I first saw this film, an excellent English dubbed version which made it totally comprehensible, at an El Paso, Texas movie theatre many years ago. The imagery and style are what really carry the movie. It is a brilliant, hilarious, outrageous spoof of the early American cowboy western. The central character, Lemonade Joe, is a personification of "clean living" and a combination of all those early movie cowboy heroes in the tradition of William S. Hart, Tom Mix, and Hopalong Cassidy. The movie follows Joe as he attempts to rid the town saloon of liquor and promote his own product creation Kola-Loca-Lemonade. As you can well imagine, Joe in his efforts has to confront some rather mean varmints especially one appropriately name Duke Badman who at one point in the movie gets the better of Joe by spiking his lemonade drink with liquor causing him to gag and pass out. But in the end, good triumphs over evil for as Lemonade Joe so philosophically declares at one point in the movie "Evil can not stand against a clean-living man."
Review of Lemonade Joe
