ARIZONA COLT is a fine-looking spaghetti western made during the big boom of the genre and at a time when the films had the budgets to make them look good. This does look very good and I was more than happy with Amazon Prime's print which is of a far better quality than most of the spaghetti westerns they show. This film features Giuliano Gemma as a delightfully amoral gunslinger who rescues a group of prisoners only to fall out with them over their subsequent plans.
Gemma is a guy who's only in the game for the money and the women and I liked the edge to his character here. He was one of the genre's most familiar faces and there's little to dislike about him overall in this film. Fernando Sancho does another larger than life villain and is loud and boisterous which fits his character nicely. The story was written by the reliable Ernesto Gastaldi and directed by genre director Michele Lupo, who made interesting titles like GOLIATH AND THE SINS OF BABYLON, BUDDY GOES WEST, and THE WEEKEND MURDERS over his varied career.
The main problem with ARIZONA COLT is the running time, which at two hours is just too long. There's too much foot-dragging here and thus some of the scenes start to feel more than a little repetitive and forced. After all, there are only so many gun fights and bar-room showdowns that you can fit into the running time. Cut half an hour off the running time and this would have been much more fun.
Gemma is a guy who's only in the game for the money and the women and I liked the edge to his character here. He was one of the genre's most familiar faces and there's little to dislike about him overall in this film. Fernando Sancho does another larger than life villain and is loud and boisterous which fits his character nicely. The story was written by the reliable Ernesto Gastaldi and directed by genre director Michele Lupo, who made interesting titles like GOLIATH AND THE SINS OF BABYLON, BUDDY GOES WEST, and THE WEEKEND MURDERS over his varied career.
The main problem with ARIZONA COLT is the running time, which at two hours is just too long. There's too much foot-dragging here and thus some of the scenes start to feel more than a little repetitive and forced. After all, there are only so many gun fights and bar-room showdowns that you can fit into the running time. Cut half an hour off the running time and this would have been much more fun.