Blindman (1971)

The Film

Somewhere in the Old West, a blind gunman (Tony Anthony) rides into town looking for the men who betrayed him. Contracted to deliver 50 women to a mine, the Blindman's partner stole the women and boasts that he sold them to a friend in Mexico. Blindman blows up the house of his former partner and heads south into Mexico where he encounters the brothers Domingo and Candy (Ringo Starr) who took the women and are planning to sell them to the Mexican army - however, Blindman discovers that Candy has a weakness for a young woman named Pilar, who he has kidnapped from a local village...

European cinema has always been naturally more surreal than Hollywood and when the Italians took over the Westerns for a decade from the mid-1960s, the standard array of Old-West tales was punctuated by a mix of strange, unusual and highly innovative films. Writer and actor Tony Anthony, along with producer Alan Klein had entered the Spaghetti Western genre with the derivative A Stranger in Town (1967) and two sequels. They later worked together on the genre inspired Cometogether (1971) about an Italo-Western stuntman, produced by the Beatles singer Ringo Starr. This trio now looked for another project they could work on together. Director Ferdinando Baldi was established as a solid genre director, and had already shot some very unusual films, including the comic musical Rita nel West (1967) and the Greek tragedy of Gunmen of Ave Maria (1969), he was the ideal choice for this highly unconventional Western.

The storyline takes its inspiration from the famous Japanese Zatôichi films about a blind swordsman who stumbles into all sorts of adventures (a series that ran to over twenty films and a television series) and puts a typically Spaghetti Western twist on it. Of course the Blindman here is armed with a gun, not a sword and rather than a straight forward hero - he is pure anti-hero, saving the day only because he wants to complete his mission and get paid. The theme of 50 women being transported across the country is pure exploitation, especially when they are all getting washed down in a bath-house - you can really imagine that this is what a Harry Alan Towers/Jess Franco Western might have looked like (although this sequence would certainly have been a lot longer under Franco). The story moves along at a relatively slow pace, with various tricks and turns along the way and both sides getting the upper hand at times, building to a suitably dramatic and brutal conclusion. Ultimately, the story doesn't make a lot of sense - the random co-incidence of Blindman being there when Candy abducts Pilar stands out, while his plan seems to make no sense later on in the film, when he simply sets loose the 50 women, however in true Euro-cinema style, it embraces this lack of sense as it devolves into pure surreality towards the end, most notably in a bizarre Oriental funeral sequence.

Baldi provides some solid direction here, his Spaghetti Western experience stands him in good stead for most of the scenes but despite the surreality, he directs in a rather straight forward manner. The film as a whole is boosted by an obviously larger than normal budget for what would otherwise be a rather small scale Western - most notable is the very large cast of extras, the Mexican army unit numbers over 100 men, while there really are dozens of naked women in the (all too brief) bath-house scenes and several pyrotechnic scenes also benefit from the big budget. The modern soundtrack from Stelvio Cipriani (who also wrote the scores to the two sequels to A Stranger in Town (1967)) is very unorthodox for the genre, but suits the film well.

There is a rather unusual cast in this equally unusual genre entry. The American born actor Tony Anthony had written himself into the Spaghetti Westerns with his trio of self penned Stranger films and is often criticised as one of the less impressive genre anti-heros, however he certainly proves himself here as the titular Blindman, managing to convince as being blind and perform some impressive fight scenes. The musician Ringo Starr is cast as one of the Mexican bandits and performs much better than one would expect for a musician turned actor, while the stunning future Playboy model Agneta Eckemyr is cast as Pilar.

Rather slow paced and strangely plotted, Blindman might not appeal to all the genre's fans, but for anyone looking for an unusual title and something completely different, it comes recommended.

In Brief

The DVD

Summary

• A unique genre entry, this film will probably be too weird for some, but should appeal to fans wanting something new.
  

• A good print of the film with fine sounding English audio. Sadly the interesting looking documentary does not have English options, but the disc is the most English friendly on the market at present.

Links

• IMDB entry

• DVD Rewind - DVD version comparisons.

• See our reviews of more Spaghetti Westerns and films directed by Ferdinando Baldi.

• For explanations of technical terms, see the DVD Dictionary.

All text in this review written by Timothy Young - 10th March 2007.
Text from this review not to be used without authorization.

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