RINGO: THE FACE OF REVENGE is the story of a treasure hunt and what the lust for gold, and other things, can do to people. It’s another one of those films that piggybacked off the success of another film franchise by using Ringo in most titles outside of Italy. According to the Spaghetti Western Databases’s entry for the film, all of them owe a nod to Lorne Greene’s 1964 hit song Ringo(I’ve included that below the trailer).
Spaghetti western veteran Anthony Steffen is the Ringo of the English language version and Tim(Eduardo Fajardo) is his long time partner. The pair have been together ten years, the old man having taught everything about using a gun and was almost a father. The pair are lounging around a campfire while coffee is boiling when they hear gunshots. They see three men chasing a fourth, shooting at him. They themselves are down to three bullets, but that’s all Ringo needs to rescue that fourth man.
Fidel of El Paso(Armando Calvo) is his name and he gives them two dollars as compensation for the rescue, much to Ringo and Tim’s disgust. They follow him into town where they plan to buy a couple of beers, only to find Fidel in a poker game with Trickie Ferguson(another spaghetti vet, Frank Wolff), and being cheated. As they move to rescue him, Fidel notices the cheating and a bar brawl breaks out(wouldn’t be a spaghetti western without one).
Fidel gets knifed in the fight and Ringo and Tim put him in a room and dress his wounds. It’s this which reveals a tattoo on his back, some sort of map. When he regains consciousness, they ask him about it. Reluctant at first, then realizing he may need help, this is the story he tells them:
While in prison, he shares a cell with an old Mexican and an American. When the old man is attacked Fidel and the American rescue him and, though badly wounded, tells them how he’d waylaid a miner with two large bags of gold dust, killing him and hiding the bags, Before he can get around to retrieving them, he ends up in the prison. For their help, he gives them the map as he dies. Neither man trusting the other, Fidel and the American get another inmate to tattoo half the map on each, then destroy that map. The American is getting out of prison first and will have to wait on Fidel.
While he’s telling the tale, gambler Stickie is listening at th door and invites himself into the venture. He has a number of gunmen waiting outside to make sure there are no slip-ups. Three will even follow the four at a discreet distance.
The American, Fidel has learned since he got out, managed to get himself made sheriff of a town where he gouges mercchants for every dollar he can squeeze out of them.
It’s decided Stickie will go into town and find the sheriff. If the three go, why would they need Stickie. If Fidel goes, why would he need any of the three.
The double crosses come hared and heavy after this. Stickie makes a deal with the Sheriff to kill them and split the gold two ways. Ringo, Tim, and Fidel ambush the three men left guarding them. The sheriff sends a crew to kill them all and keep the gold for himself. He manages to escape the carnage and recruits townspeople to capture and hang, after a trial of course, a gang planning to attack the town.
When the four are captured and jailed, with a promise of a hanging, Trickie comes up with a plan to which Fidel reluctantly agrees. Using a candle, they burn the map off his back, leaving third degree burns(man, that had to hurt). Now the sheriff has no choice but to go along with the plan to get them out of jail and out of town. Still, he has another betrayal in mind, which Ringo foils, killing two men and the Sheriff, the four beating it out of town ahead of the town.
The only choice they have is to dig up the sheriff after he’s buried. But even there, Stickie is ahead of them. He had some men beat them to the body and has memorized that half of the map so they can’t take it from him and leave him dead.
Stickie keeps fomenting trouble between the other three. he convinces Fidel to sneak up and knife Tim who’s on night watch. Tim carries the half of the map copied from Fidel’s back. Ringo scotches that just in time and disarms both men.
Later, Fidel peels off and heads to a small Mexican village he knows where a band of outlaws is terrorizing the people, promising them five hundred to kill the other three. That doesn’t go so well either and the village is rescued. Then the guys have to rescue a beautiful young woman. Manuela(Alejandro Nilo), who had happened to be the girl friend, reluctantly, of the outlaw leader. The villagers want to kill her. She goes with them.
Then the ultimate betrayal which leads to the title. Tim has two problems: he’s an alcoholic and he has a lust for Manuela, which Stickie plays up to y keeping the old man liquored up. When he makes a move on Manuela, Ringo and he start to fight. Stickie escapes with the map(he thinks) during the scuffle and when Tim draws a gun on Ringo, the pair wrestle over it. You know what happens of course, that old stalwart of the gun being drawn between them and going off. As Tim lays dying, Ringo is distraught until, with his dying breath, Tim forgives him and reveals that the map was no longer in the pouch, but in Tim’s hand.
Ringo doesn’t care about the gold dust anymore. He just wants Stickie!
Tuesday for Overlooked movies, I posted on Here’s Flash Casey, one of the two movies featuring his photographer/detective. For Forgotten Books today, I posting of Kent Murdock, a newspaper photographer a bit more sophisticated than Flash. He was featured in some twnety odd novels. The copy I have is a Dell mapback, No. 81. Not sure when this book was published as the mapbacks didn’t start until 1943, lasting about a decade, and the copyright ssays 1940. Likely the hardback’s release date.
Photographer Kent Murdock wouldn’t have gotten into it if he wasn’t worried about Joan English. He went up to the director Curtis Garland’s room, a man with a less than sterling reputation around young actresses. Joan had agreed to come to his room for an audition and even been given a key.
Murdock found the director shot and dead on his bed. A pair of shattered glasses lay on the floor by his side. He snaps a couple of pictures and is about to leave when he catches Joan English hiding in a closet. She swears Garland was already dead when she came in. Murdock believes her and helps her.
Her story was someone had jumped her and shoved her in the closet. In grappling with the man, she ended up with a watch stem in her hand.
Murdock’s idea is to leave and let someone else find the body.
Sounds good.
But the next day the room is empty, no sign of any kind of struggle. Murdock finds a sliver of eyeglass under the bed. That’s it. And a man matching Garland’s description took a flight out of Boston for Hollywood earlier that morning. A telegram is found requesting his immediate return about a picture in production.
Murdock was ready to drop the whole thing. Joan seemed in the clear and that was all he cared about.
Then she disappears!
Her landlady says a man came to her apartment and the pair left shortly. All her clothes and luggage were still in the room. No note explaining her absence. Nothing.
Murdock brings his friend Lt. Bacon in to help with the investigation. Of course he doesn’t tell him everything.
The body needs to be found. Joan needs to be found. And the killer uncovered.
A fine mystery by one of the genre’s masters. He manages several twists in the story as it moves along.
Good stuff.
For more overlooked movies, Evan Lewis is doing the gathering this week so Patti can have a week. He’s over at DAVY CROCKETT’S ALMANACK.
Omar ‘The Egyptian’ Yakoub is an interesting character. An ex-physician, his specialty Anesthesiology, now works as a P.I. In a year, he’ll be able to apply for U.S. citizenship. We get introduced to him, and two assistants in the first of a series of interlocking stories: Jorge Vela, an Hispanic ex-boxer who works as his assistant, and Lela Kraft, the eighteen year old student that’s so hardworking and perfect that she’s amazed when she loses a debate to an average student. Omar couched the girl and Lela goes to him for the same so that she never finishes second again.
Omar uses her for so much more.
He gets hired by an English lord to investigate a man who came to him with claims of the invention of time travel. He had a newspaper ‘proving’ it.
But much more was going on. Omar begins investigating and, as he unravels it in overlapping but strongly connected stories, we start to get the picture. And Omar is set up as a terrorist and has to go into hiding while he hunts for the ultimate mastermind.
I’ve enjoyed Max Connelly’s work in the past and look for more. The way this one ended, I can see more to come.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I would react to this collection of poems. Poetry has never been my strongest thing. The author passed in a tragic accident to early in life and it was a personal project for editor David Cranmer, the author’s uncle.
I shouldn’t have worried. Reading these poems evoked images from my own life as I read them. Which I think is the idea. One would imagine each reader connecting with something in this set of personal views of the young Kyle.
THE GREATEST LOSS was one favorite as I remembered family and close friends lost much to early in life. Not sad remembrances, but a spark of the happy times we had. in those long ago times.
FOUR SUMMERS AGO made me think of my own clumsy attempts at things like love(at least I thought at the time), my own bouts with certain legal and illegal stimulants, the good times, the bad.
CAMPING was fun. Never did a lot of that in my youth, though some later. I fished a lot when young with the aid of an uncle.
Quite enjoyed this look into a young man’s life and my own in the process.
If one likes poetry, this is a collection you should get.
I’d heard of George Harmon Coxe of course, but had never read any of his work. Others, Evan Lewis and James Reasoner, have written of him and his works before. I found them in researching for this short little film for overlooked movies.
Eric Linden plays the photographer, based on one of Coxe’s stories, who’s just graduated from college where he’d put himself through selling pictures he’s taken. He’s got big plans to own the world’s largest photography agency in a couple of years.
First he needs to find a job.
Not as easy as he thinks. He gets tossed out of the offices of the editor of Globe-Press, Blaine(John Crehan), then meets, or rather bumps into Kay Lanning(Boots Mallory), one of the paper’s young columnists. And falls instantly in love of course. What young man doesn’t when he meets an attractive young woman?
Looking for a way in, he spies an article about a famous French actress arriving on a steamship that same day. She’d insured her legs for a million dollars. He hopes a picture of her might get him a job. No such luck. Every photographer in town is already taking pictures and he has no credentials. By luck, he catches her coming out and snaps one of her kissing a young man.
Unfortunately for him, it’s the son of the Globe-Press’s owner, Major Addison, who wants his son to see someone more respectable. Blaine offers him a job at fifty a week if he turns over the negative, then drops it to eighteen once he destroys it. He ends up a flunky for the regular photographer who, though he likes the kid, takes credit for any pictures taken by Flash. Though they don’t name the Hindenburg, the biggest deal is pictures Flash took of that zeppelin disaster.
Pop Lawrence runs a competing newspaper, Snap News, mostly photos. It’s owned by Addison and works out of the same building, but photos intended for him keep getting into Blaine’s hands for his paper. The photographer for Pop is a bit larcenous is the reason. He’s also tied up with crooks running blackmail scams.
Flash gets caught up in the middle when he gets fired for turning a photo over to Pop of a society couple’s wedding. No one knew there was even a wedding at all but Kay is a friend of the bride and sends Flash to get it. Blaine had already planned to lay off Flash, so it was just the excuse he needed.
At a charity event organized by Kay, Flash is snapping pics of the guests when he gets one of the Major talking to that French actress and being delighted. His son had brought her along under a fake name so his father could see she was a nice girl. The film in the camera, a new small model had been lent to him by that crooked photographer, is developed by the crooks and, in what we call Photoshop today, makes it seem the major and the actress were scantily clad together.
The Major doesn’t go for the $25,000 blackmail and they try to grab him as he leaves with Kay. In the ensuing melee, Flash happens along and gets a shot of the head crook shooting the Major(he survives) and grabbing Kay. The regular photographer for the paper and he have to perform an heroic rescue with the aid of a stolen ambulance and the cops following close behind.
This movie seems to be available free all over the net.
For more films/and or related matters, overlooked, drop in on Tuesdays and check out SWEET FREEDOM.
Texas Ranger Morgan Kane had two weaknesses: gambling and women. They both were used to trip him up. First, he was skinned of ten thousand in a rigged poker game. Then a woman lured out of a train car where the three men jumped him.
They put a bullet through his gun hand, then one into his stomach, which knocked him off the platform and into a valley through which the train was running.
A neat plan except for one thing. They didn’t kill him. By luck, his pistol was tucked into the front of his belt and the bullet glanced off, creasing his side instead of plowing into his gut.
His recovery took time. A small rancher found him first and saved his life. Then his old partner, Charlie Katz, found him, gave him money, and said heal. The Rangers had marked him dead. Katz knew another secret as well. In looking for his friend, he’d found the three men and woman looking as well and knew their names. That was kept secret until Kane was ready.
The gun hand healed, but left him with a star shaped scar in the palm. The ring finger was useless and he compensated with a leather band that joined it with the middle finger. If not fast as he used to be, he was fast enough.
Now it was time to go after the four who tried to destroy him.
The Morgan Kane series ran to 83 books in Norway beginning in 1971, The author was Kjell Halbing under the name Louis Masterson. Eleven million copies were sold in Norway alone, twenty million in the rest of Europe. Kane got new life in the ebook world and for the first time, an American release.
I was given an opportunity to get one of a thousand copies of the new series printed up for review purposes. A movie is in the planning stages as well.
I loved what I read(took me only a few hours this morning) and look forward to future volumes as they are being released. Without Mercy can be ordered here.
A mixture of ARCs sent by authors, a few I ordered that are starting to come in, and some freebie ebooks sent for review.
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1: The Drift Wars(review copy) – Brett James: an SF/Mystery novel, a favorite combination, sent by the author.
2: New Year Island(review copy) – Paul Draker: sent by the author. A group of people. culled from a long list, are part of a reality show. Dropped on an island off the California coast, one abandoned for years. Camilla Becker is one of the contestants. She’d survived one disaster, an earthquake, as a child. All had something similar in their pasts. Something more is going on though. This one is 700+ pages.
3: Morgan Kane: Without Mercy(review copy) – Louis Masterson: this one’s a bit different. The fist book of a best-selling Norwegian western series that started in 1971 and lasted 83 books. A movie is planned and the series received new life as an ebook series. I was offered a paperback printing, one of a 1000, for review purposes for the American debut. The review will go up tomorrow.
4: The Hard-Boiled Omnibus – edited by Joseph T. Shaw: a collection of tales from 1952 originally published in Black Mask in the thirties. Some of the authors appearing in the book are Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Paul Cain, and Lester Dent.
5: Primeval: Dangerous Dimensions – Pippa Le Quesne: these next five are novels in the British SF series. Need one more to complete the set.
6: Primeval: Extinction Event – Dan Abnett
7: Primeval: Shadow of The Jaguar – Steven Saville
8: Primeval: Fire and Water – Simon Guerrier
9: Primeval: The Lost Predator – Alicia Broderson
10: The Killer – Chris North: Jerry House pointed this one out. North is actually Ed Gprman which is all the excuse needed to grab it.
and the ebooks:
11: Respublic Amerike(review copy) – Max Connelly: I’ve read and enjoyed the author’s work in the past. Am in the middle of this one now. The review goes up later in the week.
12: Trader – J. M. Spears: first book in the No Firewalls series offered free. How does one resist?
13: Rick Canelli, P.I. – Bernard Lee DeLeo: I’ve enjoyed the author’s work in the past and since I love P.I. stories, I’m quite sure I will do so with this one.
14: The Filey Connection – David W. Robinson: one recommended by Nik Morton.
15: Celebrations In The Ossuary & Other Poems – Kyle J. Knapp: David Cranmer has wrote about the unfortunate passing of his nephew and his desire to get his book out. He was kind enough to send me a copy.
Another fictional look at an oft neglected part of WWII. It’s the latter stages of the war and Copenhagen is the scene of last minute machinations. Sabotage Group BB has been decimated(THE INFORMER). The BB in the name, one of the founders, has left for Sweden.
Two members left, Jens and G, both code names, try to keep things together. When Jens, with a green member, blasts a secret Gestapo enclave in a small hotel, things go bad. The new man freezes at the wrong time, gets Jens a slight wound, and is captured. A man easily manipulated.
The attack turns out to a mistake and unleashes a firestorm. Jens is being hunted. And not just by Nazis.
Once again, Danish author Steen Langstrup has crafted an interesting tale set against World War II.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 