My Horse, My Gun, Your Widow Review

A late spaghetti western of the treasure hunt type, presented as a sort of post western, featuring a steam engine motorcycle contraption and the hero riding a bike instead of a horse in a couple of scenes. Nice detail: the bike is stolen from a French painter who was fascinated by the landscape and therefore decided to capture it in an artistic impression. Monet in the Wild West - it takes a eurowestern to produce such a stark raving mad idea ...

The story is basic treasure hunt stuff: Doc Janus (Craig Hill) and his partner rob a bank but they're double-crossed by their Mexican associates - led by a man called Carrasco (Cris Huerta) - who run off with the money. Of course Doc wants the money back and a cat and mouse game ensues, in which nobody can be trusted and all these double-crossing crooks are tricked by a duplicitous lady who easily twists them around her little finger ... but even this lady will get her just desserts in the end ...

Hill's character was most probably modeled after Garko's Holy Ghost: he sports a heavy moustache and is dressed all-in-white (*1). The odd contraptions and gadgets (in one scene a character uses a stethoscope to investigate a safe!) also seem to originate in a Garko/Carnimeo-movie, but Euginio Martin's Bad Man's River might have been a source of inspiration as well, with Claudie Lange filling Gina Lollobrigida's sexy boots (or whatever).

Hill is no Garko and Claudie no La Lollo, but if you like spaghetti westerns of the treasure hunt type, the film is not entirely without merit. It's a bit short on action, but this convoluted plot at least keeps you guessing what will happen next. I usually like treasure hunt movies, but the best examples of this type, were tongue-in-cheek, not slapstick, and this one was made in 1972, when slapstick à la Trinity had taken over the genre; some attempts at comedy are terribly unfunny, like Hill tickling an opponent in the middle of a fist fight. The score was recycled from Arizona Colt returns. The "Bing bang, beng bong" theme song sounds as bonkers as ever, but it seems to fit this silly movie quite well. We also get Civil War slide-show that seems to serve no other purpose than to lead us to the movie's coda in which things are put upside down once again.

Note:

(1) The two movies also have a remarkably similar title, at least in Italian:
- Uomo avvisato mezzo ammazato ... parola di Spirito Santo
- Domani passo a salutare la tua vedova ... parola di Epidemia

Simon Gelten is a long time contributor to the SWDb. "I'm not as old as Tom B. but I'm working on it. I hope to catch up with him by the end of the next decade.", he says. Simon saw all movies by Sergio Leone and several by Sergio Corbucci in cinema, most of the time in Eindhoven, the city where he was born. Currently, Simon is living in Turnhout, Belgium. Simon is active within the database as both Scherpschutter and his alter ego Tiratore Scelto.