The Curator of Schlock #145 by Jeff Shuster

A Lone and Angry Man

(Aren’t we all)

Yeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaawwwwww!!! It’s Wild West month here at The Museum of Schlock where it’s my sworn duty as Sheriff to appoint y’all my deputies in seeking out the roughest, toughest westerns Italy ever produced. That or just dig up whatever rusted horseshoes Amazon Prime has to offer.

This week’s $10,000 dollar bounty is placed 1965’s A Lone and Angry Man from director Mario Calano. This film was also known as A Coffin for the Sheriff here in North America, which is strange considering the only sheriff in this movie is as crooked as a dog’s hind legs.

So the movie starts out with a bunch no good, dirty, rotten bandits chasing down a stagecoach, pistols shooting off round after round. The cavalry is in hot pursuit, but they can’t quite keep up. Maybe it’s because one of the boys in blue is holding onto a flagpole with Old Glory waving in the wind. How are you supposed to fire off a gun while grasping the flag? He probably keeps losing his grip so the rest of the calvary has to then slow down so the American flag doesn’t tumble to the ground. The bandits manage to kill everyone in the stagecoach, excited to get their paws on the gold inside, but the cavalry catches up with them so they have to ride off. No gold for them today. One of the dying men in the stage coach tells a calvaryman that it was a bandit by the name of Lupe Rojo

Lupe Rojo (Armando Calvo) is wanted “Dead or Alive” for about $2,000, which sounds about right. He’s not that impressive of a bandit. His gang didn’t get the gold after all. I think they start robbing banks in dirt towns, but they don’t want to risk going down to Phoenix where “They’re more guards than townsfolk,” or something to that effect. I mean they rob and kill people, but they’re not really getting anywhere in life. One of the bandits is named Russell Murdock (Eduardo Fajardo) and he keeps borrowing money from the local lady of the hour and she keeps loaning him money and he says he’ll pay her back, but we know he won’t because he’ll waste all on booze and poker games. This guy ends up being the heavy of the movie, but he’s kind of a loser. I’m sorry.

Don’t even get me started on Lupe Rojo. He lives in a crappy dirt hut with his resentful wife who keeps looking back on her wasted youth while Lupe spits out the lousy coffee she makes for him. The gang hangs out at his house and the whole sorry scene reminds me of a bunch of talentless guys who started a band back in high school, but never let the dream go even as they approached middle age. There’s a hero by the name of Shenandoah (Anthony Steffen), a mysterious stranger who worms his way into Lupe’s gang, but he’s really a U.S. Marshall trying to foil their plans and get revenge for his dead wife, but they figure out he’s a traitor and are about to kill him and rape his love interest, but Lupe’s wife has had it with this nonsense. She shoots and kills Lupe before getting shot herself.

More shooting happens. Shenandoah escapes. There’s a final shoot out with Russell Murdock. The saloon catches on fire. A Marshall’s badge gets tossed in a watering hole.

The end.

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Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.