Blood for a Silver Dollar

This is one of the greatest movies I remember from my teenager years. It was the talk of town. It used to run on the local theater for months on a roll and many people went to see it more than once, including me. For some reasons it became a classic of "western" right here in Brazil. Maybe even more than full-fledged American westerns. Giuliano Gemma, even though, Italian, become the poster-boy for an authentic American cowboy down here. The plot was very well written, good fist fights, great shoot-outs right on the beginning. The soundtrack is just amazing and stands up by itself as a classic. Pay attention to the opening credits, you can have a lot of fun just by doing that. It could have been even better if had been shot in American old western soil, such as "Monument Valley". It's kind of intriguing, how italians, the creators of pasta, could make such awesome western movies and New York is the best place in the world to eat Italian food. How can these two countries can be so far and so close at the same time? It wracks my brain.

Confederate soldier Gary O'Hara (Guiliano Gemma) and his brother Phil are released from a prisoner of war camp following the end of the civil war, the barrels of their guns removed by their captors. Gary returns home to his wife Judy (Evelyn Stewart) whilst Phil is not ready to live such a quiet life and heads off west.

Gary soon decides to follow his brother to the town of Yellowstone, and to find work to support his family. On arrival, his combat prowess is soon put to practice, which brings him to the attention of local banker McCory (Pierre Cressoy). McCory offers him a ranch and money if he can kill local outlaw Blacky, which he agrees to do. Gary is taken to the local saloon and advised that Blacky is the man at the bar with his back to him. On confrontation, Blacky turns around, firing his gun - and revealing himself to be Phil O'Hara. McCory and his men open fire, leaving both brothers dead.

By a stroke of good fortune, Gary survives the ambush, his life saved by the single silver dollar in his pocket. He sets out to discover why McCory wanted Blacky dead, and to aid the local villagers that are suffering at the hands of a group of marauding bandits. Meanwhile, Judy O'Hara travels to Yellowstone in search of her husband, and soon finds herself in the unwelcome company of McCory.

As with Gemma's role in his two Ringo films, the character of Gary O'Hara would sit quite comfortably in an American made western. This is no bad thing, and he does always make for a likable hero. The same point could be levelled at the film in general - it is a likable flick, with a true old American western feel. That said, Ferrio's enjoyable whistled score clearly sits within the euro-western genre, and it does share a level of violence with its fellow Italian movies.

The story itself has a few clichés (for one thing, a fair few screen characters have been saved over the years by an inanimate object conveniently placed on their person) but does that really matter? Clearly not. And there are some great scenes, particularly both the opening (great gun-play as the brothers are released) and final sequence. From a personal perspective, I was also intrigued to note a great visual likeness between Evelyn Stewart and my own girlfriend!!! Not that that should be of any real relevance to this write up.

In summary, this is one of those nice easy to watch movies (legs up on the sofa, with a wine or beer for company), and certainly worth a few silver dollars of anyones money.

While "Blood For A Silver Dollar" is far from the worst spaghetti western made, I have to admit that all the same it failed to rouse me - and I usually LOVE spaghetti westerns! It felt interchangeable from the countless spaghetti westerns I had seen before watching it. I think the main reason for that is the script. The story doesn't contain any surprises - you'll always be one step ahead of the hero and the other characters from seeing the same situations in other spaghetti westerns before. Apparently because of this, Giuliano Gemma and the rest of the cast don't seem able to bring any life to their clichéd characters. Behind the camera, director Giorgio Ferroni does manage to give the enterprise an acceptable look, but can't generate that much excitement, in part due to the fact there's little action. Recommended only for those who have never seen a spaghetti western before in their life.

Although not as good as Gemma's best Italian Western Day of Anger (Giorni dell'ira, I (1967)), One Silver Dollar is still enjoyable. It's a relatively early euro oater, mimicing more closely than do later productions the conventions of the American originals, and displaying few or none of the gothic cynicism and elements of parody which invaded the genre as it became more established. Gemma plays O'Hara, a ex-confederate soldier whose return to peace time life is marred when he encounters a band of crooks intending to take over a town and buy up homesteaders. After accidentally shooting his own brother, O'Hara struggles to put an end to the criminal's schemes, as well as extracting his wife who has now fallen into clutches of the ruthless gang. Directed as ‘Calvin Jackson Padget', Ferroni's film is very effective, even if the plot is hardly original. Now and again the film suggests things to come, especially in the second half when the put upon O'Hara is by turn fooled, left for dead, beaten up, and even has his mouth filled with salt in order to make him talk – all casual cruelties startling in the context of an otherwise fairly genial ‘bad-guys-stealing-homesteaders-land' plot. Gemma is a lithe, physical hero, but a scene or two opening out his character, especially in the light of his brother's murder, would have been welcome. Hidden underneath the narrative is some discreet play with masculinity and honour: O'Hara has to make do with an emasculated six shooter, whose barrel has been sawn off by his yankee captors while the bonding between old Confederate comrades, and their ongoing humiliation, is another recurring theme. The main titles theme is one of those instantly memorable whistle mottos which are a hallmark of the genre, although on disc the sound is a bit thin and appears to be sourced from a mono master. The Australian produced DVD features the American dub in a slightly faded widescreen print. Its only through the trailer, also included, that one gets a sense of how effective the original language version would have been. Many recent Spaghetti releases include a subtitled version and this is certainly the most desirable package.

I only saw this film once in 1975 and for some reason it has stuck in my mind! The opening scene in particular. I am hoping that by writing here someone may be aware of its availability on PAL video and in English! There has to be a copy somewhere! I rememeber it being a particularly good example of this genre - ie: the "Italian Western."