Trusting Is Good... Shooting Is Better

Poor quality. Voices dubbed in just plain bad. James Welch Henderson Arkansas. 8/26/21.

Looks like this one had many names over the years -- the DVD case says "Dead for a Dollar", but apparently it's also known as "Trusting is Good, Shooting is Better!", as well as various titles in various countries. I saw the 91 minute DVD version, which has English dubbing, thank goodness. Stars Jorge Acosta Y Lara aka George Hilton, born in Uruguay, as Glenn Reno, on a mission. "The Colonel" is played by John Ireland, who has quite the interesting story on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ireland_(actor) Such a rambling plot, although it looks like there are about fifteen minutes missing in the version I saw. Everyone seems to be searching for the buried loot. Shooting. Killings. Digging. Great outdoor scenery. Written by Tito Carpi. Directed by Osvaldo Civirani... looks like his brother Walter was the camera-man on all his projects, a family affair. Moves crazy slow. I wonder if the original script was any more exciting than what we hear in English in the dubbed version. Sound and picture quality are terrible, but it does seem to be a copy of a copy....?

I like Hilton and Gordon Mitchell so I gave this one a try. The DVD I saw is an ugly, full-frame transfer, probably from VHS. English dub. It's a "funny" story of a man (Hilton) that runs afoul of a gang of three bank robbers (Mitchell, John Ireland, Piero Vida). The robbers are busy trying to double-cross one another and Hilton joins the party. A pretty blond (Sandra Milo) takes her turn at tricking each of the men also. The story is very reminiscent of double-cross pics like ONE DOLLAR TOO MANY or ANY GUN CAN PLAY. However, this film is a little tedious, a little boring. Some of the comic scenes are pretty well-done but the action sequences are slow-moving, boring, very poorly staged. Generally the pacing of the film is too slow, too boring, everything takes too long to happen. Music is an annoying carnival-style motif which is supposed to sound whimsical but features too much acid rock-style organ and guitar. Mitchell's part FWIW is basically a cameo, he is dead after 15min of the film. Hilton is charming but can't save the film on his own. As of this writing the full film is available on YouTube. 5/10 stars.

Man, Italians Westerns that are as average as this are hard to find. Mostly there's either a huge body count, some nice stylistic touches, or some over the top gun play to keep you going. This one, starring George Hilton (of Dinner with a vampire and Raiders of Atlantis), John Ireland (of Run Man Run and an episode of the Littlest Hobo) and George Mitchell (of Frankenstein 80 and Achtung! The Desert Tigers) kinds of keeps going over the same ground until the film ends.

What I mean is, you've got the usual bunch of folk after some gold (like Run Man Run) who keep double crossing each other or forging unlikely alliances (which happens so often in spaghetti westerns that it actually defies conventional mathematics by occurring in 107% of spaghetti westerns! How is that even possible?. However, this film just keeps doing that over and over and over again with little or no variation.

Seriously. Someone has the gold hidden somewhere, others get together to get it, there's maybe a shoot out or a punch up, the gold ends up somewhere else, repeat until the non-ending.

I've watched a lot of Italian Westerns, and this is only the second that wasn't that great. It gets points for George Hilton being good (as usual), some nice comedic scenes, but that's about it. Put this way low on your 'watch list'.

Handsome George Hilton, slippery John Ireland, and a fat blustery Portuguese each try to outmaneuver the others in order to make off with the two-hundred-thousand dollars in stolen money taken from them by the deceased Gordon Mitchell.

Sometimes this spaghetti western is amusing but mostly it's pretty talky stuff. Ireland and Hilton are game but this tries to be another The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly without any real visual excitement or fun twists in the story. These two have definitely done better.

The worst part of the film (and I mean worst!) occurs near the end, a disgusting dinner scene between George Hilton and the dressmaker (Why wasn't she shot before this?) as they smack their dripping greasy chicken, the camera lingering on closeups of them chewing the stringy chicken with oily open mouths and food hanging out!

At over a hundred minutes the movie wasn't too long already that they had to include this?! It was pointless, irritating, and gross! Obviously they struck a raw nerve, at least with this viewer!