THE STRANGER RETURNS, aka A Man, A Horse, A Gun, has a strange looking hero for it’s lead. At first glance, one can’t help but wonder at him. He’s riding a big black horse, which he calls Pussy, carries a pink parasol with white lace, though it is a bit tattered. And as the poster implies, he can’t roll a cigarette, a fact that emphasize several times: a sloppily rolled cylinder, a couple of puffs, then throws it down in disgust.
Tony Powers is The Stranger(no name is ever mentioned), and he finds a dead man in a water trough when he investigates a gun shot. He’s pulling him out when a pistol falls from the body’s jacket. At that moment, the Stranger is accosted by three men who force him to dig a grave.
“Always happy to accommodate a man,” is his laconic reply. When ordered to dig a second grave, he measures off one, getting asked isn’t that a little wide? They should have listened when he answers, “No, it’s not.”
After disposing of them, he searches the first dead man and finds a postal inspector’s I.D., taking that and heads off.
He gets involved in a stage robbery. An unusual stage at that. One made of gold and covered with a thin veneer of wood to simulate a regular stage. It belongs to a banker fleeing his failed bank with his wife ahead of a pursuing army patrol. Pulled by six white horses and with a contingent of hired thugs, the dead postal inspector had let them know and they were to pay him for the information.
They did.
There’s an identical coach made, it keeps getting switched, double-dealing keeps going on. The Stranger is aided by an old Preacher(Marco Guglielmi), who carries around a big box loaded wit fireworks and a bandolier of buckshot shells for the strangest looking shotgun I’ve ever seen. Four barrels that revolve like a cylinder, though they must be turned by hand.
The showdown between the pair and the outlaw band led by a man named En Plein(Dan Vardis) is quite well done with a lot of organ music backgrounding it> Music by Stelvio Cipriani and directed by Luigi Vanzi, the script was based on a story by star Tony Anthony.
Quite liked this one.
