A Pistol For Ringo & The Return of Ringo: Two Films by Duccio Tessari
Directed by Duccio Tessari.
Starring Giuliano Gemma, Fernando Sancho, Lorella De Luca, Antonio Casas, Víctor Bayo, Nieves Navarro, and George Martin.
SYNOPSIS:
Box set containing two influential Spaghetti Westerns from director Duccio Tessari.
You often hear movies described as Die Hard in a… which gives you a brief idea what the film is like plot-wise and tonally. Well, how about Die Hard in the Wild West or, even better, Die Hard in the Wild West before Die Hard was even a thing? Because that is basically what Italian director Duccio Tessari’s 1965 Spaghetti Western A Pistol for Ringo is, which is quite exciting when you put it into the context of when it came out and all the other elements that make it up, i.e. it’s Italian, it’s a western, it has a score by Ennio Morricone and seems to disregard many of the traditional Western’s trademarks or clichés in favour of fun and action. To give it a bit of contrast, A Pistol for Ringo comes packaged with Duccio Tessari’s other 1965 Spaghetti Western The Return of Ringo, made by the same crew and featuring the same cast but in different roles, making it a completely separate film and definitely not a sequel.
In A Pistol for Ringo, a gang of Mexican bandits have robbed the town bank and escaped to the open country where they take over a ranch owned by wealthy Major Clyde (Antonio Casas – The Good, the Bad & the Ugly) and his daughter Ruby (Lorella De Luca), who is engaged to the local Sheriff (George Martin), and keep them and their staff held hostage. With the bankers wanting their money back the Sheriff takes the desperate measure of sending in ‘Angel Face’ Ringo (Giuliano Gemma – Day of Anger), a cocky gunslinger residing in jail for the murder of four bandits, on the pretence of helping injured gang leader Sancho (Fernando Sancho) and drawing the gang out so the Sheriff can ambush them. And that is when all the fun begins….
The Return of Ringo sees Captain Montgomery Brown (Giuliano Gemma) return to his home town after fighting in the American Civil War to find that Mexican bandits, led by Don Fernando Paco Fuentes (George Martin), have seized his property and his wife Helen (Lorella De Luca) is about to marry Don Fernando, so in order to find out if his wife has deceived him he disguises himself as a mestizo peasant called Ringo in order to infiltrate Don Fernando’s gang and get to the bottom of what has happened. In the process he learns that he has a daughter and that Don Fernando is using her as blackmail against Helen, cuing Ringo to take revenge on behalf of Captain Brown, whom Helen believes is dead.
As previously stated, A Pistol for Ringo is the most fun out of the two movies although it would also be true to say that The Return of Ringo is probably the better of the two on a technical level. Part of the fun of A Pistol for Ringo is how most of the action is choreographed and paced, i.e. everything moves extremely quickly and it is very noticeable how rarely any of the punches thrown connect with their target, or even get within touching distance despite the overblown reactions of the participants. But pitted against some of those obvious errors are some cool little touches, such as how Giuliano Gemma is able to mount his horse from a standing start on the ground in one swift leap – impressive when you first notice it and you’re unable not to see it afterwards. The characters in the first film are also a lot of fun; Giuliano Gemma’s Angel Face is John McClane nearly a quarter-of-a-century before Bruce Willis put his face to the name, being all cocky with his one-liners and pretty sure of himself when it comes to putting up a fight, but along with him Fernando Sancho is brilliant as the huffing and puffing but dastardly bandit Sancho, who could be considered something of a stereotype these days but back in 1965 he would likely have got audiences booing and hissing him like the pantomime villain he could be seen as. As well as the hero and the villain we also get some interesting secondary characters such as Major Clyde, who quickly takes an interest in Sancho’s beautiful moll Delores (Nieves Navarro – Death Walks at Midnight), in a neat little sub-plot that gives his character some warmth and depth. It isn’t without its faults – Lorella De Luca’s Ruby is fairly bland and doesn’t offer much in the way of impact and it does run about 15 minutes too long when it could have been tightened up a bit in the third act – but for an exciting action movie with a simple plot and a lot of charm then A Pistol for Ringo more than does the business.
Things take a different turn for The Return of Ringo, the only other official Ringo movie despite it not being a direct sequel. The revenge-driven plot is a little more complex than the previous movie and gives the film a similar feel to some of the Japanese samurai movies from the era. The darker, edgier tone and relative lack of humour in this one makes it a bit of a tougher watch if you’re coming straight off the back of A Pistol for Ringo, making the characters less accessible and the movie as a whole less entertaining. That said, on nearly every other level it surpasses its predecessor as the score is a lot more memorable, the camera work a bit slicker, the choreography less goofy and it feels a whole lot tighter so in that way it is a progression for everyone involved, especially Duccio Tessari.
But overall it is A Pistol for Ringo that is likely to stick in your minds just for being so enjoyable. Visually both films look about as good as 53 year-old low-budget Spaghetti Westerns can look, although The Return of Ringo trumps A Pistol for Ringo for being less grainy and a little more colourful. Both films come with the original Italian audio track with subtitles and also an English audio track but be warned – the English audio track for The Return of Ringo is a little ropey in places, making the actors sound like they are gargling and the score a little choppy. There are also archival interviews with Giuliano Gemma, Lorella De Luca and camera operator Sergio D’Offizi, audio commentaries for both movies by Spaghetti Western experts C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke plus an appreciation of both movies by film critic Tony Rayns that gives a bit more background on director Duccio Tessari so plenty to delve into but the films on their own are worthy enough of any cult film fan’s collections, offering up a few hours’ worth of classic Spaghetti Western goodness to watch and enjoy alongside your Django and Man with No Name movies.
A Pistol for Ringo – Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
The Return of Ringo – Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
