Johnny Yuma

Tags

spaghetti westerns

JOHNNY YUMA is a 1967 spaghetti western starring Mark Manon in the title role. It has nothing to do with the Nick Adams TV series, The Rebel, though.

Johnny Yuma is a former gunman making his way to his uncle’s ranch, having been summoned to help run it after his uncle’s accident. Thomas Felton’s scheming wife, Samantha, has different ideas though.

She gets her brother to kill her husband and sends a servant with a message to an ex-lover, Linus Jerome Carradine. Unfortunately, the message says the servant murdered Felton and a thousand dollars is offered for him.

She knows there’s a will leaving everything to Johnny and needs time to find it, wanting Carradine to find Johnny and kill him.

The two men, not knowing each other at the time, form a bond during a saloon fight though when Johnny catches a card sharp trying to cheat him. During the fight, each man saves the other’s life from back shooters. They even swap gunbelts(I don’t know why this was done) and weapons.

Later in the movie, when Johnny and Carradine are facing each other down, double crossing Samantha sends her brother and his men to make sure they are both dead, forcing a team-up between the pair to eliminate the gang.

The film is a pretty good western.

For me, there was a jarring note though. Johnny has a Mexican sidekick to provide the comic relief, which I thought was totally unnecessary, but the cowardly fellow was certainly no Tuco, Eli Wallach’s character from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Companeros

Tags

Franco Nero, spaghetti westerns, Tomas Milian

COMPANEROS, Sergio Corbucci’s 1970 western, brings two of Europe’s top stars in the spaghetti genre together. Franco Nero stars as Yodlaf Peterson, a foppish Swedish arms merchant much tougher than his appearance would indicate, and Tomas Milian as Vasco , a bandit elevated to hero status more by accident than anything else. A shoe shine boy, he’s offended by a Mexican General’s deprecating words and kills him in a fit of pigue, triggering a revolution in the process.

The two are thrown together in a plot for gold locked away in a Swedish designed safe, impregnable without the combination. That is known only by a Professor(the bank officials were all killed by General Mongo’s men) who’s under arrest in Texas. He’d been preaching peaceful sedition of the corrupt Mexican government and been taken into custody because America recognized the legal government only.

Peterson is in it only for the money. Vasco is loyal to General Mongo and the revolution. Unknown to him, Mongo wants only the money as well.

Peterson and Vasco are sent to somehow get the professor from the Americans and return with him to open the safe. Peterson is constantly trying to get away from Vasco, yet somehow they keep getting thrown together.

In addition to avoiding the Mexican army, there’s a band loyal to the professor, idealisitic young students, and an outlaw group lead by a marijuana smoking Jack Palance, who’s best friend is a hawk named Marsha that he dotes on.

There are touches of humor all through the movie, I enjoyed them, and I think this is one of the better spaghetti westerns I’ve seen lately. The one I have has been restored by Blue Underground and is a clean copy.

One note they mention is that parts of the film are in Italian with English subtitles. These westerns were usually cut for American release, whenever they had such a release, and the parts mentioned were never dubbed. I suppose it wouldn’t have sounded right to dub those parts with a different voice for this release.

The score is by Ennio Morricone and a fine one it is.

Worth checking out.