Yellow Hair and the Pecos Kid (1984)

Very well executed

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Director Matt Cimber kicks off Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold in the style of a Saturday morning serial adventure, introducing the viewer to his characters (to the cheers of an appreciative audience) before plonking the viewer in the middle of an ongoing story. It's a lively way to start proceedings, but that's where the fun ends, the exploits of half-breed Yellow Hair (statuesque blonde Laurene Landon) and lovable rogue The Pecos Kid (Ken Roberson) proving stupefyingly tedious despite plenty of noisy action—shooting, explosions, fights and chases, including the obligatory classic stagecoach stunt that sees our heroes falling between the horses.One can't fault Cimber for trying, I suppose, but his terrible script, lacklustre direction and unengaging characters make for a virtually joyless experience. The shambolic plot meanders aimlessly throughout, there's way too much boring conversation, the comedy is exceptionally weak, and star Landon displays little in the way of acting ability. About the only aspect I enjoyed was the occasional spot of mean spirited violence: a commanchero is thrown off his horse over the edge of a cliff, another is slowly lynched, and one poor guy has his head dipped in molten gold before being decapitated.In the tradition of the serials it seeks to emulate, the film ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting that a sequel was planned: thankfully, it never materialised.

There are some reviews on this site that give Yellow Hair one star. That's uncalled for as this is not a bad movie. It's no Seven Samurai, but let's be honest with our expectations on a movie called 'Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold'. This movie doesn't deliver Oscars, but it does deliver a funny script with plenty of gun-play and Spaghetti Western caricatures of good and bad guys (or gals!). It promotes itself as a 'Lost Ark' style adventure movie, and that is more than a little misleading, as this could have just as easily been a Corbucci or Tessari film. I would let that go, however, and just enjoy a goofy throwback with a high entertainment value. Rating: 26/40

There is little to be said in favour of this unholy mixture of slapstick and Spaghetti Western sadism. It's long, it's boring, and hasn't a spark of originality about it.I have no idea who the producers thought the target audience for this movie might be but the pitch must have been a doozy to get someone to stump up the money."It's a Spaghetti Western Comedy - only, and here's the twist, we have a woman hero and make it look like an old time Saturday morning children's serial to cash in on the Indiana Jones market! How can we loose?" Three big targets to hit - and they missed all three. The comedy is feeble - are we really supposed to find the fact that the generalissimo is a teensy bit camp funny? The serial framing device is so clumsily and laboriously done that any humour in it evaporates before it gets going. The whole point about the Saturday serials was that there was a cliffhanger at the end of each episode*, a point that seems to have been totally missed by the writers. The only one of their targets they came close to hitting was the parody/homage of the Spaghetti Western genre - but as that was a genre that was always happily sending itself up it's a very easy target to hit. Give anyone a week in Almeria with a few unshaven actors in cowboy costumes and they could have come up with this stuff.Avoid.*Apart from the last one naturally.

YELLOW HAIR AND THE FORTRESS OF GOLD is a Crown International release, which we all know what that means: acting, production values, dialogue are all questionable. Seriously, this movie looks like one of the bigger budgeted CI flicks but that doesn't mean the movie itself is better than the average CI release. While watching it, the film reminded me more of Spaghetti Westerns than the Indiana Jones type of movies it's being advertised as. The title and the video's cover box are very deceptive. YELLOW HAIR AND THE PECOS KID is a more apt title. Though there are some moments about a lost civilization and treasures, the whole stale flick is nowhere near the type of action seen in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, even if both movies use old time serials as their source of inspiration.The film itself was dull and creaky. Lotsa slow motion gun action, typical in Westerns made in the 1960s. Seeing that this movie was made in the 1980s, YELLOW HAIR has a very outdated feel to it. Spaghetti Westerns weren't being made in the 1980s anymore. It's seems the producers of this stillborn action/western weren't aware of this. The acting was mostly bad. The ineffectual heroine, Yellow Hair, is unfortunately nicknamed "Yella" throughout the movie. The whole film is politically incorrect but not in a fun P.I. way. Some of the stunts involving horses were obviously harmful to the animals. All in all, a pretty forgettable and pointless Spaghetti Western film, deceptively advertised as an action movie.