(Some spoilers) This silly western farce, made in Fascist Italy and probably one of the first spaghetti westerns, is a likable caricature of the gun-slingin', rootin'-tootin', shoot-em-up type with no holds barred. It was good escapism for Italian audiences at a time when American westerns
and other popular movies could no longer be imported.
Comic Erminio Macario, a sort of cross between Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton, plays Mac Carey, whose family has a long-standing feud with the Donovans. Mac is in love with Margherita Donovan, daughter of the rival family, in a Romeo and Juliet manner that is alluded to over and over in the movie, including the enactment of passages from the Shakespeare play by the two lovers.
A nasty band of outlaws threatens the town, and during the course of the movie Mac is successful in putting an end to them through means that sometimes strain credulity. Naturally all ends well: Mac gets his girl. They marry and process through an honor guard of gun-shooters. Both houses are unplagued and reconciled.
A secondary role as Lolita, the Spanish saloon dancer-singer is played by the passion-inspiring Elli Parvo. The Indians in the film are stereotyped ad nauseam, with "Ugh" being a standard vocabulary word coming from the Italianate tribesmen. One of the means Mac uses to try to win over Margherita is to steal a necklace of hers and have the Indian witch-doctor perform incantatory rituals over it. The title of this sophomoric mayhem is a variation on Puccini's 1910 opera "La fanciulla del West" or "Girl of the Golden West," itself from a play by David Belasco.
In 1968 director Giorgio Ferroni would make IL PISTOLERO SEGNATO DA DIO, a genuine spaghetti western of that era.
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