Acquasanta Joe

To me you have to really be a fan of this genre to enjoy this Spaghetti western. The biggest problem to me is the script. There are way too many plot holes that are just never explained, and questions as to why they are doing this or that. There are some good action scenes and moments. I loved the last 15 or 20 minutes of the movie just for the action alone. I will say another problem with the movie at times was the music score, which seemed way too lighthearted or comical at times for what was happening on screen turning moments that should have been played for more dramatic effect into comedy. My last problem with the movie was with the English dubbing -- at least on the version I watched. The voices seemed too alike at times as if a person not very talented was doing both parts at the same time, and didn't know how to disguise their voice well. In conclusion, I say if you are a fan of the genre, don't pass this one up. It is worth it for the action at times alone.

It was around this time during the spaghetti western craze that many spaghetti westerns started to add some comic elements, some being outright comedies. "Holy Water Joe" (a.k.a. "Acquasanta Joe") plays it straight for the most part, but there are several scenes that are clearly there to generate laughs. When this comic side of the movie is placed against the serious side, it is sometimes jarring, because the movie has several sequences where people are viciously gunned down or threatened with hanging or being blasted by a cannon. Apart from that flaw, I didn't find the movie as terrible as some of the other IMDb users did. I'm not saying it's a great or even good western, but I found it lively enough to pass the time (though not much more.) If you are a fan of the spaghetti western genre, it's probably safe enough to give it a try.

Colonel Donovan (Ty Hardin) and his right hand man Charlie Bennett (Richard Harrison) are planning a bank robbery, disguised as soldiers. The successful bounty hunter Acquasanta Joe (Lincoln Tate) was the bank's best customer and loses all his well earned money. Of course, Joe chases the bandits. He finds that Bennett cheated Donovan and ran with the money. Now Joe doesn't hunt Bennett to bring him into a prison - he wants to bring him to his former boss instead, because that's even worse. However when he catches Bennett, the money has disappeared...

Another cheap western, but not all bad. Richard Harrison has the best role, because he can put some comedy into his portrayal of Bennett as a shameless crook, coward and traitor. Ty Hardin plays a sympathetic rogue who really has to struggle between Bennett on one side and Acquasanta Joe on the other - and decides to use creative weaponry. Lincoln Tate, however, is not memorable in the title role.

I rated this one with solid 5/10 points. It's very limited in various ways. Let's face it, most Italian westerns weren't blessed with a high budget, this wasn't either and it shows. The action takes place mostly somewhere in a canyon or woods, you barely get to see. Still, it's entertaining. The characters are stereotypes, starting with the hero Holy Water Joe, the ruthless but cunning headhunter who brings down a pack of bandits that robbed the bank he put all his earnings in. The action is quite fast and though this kind of movie naturally isn't a grade A product it's fairly entertaining. The soundtrack is quite interesting, as it contains both the usual orchestration for spaghetti westerns as well as some 60/70s style music. A product of it's time I guess. However, I felt entertained by this one and for that it gets a bonus pushing it to 5 of 10 points, with the entertainment factor higher than that.

Like SARTANA IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH (1970), I watched this via C'Est La Vie's R2 DVD and, in hindsight, both film and disc are of similar quality. The lead is Lincoln Tate in the title role of the bounty hunter pursuing Ty Hardin's band of Renegade Union soldiers; Richard Harrison appears as one of the latter's associates who later double-crosses him.

Having watched so many Spaghetti Westerns this past week, the films' plots get intertwined in my mind – and, frankly, I can't recall much of what this one was about!; I do know that Hardin's gang carries with it a cannon to aid in their bank robberies and that his leadership is challenged at one point by a bald-headed associate whom Tate eventually dispatches with a horde of arrows in the style of Akira Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD (1957). Hardin eventually joins forces with Tate to retrieve a stash of money hidden in a cave, and also involved is Hardin's half-breed (and gun-toting) woman – who has her eyes on Tate as well.

The director biography, included among the extras, makes some claim for him being a versatile film-maker but, personally, it's the first I've ever heard of him: his career spanned all sorts of genres from Spaghetti Westerns to crime thrillers, horror, sci-fi and even erotica (as it turns out, he also made the sentimental drama THE BALLOON VENDOR aka THE LAST CIRCUS SHOW [1974] – starring James Whitmore and Lee J. Cobb – which, when released in Malta back in the day, proved a huge box-office success)!