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By  Will, on March 5, 2012, 5:20 am  The Return of Shanghai Joe [Il ritorno di Shanghai Joe] (1975)
AKA Che botte, ragazzi! & Zwei durch dick und dünn
Starring Klaus Kinski, Cheen Lie, Tommy Polgár, Karin Field, Claudio Giorgi, Tom Felleghy, Paolo Casella, Fortunato Arena
Directed by Bitto Albertini
Expectations: Low. It can’t live up to the first one.
On the general scale:
 (NO STARS)
On the B-Movie scale:
For those expecting a film on the level of My Name is Shanghai Joe, you should look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you’re in the mood for a total and utter piece of shit, then The Return of Shanghai Joe is the movie for you! It’s offensive in its sheer audacity to take boredom to new heights. And to think I had some expectations that this would only be half as good a movie as the original. It’s not even fit to be in the same state as that film; it’s literally so boring and pointless that I’m having a hard time staying focused enough to get my thoughts down.
The plot, if you could call it that, involves a tonic salesman who falls into a bad crowd when a dying bandit hides out in his wagon. I honestly can’t remember what happened next, because there’s literally no reason to. The plot moves from point to point alright, but without any sense of what a story is or should be, so it’s incredibly hard to re-tell. I forget exactly how, but at some point the salesman gets duped out into the wilderness where some evil fuckers are planning to rob and hang him. Shanghai Joe happens to be taking a nap behind a tree and saves the salesman’s life, so now they’re pretty much buddies for the rest of the film. That might sound like it has potential or is perhaps vaguely intriguing. It’s not, and lest you be fooled by the title, Shanghai Joe is barely in the film.
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By Will, on February 6, 2012, 5:20 am  My Name is Shanghai Joe [Il mio nome è Shanghai Joe] (1973)
AKA The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe, The Dragon Strikes Back, Knochenbrecher im wilden Westen (literally translates to: Bone Crusher in the Wild West), Shanghai Joe, To Kill or to Die
Starring Chen Lee, Klaus Kinski, Gordon Mitchell, Claudio Undari, Katsutoshi Mikuriya, Carla Romanelli, Carla Mancini, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, George Wang, Federico Boido, Piero Lulli
Directed by Mario Caiano
Expectations: High, this one looks great and I’ve heard good things.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Usually in films where two distinct genres are mashed together, the end result is less than it could have been. In My Name is Shanghai Joe, I am happy to say that everything comes together in the best, most satisfying way possible. It is a western first, then a kung fu film, but it truly delivers on both levels. It is also nearly non-stop action, with Shanghai Joe moving briskly through the baddies in one great scene after another. I always go into mixed genre films with apprehension, especially ones that mix two of my favorite genres, but My Name is Shanghai Joe does it so well that I had an absolute blast watching it and will definitely be watching this one again.
There isn’t much of a plot to speak of. Shanghai Joe arrives off a presumably slow boat from China in San Francisco of 1882. He quickly buys a stagecoach ticket East to Texas. At every turn, Joe meets up with some of the most racist fuckers ever put onto celluloid, spouting shitty Chinaman jokes one after another. After working his way through tons of these bastards, Joe finally pisses off the wrong dude, who in turn hires four assassins to track down Joe and take him out. These assassins, with such names as Scalper Jack and Pedro the Cannibal, each go down in interesting and fun ways. My Name is Shanghai Joe is a revenge film, but not one to linger on the pain or the regret such killing might lead another hero to contemplate. Instead most of the scenes follow this general framework: Joe enters, the bad guys say some racist shit and attack, Joe fucking annihilates them. It’s truly gratifying to watch and literally never gets old.
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By Will, on January 16, 2012, 5:20 am  In a Colt’s Shadow [All'ombra di una colt] (1965)
AKA Pistoleros
Starring Stephen Forsyth, Conrado San Martín, Anna Maria Polani, Helga Liné, Eugenio Galadini (as Graham Sooty), Franco Ressel (as Frank Ressell), Aldo Sambrell, José Calvo (as Pepe Calvo), Javier de Rivera, Andrea Scotti (as Andrew Scott), Rafael Albaicín
Directed by Giovanni Grimaldi
Expectations: Moderate. I’ve never heard anything one way or the other on this one.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
In a Colt’s Shadow isn’t your average Spaghetti Western. Not like Cemetery Without Crosses‘ thoughtful difference though, instead this one has a romantic through-line that drives the entire film and it takes as much influence from American westerns as it does from the work of Sergio Leone. This makes for an interesting film and one that is definitely entertaining for genre fans, but one that falls short of both cinematic ideals by choosing to go the hybrid route. The film opens with a stylized, painted credits sequence that is stunningly rendered and sets the stage for a colorful, unique western. Over the images is one of the strangest (and therefore lovable) western themes I’ve ever heard. While the soundtrack pumps out emotive, jangly guitar and whistling that evokes the musical styles of Ennio Morricone, the vocalist speaks his lines instead of sings them. Lines such as:
I wanna feel between my fingers
the warm wood of a plow
the prickly ears of grain
the silky soft hair of my woman
But I can’t…
‘Cuz I gotta kill.
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By Will, on December 26, 2011, 5:20 am  Cemetery Without Crosses [Une corde, un Colt...] (1969)
AKA The Rope and the Colt, Death Valley Gunfighters, Cimitero senza croci
Starring Michèle Mercier, Robert Hossein, Guido Lollobrigida, Daniele Vargas, Serge Marquand, Pierre Hatet, Philippe Baronnet, Pierre Collet, Ivano Staccioli, Béatrice Altariba, Michel Lemoine, Anne-Marie Balin
Directed by Robert Hossein
Expectations: Pretty high, this one’s supposed to be a genre classic.
Cemetery Without Crosses is another of these movies that I have a hard time rating. This stems from my ambiguous feelings toward the film, as it is definitely well-made and interesting, but ultimately I found the film painfully slow and not all that engaging. My mind wandered so much while watching this one because it is a film composed almost entirely of music over images without much dialogue. It’s similar to this year’s Drive in that way, and like that film, I feel that it is less than it could be if it was slightly more accessible.
In terms of its story, Cemetery Without Crosses looks to be a simple revenge tale. The film opens with a man desperately riding away from a group of men. He reaches his house and his wife Maria, only to be captured by the men following him and promptly hanged. Maria wants revenge on these rancher bastards, so she enlists the help of a depressed old friend Manuel who currently fritters away his time hanging out in the saloon of a ghost town, thinking about what might have been. Sounds like a good setup for any standard revenge tale, but Cemetery Without Crosses is anything but standard. Instead, it takes a somber, hard look at the reality and the cyclical nature of revenge and how it can never truly deliver the satisfaction and the freedom it initially promises.
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By Will, on December 9, 2011, 5:20 am  A Coffin for the Sheriff [Una bara per lo sceriffo] (1965)
AKA Lone and Angry Man & Tomb for the Sheriff
Starring Anthony Steffen, Eduardo Fajardo, Fulvia Franco, George Rigaud, Armando Calvo, Arturo Dominici, Luciana Gilli, Miguel Del Castillo, Jesús Tordesillas, Tomás Torres, María Vico
Directed by Mario Caiano
Expectations: Low, but I enjoy Anthony Steffen so hopefully it’ll be good.
Let’s just cut to the chase: A Coffin for the Sheriff is a good, enjoyable spaghetti western, but one that is very average and clichéd. The fact that it remains interesting and fun is a testament to the quality of the storytelling, with the mystery of our main character Shenandoah slowly revealed over the course of the film. If you’ve seen any movie like this before, I’m sure you can unravel it rather quickly as I did, but regardless, it’s a story well told with lots of good scenes sprinkled throughout.
The film opens with Lupe Rojo’s gang robbing a wagon and murdering the people on it. This leads into an awesome montage of wanted posters, telegraph operators and the ever-riding Lupe Rojo as he continues to skirt the law in any way he can. After this we meet Shenandoah (played by genre-staple Anthony Steffen), a mysterious stranger who rides into town and has a run-in with the bandit group. Instead of fighting against them as you’d expect though, he rides off with them, helping an injured member escape along with him. Is this Shenandoah worthy of your trust? (On a side note: The word/name Shenandoah ranks near the top of my most hated words in the lexicon of classic Western cinema and its use here continues to annoy me.)
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