The first time I watched this I rated it only **1/2; among the first to send up the Spaghetti Western genre, I tended to overlook it in favor of the director's more sobering DEATH RIDES A HORSE and TEPEPA (both 1968). Still, it's such an engaging, consistently entertaining and often uproariously funny film that rating it any lower than *** would suggest that it's less than good, which certainly isn't the case!

The film's rambling narrative revolves yet again around the buddy-buddy formula in an obviously broader vein; even so, the film has its serious side since it opens with a stagecoach massacre and a similar fate befalls a couple of traveling circus performers towards the end - the perpetrators are a gang of criminals hotly in pursuit of ex-comrade and sharpshooter Giuliano Gemma who wants out (he doesn't even carry a gun anymore),preferring to make his living as a confidence-trickster (which, as it turns out, is no less precarious or law-abiding than being a bandit!).

His companion, more often dupe, is Mario Adorf turning in an inspired performance as the gullible and gruff yet amiable would-be rancher (whom Gemma embroils in many a scheme - fake telegraph service, circus acts involving a siren and Adorf himself fitted with a loincloth and breathing fire - to fleece the unsuspecting townsfolk). At one point, Adorf himself is made to invest all his savings in an inexistent bank and, later, falls for his partner's ruse that a funeral procession they meet up with is for a famous bandit who has a fortune buried in his back-yard (only to learn, after having dug a hole "all the way down to Hell", that he had been wheelchair-bound since childhood) just so Gemma could make out with the deceased's luscious young wife - the dinner-table scene between Gemma and Magda Konopka here is highly reminiscent of the celebrated one featured in TOM JONES (1963). Forsaking Gemma for a visionary drunk, Adorf manages to rob a gold shipment by posing as a Wells Fargo employee - though his partner in this venture turns out to be a bloodthirsty maniac who mows down an entire Army platoon which sets out in pursuit of them!

Anthony Dawson turns up at the climax as the sadistic chief villain; having taken refuge in Adorf's dilapidated ranch (which they leisurely restore),our heroes then see their dreamhouse literally go up in smoke when they are forced to blow the place up with Dawson's gang still inside! The tireless Ennio Morricone provides yet another exemplary score; the wistful main theme is especially striking.

A coach full of innocent people is attacked and everyone murdered. A psychotic gunman is hunting for a man called Billy. When leaves the area, a stranger arrives and gently brushes dirt off the face of a dead girl. Silently, he begins to bury them. Another stranger turns up and together the bury the corpses to the haunting, melancholic tune of Ennio Morricone's soundtrack. What follows is a...comedy?

This is the most bi-polar Western I've ever seen. Morricone's soundtrack is heart wrenching and beautiful. The gunfights are violent. Women are beaten and tortured, and yet, in between all this, there's slapstick and one liners. Mood swings?

One stranger is Giuliano Gemma and he's the guy on the run from the psycho. The other guy is Mario Adorf and he's a miner with a bit of gold but not a lot of brains. Gemma is at first out to con Adorf which does over and over again, but then Adorf is so kind and big hearted the two of them just bond. However, there's still that crazy guy and is family to worry about.

It's kind of a road movie as the two characters head for Adorf's ranch and encounter various characters, like the fake Mermaid lady or the bank robbers. None of it should work but it all kind of does anyway as the man behind the camera is the guy who made Death Rides A Horse. Kind of weird to take though as people are still gunned down brutally ala a Spaghetti Western from 1968, but has huge bar fights and punch ups like a 1972 Spaghetti Western.

I was curious to watch it as I'd never seen Mario Adorf in a Spaghetti Western before. He does well as the slow miner guy. Gemma is the usual goofy charmer and a ladies man.

This is a spaghetti western that is genuinely funny, but it also has its share of serious action which keeps it from being just another run-of-the-mill light-weight comedy.

Adorf and Gemma are great as the protagonists of this film, and I find them much more believable than Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Federico Boido and Anthony Dawson are even better as the over-the-top father-and-son villains who are hunting for Gemma. They are very entertaining to watch. Boido's character is especially funny, and both are marvelously ruthless. The showdown at the end of the film is classic.

The music score by Ennio Morricone is great, as always, even though its far from being one of his best.

This is definitely a movie worth watching, especially for Euro-western fans.