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Rating: The ripest fruit of the intense collaboration between director Ferdinando Baldi and actor (actor?) and 3D expert Tony Anthony (that is, Roger Petitto) is certainly this epochal western-zatoichi "Blindman, the blind gunman," a bizarre film, sometimes depressing, elsewhere curious and intriguing that reinterprets the figure of the blind samurai in a spaghetti western key, recently revisited with customary irony by the great Beat Takeshi.
Anthony, who had roamed the Italian cinema scene in the '60s, found a career outlet with director Luigi Vanzi: in the years of spaghetti western duels. Good old Petitto, aka twiceTony, created a mini western saga where he proposed a static sixteenth-scale rendition of the Stranger of strangers, that is Clint "God" Eastwood. Titles: "A Man, a Horse, a Gun," "A Dollar Between the Teeth," and "The Stranger of Silence." Following this poncho mini-epic, Anthony and Vanzi made the little gangster movie "Piazza pulita," according to Merega with Cormanian touches and, aside from some inconsistencies and somewhat slapdash setting, a film that is watchable, featuring a great Adolfo Celi, who consumed the remains of Largo from "Thunderball," and a witty, pre-tramp Lucretia Love. Although a static actor to the point of paralysis (but without the poetry of Kitano's paralysis), the actor (actor?) and the director create a curious character of a half-smart who gets caught up in a game bigger than himself and pays for all, a small fish in a barrel of salted whales. But...
...before this bandoliered machine-gun film, Anthony and Ferdinando Baldi (BETRAYAL!) began their future fruitful collaboration with the film for which the two will be remembered ad infinitum: Blindman, the blind gunman.
Allen Klein of ABKCO was recruited, the man who was supposed to save the Beatles from ruin (it didn't work) and who had the Stones in his hands, and after securing a good budget, the two had Pier Giovanni Anchisi and Vincenzo Cerami write the bizarre story of this not-so-improbable visually impaired shooter. The mission of the boy with the white eyes is to recover 50 exceptionally gorgeous women (including Solvy Stubing, the classic blonde from Peroni) from three bandits, such gentlemen as Scab, Stink, and Gallows.
Blindman arrives in the usual sun-drenched and windy village, wearing a huge hat and hippie-style clothes; out comes a battered little man, with masonry worker sunburn and an age that doesn't do justice to the birth certificate. El ciego asks to be shown the church bell. Feeling the lobster arm of the little man, he aims and doesn't miss a shot, making the bell chime as if it were the Marian month. From a hotel window, three guys appear, who just a moment ago were entangled with a plump black wench, exhausted from trashy-scented lovemaking and stale sweat. Blindman demands his goods back, but the three cunning fellows laugh at him, telling him the girls went to Domingo (Lloyd Batista, already in Woody Allen's "Love and War"), a bastard Mexican bandit and his sister Sweet Mama (Magda Konopka, "Satanik" in Vivarelli's grim film).
Blindman, pronouncing semi-prophetic sentences on friendship, makes the three, the wench, and the hotel explode with a nice package of dynamite and heads to Mexico....
Note: one of the three crusty scoundrels is Mal Evans, a close collaborator of The Beatles, uncredited in the titles.
What a curious note: and what an effect it was to find in a macaroni western a member of the Beetles clan!!!! It truly is an uncanny sensation...
Indeed; but this sensation evaporates, reduces to nothing when we discover that Domingo, in addition to a sister (their relationship reeks, there's incest in the air...) has a Brother, Candy, a simpleton played by RINGO STARR.
Candy is the weak point of a viperous family (incidentally, Domingo is obsessed with snakes, only wears snakeskin and smokes snake cigars); indeed, in his unrequited mad love for the very blonde Pilar (a Swede in Mexico, Agneta Eckemyr!!!). Our sightless hero meets Candy and his henchmen right at the farm of Pilar's father, just when Candy has gone to claim her. Instantly turned into the tail end of the bastards, they make him dance to the tune of gunshots at his feet. Blindman, with a sense of understatement and humor, plays along for a while, then takes aim and with his crutch-rifle shoots them better than an eagle.
The rest of the plot involves Blindman's attempt, full of twists and turns, to retrieve the 50 busty ladies, promised by Domingo to a troop of Mexican soldiers led by El General (the dear, toothless, very greasy Raf Baldassarre). The busty ladies, showered and shoed, are presented on the stage of an abandoned theater to dozens and dozens of drunken soldiers who loudly demand "Pu-ta-nas" "Pu-ta-nas." But it's a trap: they will be machine-gunned down after the ransom for the women was paid. Blindman and the General have been captured and locked in cells. Obviously, they will become escape partners and tricksters against Domenico and his sister. The snake-clad villain will also receive punishment in accordance with his sins, and everything will go back in its place. Or almost....
One grows fond of this film, like a Paketa clock; with miserable tones but eccentric enough to be immortal. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the film was made to satiate the hunger for self-reference and protagonism of the fallacious Tony Anthony; it feels like a joke among friends, playing freakowboys, dressed like Santana band members at Woodstock and with hairstyles from the good rock days.
The beautiful cinematography by Riccardo Pallottini and the frenzied music by Stelvio Cipriani (with choristers barely into puberty and drum fills that even Hugo Montenegro's orchestra couldn't match...) serve as a glue for this greasy extravaganza, featuring a somewhat dumb hero with a poor sense of humor, 100 high-quality breasts, an intense reference to "High Plains Drifter" by Clint Eastwood for the funeral of.... (omissis9 with the bizarre presence of Mammutones, some good actors.
Presented at the Venice Film Festival during the obscure Tarantino nights three years ago (what times! Where will we end up) "Blindman" is now easily available on DVD. I struggled to find it after I saw it on GrandItalia TV 17 years ago, by chance, at night, in August. I suggest you also watch it in August, with chilled Livio Felluga Pinot Grigio nearby, ready to empathically sweat with the tacky protagonists.
Ah, in the UK edition there should be a song sung by Ringo, titled "Blindman"; but in the copies I have reviewed, it cannot be found. The song is present, however, on the unforgettable album "Goodnight Vienna" by the Nasuto puncher. Yes, the one with the cover from "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
"Blindman" is the second most-watched spaghetti western in the world. In Karachi, it was shown for 6, I say 6, consecutive years!!!
KLATU BARADA NIKTA
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