I must admit to being relatively new to the whole Bud Spencer/Terence Fisher thing, but I've already found myself a personal favorite movie in the stack. This infectious, dopey, quasi-surreal Spaghetti Western/comedy, tailor-written for Bud Spencer, then at the height of his post TRINITY glory.
Like a good Simpson's episode, IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO's plot defies verbal description: A shambling, lummox like behemoth of a scoundrel (Spencer, standing about 6'4" and weighing 300lbs easy) finds himself going from two bit horse thief to community hero, in spite of his best efforts to avoid otherwise. He is also avoiding Jack Palance, comically over the top as a super-slick Pistolero who will see his "disgraced" sister married to the lummox, or else. Palance is traveling the west with his group of showgirls that he promotes in the most ridiculous looking coach I have ever seen in a Western, and at one point suffers a bout of whiplash that renders him bent over like a pretzel for about a quarter of the film. There are additional intrigues about a young boy traveling to his fostered parent's homestead with an uncle, who turns out to be dead but still entrusts the tyke to Spencer anyway. With much grumbling and gruff muttering, Spencer slowly becomes a father figure, the kid decides that Palance's sister would make a good mother figure, and even plots by local desperadoes won't stop this rolling boulder of humanity once it gets going.
And also like a good Simspon's episode, what the film does is to present us with a small community of memorable, likable, amusing cartoon characters who inhabit a very real world made up of what appear to be sets left over from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, but now somewhat run down and falling apart. The whole film has a sort of ramshackle, on-the-fly look to it that is very endearing, having the appearance of a typical Western, but being a whole heck of a lot more. Even the meanies in the movie have very human qualities, like the identical twin mustachioed gunfighters (one is left handed, the other right), the weaselly Desperado that Spencer cons out of a turkey dinner in the film's beguiling opening section (the look on Spencer's face after having a bottle broken over his head is priceless: "Not again ..."), and especially Jack Palance, who has never been better as he chomps on a cigarillo and intones "You're gonna marry my seester".
Then there is the wandering geologist who pays people to eat some of their dirt (he's looking for oil), Spencer's highly intelligent and communicative horse (who is asked for and gives advice on a few occasions), the bumbling gang of Pistoleros who keep trying to do Spencer in and keep paying for it, and the pretty, busty, blond woman who only wants to marry Spencer, whom she has a love/hate relationship with that is especially amusing when they discuss his eating habits ("I eat like a hog 'cos that's the way I like it."). The effect that this otherwise dainty, attractive young woman has upon the huge, gentle Spencer is the film's best joke, because he only wants to eat, ride, talk with his horse, and not have any responsibilities.
Don't we all, though? The movie IS Spencer's, and was either written specifically for him OR was the role he was born to play, probably a bit of both. One of the alternate titles for the film is THE BULLDOZER RETURNS, AMIGO and is very telling of his Hiram Coburn. He doesn't wear a gun, and doesn't need to. He is big, strong, fast, and outsmarts people as much as pounding them into the ground like telephone poles. One of the interesting quirks given to his character is that Spencer puts on a pair of Ben Franklin wire rim glasses just before he starts swinging the beef, and my favorite moment from the film is when one of the bad guys tries three swift punches to his bread box that have the effect of punching the Hoover Dam. It's hilarious ...
But to use the analogy one more time because it's so fitting, just like a good Simpson's episode, you have to see it for yourself to understand the magic that this stupid, funny, quirky little movie has going on. And you can: Look for a DVD Box Set by the nefarious Treeline Films obnoxiously called FIFTY WESTERN CLASSICS with 50 fullframe PDM Westerns on twelve double sided DVDs, each enclosed it it's own cardboard drink coaster. The print used was a dingy, fullframe formatted TV print, but it's utterly hilarious, addictively watchable, somewhat thought provoking, and proves once again that the best movies are always the ones that tell stories about people. Perhaps Mr. Lucas should have given this a looksee while making up his last STAR WARS movie, which was about action figures and computer games and making money. And as a result, it sucked. IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO was shot on a budget of probably less than $100,000 in even today's money, and is a far superior entertainment that actually has a soul. Imagine that.
I give this one unusually high marks: Nine out of ten, and recommend it to anyone planning to put relics of humanity into a satellite to be launched in the direction of the galaxy Andromeda as an example of what we were capable of.
Like a good Simpson's episode, IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO's plot defies verbal description: A shambling, lummox like behemoth of a scoundrel (Spencer, standing about 6'4" and weighing 300lbs easy) finds himself going from two bit horse thief to community hero, in spite of his best efforts to avoid otherwise. He is also avoiding Jack Palance, comically over the top as a super-slick Pistolero who will see his "disgraced" sister married to the lummox, or else. Palance is traveling the west with his group of showgirls that he promotes in the most ridiculous looking coach I have ever seen in a Western, and at one point suffers a bout of whiplash that renders him bent over like a pretzel for about a quarter of the film. There are additional intrigues about a young boy traveling to his fostered parent's homestead with an uncle, who turns out to be dead but still entrusts the tyke to Spencer anyway. With much grumbling and gruff muttering, Spencer slowly becomes a father figure, the kid decides that Palance's sister would make a good mother figure, and even plots by local desperadoes won't stop this rolling boulder of humanity once it gets going.
And also like a good Simspon's episode, what the film does is to present us with a small community of memorable, likable, amusing cartoon characters who inhabit a very real world made up of what appear to be sets left over from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, but now somewhat run down and falling apart. The whole film has a sort of ramshackle, on-the-fly look to it that is very endearing, having the appearance of a typical Western, but being a whole heck of a lot more. Even the meanies in the movie have very human qualities, like the identical twin mustachioed gunfighters (one is left handed, the other right), the weaselly Desperado that Spencer cons out of a turkey dinner in the film's beguiling opening section (the look on Spencer's face after having a bottle broken over his head is priceless: "Not again ..."), and especially Jack Palance, who has never been better as he chomps on a cigarillo and intones "You're gonna marry my seester".
Then there is the wandering geologist who pays people to eat some of their dirt (he's looking for oil), Spencer's highly intelligent and communicative horse (who is asked for and gives advice on a few occasions), the bumbling gang of Pistoleros who keep trying to do Spencer in and keep paying for it, and the pretty, busty, blond woman who only wants to marry Spencer, whom she has a love/hate relationship with that is especially amusing when they discuss his eating habits ("I eat like a hog 'cos that's the way I like it."). The effect that this otherwise dainty, attractive young woman has upon the huge, gentle Spencer is the film's best joke, because he only wants to eat, ride, talk with his horse, and not have any responsibilities.
Don't we all, though? The movie IS Spencer's, and was either written specifically for him OR was the role he was born to play, probably a bit of both. One of the alternate titles for the film is THE BULLDOZER RETURNS, AMIGO and is very telling of his Hiram Coburn. He doesn't wear a gun, and doesn't need to. He is big, strong, fast, and outsmarts people as much as pounding them into the ground like telephone poles. One of the interesting quirks given to his character is that Spencer puts on a pair of Ben Franklin wire rim glasses just before he starts swinging the beef, and my favorite moment from the film is when one of the bad guys tries three swift punches to his bread box that have the effect of punching the Hoover Dam. It's hilarious ...
But to use the analogy one more time because it's so fitting, just like a good Simpson's episode, you have to see it for yourself to understand the magic that this stupid, funny, quirky little movie has going on. And you can: Look for a DVD Box Set by the nefarious Treeline Films obnoxiously called FIFTY WESTERN CLASSICS with 50 fullframe PDM Westerns on twelve double sided DVDs, each enclosed it it's own cardboard drink coaster. The print used was a dingy, fullframe formatted TV print, but it's utterly hilarious, addictively watchable, somewhat thought provoking, and proves once again that the best movies are always the ones that tell stories about people. Perhaps Mr. Lucas should have given this a looksee while making up his last STAR WARS movie, which was about action figures and computer games and making money. And as a result, it sucked. IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO was shot on a budget of probably less than $100,000 in even today's money, and is a far superior entertainment that actually has a soul. Imagine that.
I give this one unusually high marks: Nine out of ten, and recommend it to anyone planning to put relics of humanity into a satellite to be launched in the direction of the galaxy Andromeda as an example of what we were capable of.