Get Mean

Once again, Tony Anthony (one of the least charismatic spaghetti western cowboys of the genre) rides the range.... though this time in Spain... and encountering Vikings (!) and Moors(!) It's played somewhat straight, though there are some broad attempts at humor (such as a embarrassingly unfunny gay character.) There are some impressive visuals, clearly showing this movie wasn't cheap - kind of surprising when you consider the spaghetti western was considered all but dead by European producers at the time. But despite the money spent, and the absolute goofiness of the premise, it's just as dull as Anthony's other spaghetti westerns. It's just another part of the mystery as to why Anthony managed to be so popular in Europe.

The fourth and last entry in an unknown and insignificant film series revolving around the rather annoying Tony Anthony as "The Stranger". Like the rest of the world, I haven't seen the previous three films, so I don't know if it's a trademark of the series, but "Get Mean" is a mixture of the genres: comedy, adventure and western. Well, actually, it's an attempt to mix genres but not a very successful one. It's not funny, not adventurous and a pretty miserable excuse for a western. The Stranger is "chosen" to escort a Spanish princess back to her homeland, but there he becomes entangled in a battle between Barbarians and Moors. During a lot of far-fetched and uninteresting twists, he also turns black (!) and must battle gay backstabbers and Shakespeare-obsessed Vikings. "Get Mean" is pretty boring and often comes across as amateur theater, complete with lousy costumes, bad make-up, tame action but an overload of stupid dialogues, and incompetent extras hectically running around in the background. Ferdinando Baldi's movies are always quite inept, but usually also very entertaining ("Blindman", "Just a Damned Soldier", ...). This is my least favorite film of his.

Here's a very strange one - A Western that barely takes place in America, seems to involve time-travel, ghosts and magic, and has a smart-ass, cowardly hero who sports a four-barreled shotgun. Somehow Ferdinando Baldi has bypassed the future trend of killing machine Eighties action stars like Arnie and Stallone and gone straight for the nineties-era non-action stars like Bruce Campbell. Nice one!

The Stranger, as he's called, is dragged into town by his horse while a silver orb looks on. After his horse suddenly dies, the Stranger finds the same orb held by a mystic woman who tells him he has to escort a princess back to Spain so she can prevent a war between Barbarians and Moors. Quite rightly demanding a cash reward and getting into a slapstick punch up with some Barbarians, The Stranger agrees to go.

Now, I'm not quite sure if time travel is involved, but The Stranger gets to Spain and witnesses a huge battle between the Barbarians and the Moors, resulting in a win for the Barbarians, the princess getting kidnapped, and The Stranger being hung upside down. We also get to meet our bad guys - the head Barbarian seems to thrive on violence and anger while his hunchbacked brother constantly quotes Shakespeare. Both are advised by an ultra-stereotypical gay guy.

The demented plot follows The Stranger as he seeks his payment and a hidden treasure, fights ghosts who make him howl like a dog and slap himself before turning him completely black from head to toe, fight various bad guys before getting tooled up for the explosive end of the film. There must have been quite a bit of budget behind this one too as there's a lot of good set design and huge crowds of extras.

I wasn't too sure about it when it started off (that being the slapstick fight) but I was one over by the general willingness for the film to weird and entertaining at the same time. Better than all those comedy westerns for sure.

This movie is a lot of fun, and deserves more credit than it gets. It is quite unique among westerns, or even spaghetti westerns. It's so odd, in fact, that it really defies categorization.

Though it is without question a gloriously over-the-top spaghetti western, it actually relates more closely to "Army of Darkness." In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Sam Raimi was influenced by this film before he directed that great third installment in the "Evil Dead" series. In this film, Tony Anthony plays his usual role of "the stranger" (kind of a "man-with-no-name' type of character). We learn right away that there is something supernatural going on here as the movie opens with the stranger being dragged by his horse into a ghost town. On the way there, they pass a strange silver orb, then when they get there, the horse has a heart attack and dies as the town bell tolls unexplainedly. Anthony walks into a building where he meets a witch who has the same silver orb at the table where she sits. He finds out he's been summoned to escort a Spanish princess back to Spain and help her regain her throne from "barbarian" invaders who appear to be from another time. This all happens in the first five minutes! I don't want to give away too much of the story, so I'll just say that the stranger's tasks are to deal with the barbarians, rescue the princess, find a treasure that is guarded by ghosts, and collect money that was promised to him by the witch. The movie is quite comical and full of slapstick, and just like Ash in "Army of Darkness," the stranger unloads a huge can of whoop-ass on an army of foes. I would love to see the plot of this movie "borrowed" for a sequel to the Evil Dead series. Ash could once again be sent back in time, but this time to the old west where he would be the stranger. Change the treasure to the Necronomicon, have it guarded by Deadites, and bam you've got Evil Dead 5! They wouldn't even have to change much of the dialog as most of the stranger's lines would be perfect for Bruce Campbell as Ash.

Tony Anthony is great, as usual, in this one. He's like the Rodney Dangerfield of spaghetti westerns in that he doesn't get the respect he deserves. Eastwood's "man-with-no-name" may be the king of "cool," but Tony Anthony's "stranger" is more of a character, and just as tough. The other actors and actresses in the film do an excellent job also. I especially liked the character of "Sambra," a crazy Hunchback who thinks he's the reincarnation of Richard III.

This movie isn't for everyone. If you go into it thinking it is just a wacky late-era spaghetti western, and try to fit it into that mold, you will think it is trying too hard, and will probably find it to be just slightly amusing and nothing more. But if you can understand and appreciate the film for what it really is, and especially if you've enjoyed "Army of Darkness," you should definitely enjoy this one.

This curious very late spaghetti western really goes out on a conceptual limb, sending Tony Anthony's rascally Wild West "Stranger" across the Atlantic with a Spanish princess. In Europe he somehow gets mixed up with both Elizabethan-era Spaniards and Viking-style "barbarians," while another character seems to parody Shakespeare's Richard III.

It's goofy stuff that has been compared to "Army of Darkness," and does bear a superficial resemblance in its goofy quasi-historical incongruities. But while the movie does have a sense of humor, it's pretty crude--rather than absurdist, which would much better suit this out-there concept. It's also particularly hard now to take the simpering old-school screaming-queen stereotype played by the star's brother.

Anthony's sort of proto-Lebowski wiseacre carries things to an extent, and the film has an impressive scale at times, particularly since the Euro western genre was way past its commercial peak in 1975. But the direction by a mostly undistinguished toiler in Italian B movies (he did make a handful of decent giallos, straight-faced spaghettis and other genre entries) doesn't rise to the occasion, and beyond its premise nor does the script. This is one of those enterprises that sounds so deliciously nutty it can hardly go wrong...until you actually watch it, and realize it's not nearly as much fun as it sounded.

I've seen contrary information on the film's commercial fate, some indicating it ran into distribution problems, others indicating it made $10 million (which would have been a lot then, and seems highly improbable). I suspect the truth is that it didn't do well, because apparently Anthony had hoped to kick off a whole new series of "Stranger" films. Instead, he never made another--which suggests financiers didn't want to take the risk.