The White, the Yellow, and the Black

Many of the problems I had with "Shoot First...Ask Questions Later" (a.k.a. "Samurai") had nothing to do with the original production. The DVD I got from Netflix was among the very worst discs I have ever seen--and that's saying a lot since I have rented thousands of their films. In fact, it might just be THE worst. It appears as if someone took an old videotape and literally filmed it with a home videocamera! The picture was super-blurry and crooked throughout. Ugly is perhaps the kindest thing I can say about the DVD!

As far as the film goes, it's not a good film either. It's all about some 'Japanese' folks in the West. Some might just have been Japanese but the main one was played by the Cuban-American Toma Milian and it's undoubtedly one of the most embarrassing roles he ever took. Seeing the guy in a goofy wig, mustache and kimono looked utterly stupid. Unfortunately, the film itself never rose much above this. Probably not worth your time unless you insist on seeing EVERYTHING made by Sergio Carbucci AND you can find a better DVD copy.

I did my best. I suffered through half of the film, but that idiotic portrayal of Sakura started to destroy my brain, so I gave up. I couldn't believe it was the same Sergio Corbucci, who created Django. Eli Wallach and his obvious talent couldn't save the film either. Giuliano Gemma in it is forgettable.

Holy heck, I still feel like I need a therapy after watching it. I only gave it three stars because of Wallach and a few good moments in the film. Can't recall them now lol. I need to erase this film from my memory.

Don't go into this film expecting a typical Corbucci high body count shoot 'em up. This time around the famous `other Sergio' takes a stab at the comedy/spaghetti sub-genre which was ever so popular in the waning days of the Euro Western. `Bianco, il giallo, il nero, Il' is more or less a bizarro take on the East meets wild West classic `Red Sun'. Eli Wallach plays `Black Jack Gideon', a straight and narrow lawman who reluctantly gets mixed up in a quest to recover a prize Japanese show pony that's being held for ransom by a renegade band of army deserters with a penchant for dressing up like Indians. Accompanying him on his journey are the notorious bandit and womanizer `Swiss', played by Giuliano Gemma and `Sakura' the dung handler turned Samurai played by Tomas Milian. Many unintentional laughs and moments of genuine surreal weirdness set to the equally strange Guido & Maurizio De Angelis score almost guarantee this film to delight fans of the genre and confuse and frighten the average viewer.

I saw it twice in 1975, when I was only 16 years old. It delighted me terribly then. Through the myriad of communist films, whether Romanian, Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Chinese or Vietnamese, this was a rare bird. Watched again in 2021, I consider it just a big waste of time. Although, we have two very good actors in the cast, Eli Wallach and Tomas Milian, who both gave their best, the film is a failure, it has no fun at all, for me it's just a failed attempt to copy on Sergio Leone, everyone knows which movie, and "Red Sun" with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune.

After Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci is probably Italy's best known spaghetti Western director. Most of his films - that I have watched, some I have not - are quite dour, even gory. In contrast, "Bianco, il giallo, il nero" has some wonderfully comic moments, with Thomas Milian as a Japanese sword-bearing samurai rocking up in the middle of the West to engage in such diverse activities as putting sheriff Eli Wallach to sleep, and giving Giuliano Gemma a lesson in fighting with a sword. The saloon scene with Eli, Giuliano and Thomas dressed as tarty can can dancers is one of the movie's finest slapstick highlights.

It seems to me that the three must have had a great time, notably during the inevitable bar room fight sequence.

Not that the story makes much sense, but the photography is more than adequate for a spaghetti Western, and Milian gets to deliver the most memorable line in the movie when they arrive in an inexplicably empty town. Thinking that it might be due to a religious holiday, Milian points out that "America is full of prostitutes"... meaning Protestants, of course.

The self-parodying approach runs right through the movie. I found it refreshing and at times quite inspired. 7/10.