Too Much Gold For One Gringo(La Caza del Oro)1972

Tags

Anthony Steffen, Fernando Sancho, spaghetti western

Everyone wanted Dan Carver(Manuel Guitian). The vultures were gathering, both the “legal” and criminal. You see, Carver was about to get out of prison after twenty years. He’d been a gold shipper in his younger days and had apparently diverted a shipment of forty bags to a hiding place he wouldn’t reveal. He hadn’t spoken of it in all that time.

The legal vultures were the prison warden and Carver’s old partner, now apparently the mayor of the small town where the prison was located.

The criminals were a motley bunch: Preacher(Indio Gonzales), Apache Joe(Juan M. Solana), Travers(Luis Indoni), Jed Spotless(Ricardo Moyan), and the smartest of the bunch, Trash Benson(Spaghetti vet Anthony Steffen), our erstwhile hero.

Carver doesn’t want to leave while that bunch is waiting for him and snatches the warden’s gun, shooting up his office, and getting tossed back in his cell.

Carver’ cell mate, Paco(Daniel Martin) is planning to break out and knows nothing of Carver’s history, though Carver believes different, thinking him placed there to worm the location of the gold from him.

Just as he’s breaking out, via a rope made of bed sheets, another such falls beside him, Trash Benson coming into the prison to get Carver out. Paco had left him tied up in the cell with the guard he’d tricked into coming in. They go back to get him and escape.

This sets off a chase with the gang of outlaws pursuing them, as well as the prison warden and a gang of guards, all the while with an unwilling Carver. They keep double-crossing each other, such that they are soon afoot, and the old man reluctantly agrees to split the gold with them. Albeit with a few dividends. He has to be carried, riding Paco piggyback most of the time.

Making progress until they come upon a wagon load of women, Molly’s Women of Ballet said the painted wagon, but the way they were dressed tells us their real profession. Carver is surprised to see Molly, who with a bit of prodding, remembers him and that he was a regular customer. Which gave the old man an idea. “Nothing like a woman to revitalize a man!”

Bad idea.

The strain is too much and he has a heart attack. Benson gets him to write down the location of the gold, then tells Paco to memorize it, then burns it so no one else can get it. Unfortunately Paco can’t read and neither can Benson.

All they know is there’s something about a statue.

Then the run into the outlaw band of Hombre de Rojas(another spaghetti vet, Fernando Sancho), who’s somehow gotten word of a statue and is threatening the villagers who refuse to tell him where it’s hidden.

Benson and Paco have to outwit the bandits, the gang following them, and find the gold.

Not a bad film, though it came as the spaghetti western genre was starting to fade a bit. The writing credits had several hands listed, not always a good sign: Juan Bosch(who also directed) and Fabio Piccioni, screenplay, and Bosch, Picccioni, and Renato Izzo story.