BLINDMAN (1971) ¢ ¢
D: Ferdinando Baldi
Tony Anthony, Ringo Starr, Lloyd Batista,
Raf Baldasarre, Magda Konopka, Agneta Eckmyr,
Marisa Solinas, Franz von Treuberg, Shirley Corrigan
Tony Anthony tries to pretend he's Charles Bronson in a pointless (and pointlessly brutal) spaghetti western about a blind gunman who takes on a horde of murderous Mexicans while trying to get 50 mail-order brides to their prospective husbands in Texas. In fact, he spends most of the movie trying to spring the women from captivity at the hands of bandits or the Mexican army, and he's no closer to getting the job done at the end than he was when the story began. Shots and even whole scenes in this are lifted from other, better spaghetti westerns, and Stelvio Cipriani's musical score owes everything to Ennio Morricone. Some bits stand out for their sheer bizarreness. One is the scene where the women, running barefoot through the desert, are chased down by men on horseback, who hunt them like animals. Another is the funeral of a bandit named Candy (played by Ringo Starr), in which all the sets and costumes are black-and-white. Ringo doesn't do much and gets killed off too soon. Anthony had a hand in the screenplay, so he can't blame anybody else for his lame one-liners. One thing he does make clear: He's not Charles Bronson.
