Roy Colt & Winchester Jack

The great Mario Bava will always be best known for his Gothic horror and Giallo films, but he was a very versatile director (like most Italian directors around the time) that made many films in genres outside of horror, and Roy Colt and Winchester Jack is his attempt at making a film within Italy's popular Spaghetti Western genre. This film is not widely liked amongst Mario Bava's fans and it's not hard to see why - the film really doesn't feel like a Bava film at all as it features none of his trademarks and the plot also has a lot of problems and elements that don't work. The film takes obvious influence from the greatest of all the Spaghetti Westerns; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and focuses on the race to claim some buried gold. The main characters are a pair of outlaws named Roy Colt and Winchester Jack. They were once in a gang together, but Roy left to find honest work and ends up becoming sheriff of a small town. A bank owner there has some gold buried and after Jack and his gang steal the map, Roy heads out on their tail. A corrupt reverend and a devious Indian girl also join the party...

The film is obviously not meant to be taken seriously and Bava packs it with comedy. It has to be said that a lot of it completely misses the mark and isn't funny - but there are some laughs, and scenes such as the one that takes place inside a Brothel in "Wimpy City" work simply because it's so surreal. As the title suggests, this is a character driven western and the leads are both well designed and well acted by American actors Brett Halsey and Charles Southwood. Their relationship is one of the key elements of the film and the way they interact with each other is generally entertaining. The biggest highlight of the film for me was undoubtedly the beautiful and seductive Marilù Tolo who plays the Indian girl and steals every scene she's in - I would even go as far as to say that this film would not have worked without her in it. The only character that doesn't work too well is The Reverend, who is more irritating than amusing. There's some good fighting in the film - plenty of gunfights and fistfights and at eighty five minutes, there isn't really time for the plot to get boring. Overall, on the grand scheme of things; this is not a particularly good western or a particularly good Bava film - but it's entertaining enough and I did enjoy it.

While this comic Spaghetti Western was nowhere near as bad as its low reputation amidst the director’s canon would seem to suggest, it can’t possibly hold a candle to Sergio Leone’s classic THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) – and it would be puerile for anyone to attempt comparisons of this sort!

It’s the last of Bava’s three such genre efforts but, actually, the first I’ve watched; I used to think that he was constrained within the number of relatively low-brow peplums he made, but even those showed greater commitment – and vigor during the action sequences. Here we get plenty of brawling and shooting, to be sure, but the handling throughout is decidedly sloppy…as if Bava, rather than be inspired by these traditionally ‘big’ moments, wanted to get such genre requirements out of the way!

That said, despite utilizing a wide variety of locations in its plot about two rival outlaw gangs’ quest for gold, these don’t seem to have stimulated the director’s trademark compositional skills; even worse, the comedy element comes across as heavy-handed most of the time, resulting in a flat and drawn-out film (even if it runs for a mere 85 minutes)!

Brett Halsey (from Bava’s FOUR TIMES THAT NIGHT [1969]) and Charles Southwood don’t exactly generate fireworks in the title roles and, in fact, the best in the cast are Marilu' Tolo as Winchester’s spirited (and shrewd) Indian girl and Teodoro Corra' as The Reverend, the atypically buffoonish baddie – a Russian émigré who still can’t get over the cold of his native land. Isa Miranda (who would work again with Bava when he treaded more familiar ground in BAY OF BLOOD [1971]) appears as the brothel Madame in what is perhaps the most slapsticky and forced set-piece in the entire film.

Hardly memorable in itself, there are still a few mild highlights in this reasonably agreeable, innocuous yet patchy genre offering: the spastic gunman at the beginning, the obviously fake snake which menaces Winchester (reminiscent of the one in Fritz Lang’s THE Indian TOMB [1959]), the exploding villain, and the final shot with the heroes’ feet up in the air as they engage in yet another fisticuff. Piero Umiliani’s lively score certainly contributes to the film’s characteristically light touch.

If this film is judged only on its own merits, without reference to other entirely unrelated entries in the Mario Bava lexicon, it holds its own as light-hearted entertainment. Unlike most Italian comic westerns, this one holds the interest largely due to its three central players' well rendered characters and exploits. The cinematography is also far better than many others in the genre.

Charles Southwood is perfect as the scruffy, irrepressible Jack, in contrast to the stolid, lachrymose-faced Roy (Halsey)and both of them can be relied upon to out-cheat the other when they aren't busy beating the tar out of each other to show their mutual affection. Southwood is really quite outstanding and should have been in a lot more films.

Marilu Tolo is very effective here (much more than she is in most of her roles) as the feisty and very resourceful Indian prostitute who is determined to coerce someone into marrying her, preferably Jack or Roy. Don't miss the sequence when she hooks up with Southwood and forces him at gunpoint to take a bath before becoming a "client." Under protest, Southwood descends to the cellar and has to break the ice on the water before stripping off his smelly long-johns to take the plunge. By the shrunken state of his retracted genitals, the water is cold indeed. The shotgun pointed at him by the comely Tolo probably helped, too. Now there's a touch you would never have seen in an American-made western.

Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (1970)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Spaghetti western directed by Mario Bava about two outlaws (Brett Halsey, Charles Southwood) trying to find a treasure. Outside some nice cinematography this film is pretty much a wasted effort for everyone involved, especially the director. I'm a fairly big fan of Bava but this here certainly ranks down at the bottom of his filmography. The film goes for way too many laughs, which is okay if any of them were actually funny. In the end the film is basically a rip of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly as well as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There are a few good moments but not enough to make it worth watching.

Now that this is available in a beautiful letterboxed, subtitled DVD, ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK can be enjoyed by anyone who wants to see it. Is it worth seeing? Well...what you have is basically a lowbrow Eurowestern comedy that belongs on the same shelf with STING OF THE WEST and IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO. The various supporting players are colorful, and there are two strong American leads in the charismatic Brett Halsey and the engaging Charles Southwood. Though hidden under a lot of makeup, Marilu Tolo is as sexy as ever. I've never found Italian western comedies to be that worthwhile (or western comedies in general, BLAZING SADDLES excepted)--for me, most of the best qualities of westerns are lost when they are played for laughs. There are a number of laughs in this film--Halsey and Southwood both play comedy well--but the viewer should be warned that the laughs are on a Bowery Boys/Police Academy-level. I like that kind of comedy, but you may not. The reason this film was reissued is that it was directed by Mario Bava; however, had I seen the film without knowing that, I would never have guessed. Bava scholars can no doubt find similarities, but I would not consider his direction a major element here (see my review of RINGO DEL NEBRASKA, one of Bava's two other westerns). Overall, this is an enjoyable Eurowestern comedy, with excellent and creative production design (now THERE is a Bava quality!) and good performances, but I don't really consider it essential, only for the serious Eurowestern fan or the Brett Halsey fan (of which I'm one).