Roberto Mauri directed a number of rather pedestrian Italian western such as Sartana nella Valle degli avvoltoi [1970], Seminò la morte... lo chiamavano Castigo Di Dio [1972], and La Vendetta è il mio perdono [1968] as well as Colorado Charlie [1965], which was his first film in the genre. Unlike Baldenello, Mulargia, and a few other ultra-low budget directors, Mauri didn't master the technique of focusing his resources to achieve a single effect (like Django il bastard' s [1969] focus on a Gothic atmosphere)and so his movies tend to be a little dull.
Wild Bill, sheriff of Springfield and the fastest gun in the territory, is retiring at the request of his new wife, a widow with a young son whose father had been killed in a gunfight. Colorado Charlie, notorious Mexican bandit, learns of this and of the celebrating cattle buyers that have recently returned to town. Waiting for Wild Bill to leave, Charlie robs the buyers and kills the new sheriff, forcing Wild Bill to pursue him.
This movie is reminiscent of the early WAI which attempted to pass themselves off as American product. While some of these films are descent b-movies, they are not as dynamic and interesting (to most viewers) as later movies that were inspired by Leone's cinematic and financial success (not necessarily in that order). Colorado Charlie is a strange little melodrama with music that at times brings to mind 1940s b-westerns and histrionics that belong to the silent era. Given the utter poverty of the production, it is difficult to determine the intention of the filmmakers. Was this supposed to be ironic in the manner of the same year's Una Pistola per Ringo [1965] in which the conventions of the western are played up and almost border slapstick? Was this supposed to be a social melodrama about the consequences of violence like later Spanish westerns such as El Hombre Que mató a Billy el Niño [1967]? This confusion arises from what must have been the mismatch between means and goals as well as shifting goals themselves - melodrama or comedy? Furthermore, Leone's techniques of extreme closeup and the idiosyncratic use of music were not intuitively understood by many of the filmmakers that tried to replicate his success after the reception of the first two Dollars films. Colroado Charlie was probably intended to be a pastiche or farce of sorts like Navajo Joe [1966], but in the end it doesn't work.
Given this, there are the usual WAI motifs of mirrors, assumed identities, and parallels between protagonist and antagonist in which the one is the reverse image of the other. Livio Lorenzo gives one his strange, over-the-top performances(see Jim il primo [1964]) as the title character that may imply some comic intentions it is hard to tell.
The ironic pastiche that recurs throughout many of these movies is due to the genuine enthusiasm that the filmmakers had for the American western and the recreation of the conventions and situations of those movies. However, by the mid-60s the conventions of the classic westerns may have appeared absurd. Additionally, the Italian popular filmmakers tended to be very self-conscious and more than a little aware of what might seem like the sarcastic absurdity of their productions shot in the Almerian desert or the Italian countryside. The idea of a Mediterranean western might have struck them as a sort of clever joke. This irony informs the movies of Corbucci, especially Il Grande Silenzio [1968], and it led to the inevitable development of the often unwatchable slapstick westerns of the 1970s. In a film like Colorado Charlie the seeds of this development can be discerned.
This movie would only be of interest to die-hard euro-western fans.
Top spaghetti western list http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849907
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For fanatics only (bottom of the barrel) http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849890
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