are terrorizing the border region. Their robberies are carried out with the help of a stolen army canon. Business is flourishing, but the army wants the canon back and a bounty hunter named Acquasanta Joe is on their trail because they have robbed the bank where he had put his earnings. Things are further complicated by a gang member who runs off with the loot and another member who challenges the Conolonel's authority ...

Apparently Acquasanta Joe was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek adventure movie in the treasure hunt vein, a serio-comic subgenre mainly inspired by Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Castellari's Any Gun can Play, but plans were altered when it became clear that Trinity had changed the face of the Italian western once and for all. Things were pimped up with an incongruous score full of quirky tunes and the characters all got idiosyncratic tics and traits. Ty Hardin's renegade Colonel chews cigars instead of smoking them and Harrison's double-crossing rascal called Charlie has become a garrulous halfwit. Harrison developed the character himself and seems to think he did a good job. I usually like Harrison, but thought he was pretty unbearable here.

No doubt the film would've worked better tongue-in-cheek. Some of the action scenes have potential and the script offers enough double-crossings and changing alliances to keep things moving, but the mishmash of some spaghetti western violence, zany comedy and off-kilter characters soon starts working on you nerves. Still it's not completely without entertainment value. The finale, set on an Indian graveyard, was probably influenced by Corbucci's Navajo Joe but may have inspired Sergio Martino to model his tomahawk wielding hero Mannaja (1977), played by Maurizio Merli, after Tate's Acquansanta; in some scenes the resemblance between the two actors/characters is striking. Pietro Ceccarelli, one of those instantly recognizable supporting actors who was often only introduced to serve as a punch ball or a shooting target for the hero., has a slightly more important role here as the gang member challenging Hardin's Colonel authority. And yes: he's a convincing mean bastard. And Monelli? well, she's not really my type but she sure has a pretty face.

Note:

  • (1) Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all'italiana. According to Harrison, the character was originally written for Klaus Kinski

Dir: Mario Garriazzo - Cast: Lincoln Tate, Ty Hardin, Richard Harrison, Giulio Baraghini, Sylvia Monelli, Pietro Ceccarelli, Tuccio Musumeci, Mario Novelli, Alfredo Rizzo, Dante Maggio, Fedele Gentile - Music: Marcello Giombini

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