The Curator of Schlock #383 by Jeff Shuster

A Pistol for Ringo

And Ringo was his name-o

Larry had just revealed to me that Mooseville (a small town in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan) celebrates Canadian Thanksgiving by eating roast Marsupial, of which the species kangaroo is a member. I tore away from him toward a festival I could hear in the distance. I had to see for myself if Edwige, my kangaroo companion, was being served as the main course  to these barbarians. — To be continued.

Merry Christmas to all of you out in the blogosphere. Tonight’s movie marks the end of my spaghetti western selection for this year, but I will be fulfilling a promise I had made to myself on July 8th of 2016. I had just watched a little western called The Return of Ringo and meant to review A Pistol for Ringo the following week. Well, I guess five years later I am now fulfilling that promise. Looks like Arrow Home Video released a Ringo twofer on Blu-ray, so let’s boogie.

1965’s A Pistol for Ringo was directed by Duccio Tessari and stars Montgomery Wood as Ringo, a gunslinger that also goes by the name of Angel Face. I guess they call him Angel Face because he’s so good looking. Anyway, Ringo gets arrested for shooting some malcontents that were tailing him. Sheriff Ben (George Martin) hopes the judge will stick it to Ringo so he’s less trigger happy. This mustn’t take place in Texas because I heard all you needed back in the day was to tell a Texan sheriff that the man you shot “needed killing.” And that would be good enough the sheriff.

A group of Mexican bandits led by a rotund man named Sancho (Fernando Sancho) rob a bank and shoot up the town. Seriously, none of the local cowboys can seem to get a shot off, each taking a bullet before their hands reach their holsters. The bandits escape, but Sheriff Ben and his posse are in close pursuit. Sancho’s gang then finds a ranch to hold up in and warns the sheriff that he’ll be sending out a dead ranch hand every dawn and dusk until his gang is allowed to escape with the money.

The ranch is owned by a Major Clyde (Antonio Casas), a rather wealthy land baron. He lives on the estate with his lovely daughter, Ruby (Hally Hammond), who herself is engaged to Sheriff Ben. They were getting ready to celebrate the Christmas holidays, but their new houseguests are a rather rude bunch of individuals with all of the drinking and shooting and what not. Major Clyde has taken a shine to Sancho’s sexy girlfriend, Delores (Nieves Navarro), and starts romancing her as any silver fox would.

Ringo offers his services to the bank and Sheriff Ben. Ringo will infiltrate the gang in exchange thirty percent of the money retrieved. The bank figures seventy percent of something is better than zero percent of nothing and thus the scam begins. Ringo is seen by the bandits to be narrowly escaping Sheriff Ben’s wrath. Ringo tells Sancho that if he gives him forty percent of the take, he has a surefire plan for the gang to escape. Just whose side is Ringo on anyway? You’ll have to watch and find out.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.