Panhandle 38 (1972)
The son of an aging gunfighter returns home with a shipment of confederate gold.
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Too much of everything
Boring
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Although this seemed inept and crude to me for the duration, I'll at least give it some technological benefit of doubt for having to watch the original cinematic images compromised by the pan-and-scan screening.Wynn plays (non too evocatively it has to be said) an old gunslinger who doesn't know whether or not to trust his estranged, convent-raised son when he turns up out of the blue. But fear not, Junior promptly beats up barfuls of badly-dubbed recalcitrants, and displays an acute disloyalty towards the intended Confederate recipient of his consignment of gold.No-one else - including standard decorative female lead, and bungling bandit companion - is quite what they seem, in the name of achieving mirth in this 'humorous' genre entry (ie tiresome fast-motion fights in the Hal Needham vein).In what must be one of the most bizarre examples of the politically-incorrect in the entire Spaghetti Western canon, a gang of decidedly effeminate red Indian marauders lose their quarry over concern for their coiffures: "...Nasty man... You've ruined my hairdo... I'm sure I look just awful... My curlers! I've lost my curlers!". It simply has to be seen and heard (the appalling Anglicised dubbing probably makes it even more incongruous than it actually is) to be disbelieved. One has to wonder whether this film in part inspired Mel Brooks to do Blazing Saddles.In the film's defence, it probably would have at least had the visual sweep of burning hills and wide open spaces in it's original format. But it is now so obscure - and probably not without good reason - that the prospect of such a version ever becoming readily available, for re-appraisal, is as elusive as El Dorado.