There’s a theory in cinema that even the greats are allowed a mulligan. Some say Scorsese had New York, New York. Kubrick had Fear and Desire. And Bava—Mario Bava, godfather of giallo and gothic dread—he had Roy Colt & Winchester Jack, a film so aimless it makes you long for a rattlesnake bite just to feel something.
Here’s a western so desperate to be clever, it collapses under the weight of its own lunacy like a whiskey-drunk gunslinger trying to ride a rocking horse into town.
🍝 Spaghetti Western? More Like Spaghetti Thrown at the Wall
The film tries to cash in on the success of the Trinity films—those slapstick Italian westerns with hillbilly charm and brawling fists. The problem? Bava doesn’t do comedy. He’s a poet of shadows, not pratfalls. So when he slaps slapstick on a genre he clearly doesn’t care about, the result isn’t funny—it’s tragic. Not Shakespeare tragic. More like “clown funeral at a dog track” tragic.
🤠 The Plot, Allegedly
You’ve got two ex-outlaws: Roy Colt (Brett Halsey) and Winchester Jack (Charles Southwood). They’re former partners turned rivals, trying to outdo each other for a mythical treasure map or some vague MacGuffin nobody in the cast—or audience—can keep track of. Along the way, there are corrupt priests, Native American stereotypes that make you wince so hard your fillings loosen, and a love interest who looks like she wandered in from an Italian detergent commercial.
It’s a “buddy comedy” in the sense that two guys occupy the same frame and grunt at each other, occasionally firing their six-shooters at things that don’t matter. The dialogue sounds like it was translated from Italian into English by a drunk tourist with a phrasebook, and then translated back again for good measure.
🎭 Acting Like They Want a Day Off
Brett Halsey plays Roy Colt like a man negotiating with the director for an early wrap time. He’s got the heroic jawline and the charisma of a used barstool. Charles Southwood as Winchester Jack smirks his way through scenes as if he’s in on the joke—he isn’t. Together, they have all the chemistry of two tax auditors sharing an elevator. You keep waiting for them to say something interesting. Or funny. Or coherent.
And then there’s the “Indian Chief”—a character so cartoonishly offensive you half expect him to scalp the audience for watching. He delivers broken-English dialogue like he’s reciting from a fortune cookie written by Andrew Dice Clay.
The love interest, played by Marilù Tolo, is an ethereal presence mostly there to undress and feign interest in the male leads. Her character motivation seems to be “survive the runtime.”
🐎 Direction from a Man Who Clearly Misses Fog Machines
This is Mario Bava, right? Master of color, king of chiaroscuro, painter of dread and delight. So why does this movie look like it was shot in a gravel pit behind an Italian Taco Bell? Bava tries—he frames some wide vistas, sprinkles in a few dramatic angles—but you can feel his soul dying behind the lens. He hated westerns. It shows. This is the cinematic equivalent of a man flipping burgers at a gas station while dreaming of opera.
The editing? Choppy. The transitions? Awkward. The pacing? Like watching glue dry in the desert. You’d get more narrative momentum from a bingo night in a retirement home.
🔫 The Action: Stiff, Staged, and Startlingly Boring
Gunfights erupt for no reason, often involving dozens of extras dressed like they wandered over from a Ren Faire. Fists fly in slow motion. People fall off roofs in the most unconvincing manner possible. There’s a sequence with dynamite that somehow manages to be both visually flat and emotionally unengaging. Every punch, every bullet, every explosion is soaked in a lethargy that says, “We’re only doing this because we already paid for the blanks.”
🎼 The Music: Honky-Tonk Brain Damage
Piero Umiliani’s score deserves its own war crimes tribunal. It veers wildly between goofy plucking, campy saloon ragtime, and wah-wah pedal abuse that would embarrass Ennio Morricone’s dog. You keep waiting for the music to settle on a tone—any tone—but it never does. It’s like your TV is flipping between stations during an earthquake. At one point, the score actually giggles at itself. So did I, but only to mask the tears.
💬 Humor That’s All Elbow, No Punchline
The jokes? Let’s just say, they land like anvils. You get visual gags, bad puns, random nudity, and dialogue that would get laughed out of a dad-joke subreddit. “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” one of them says unironically. Somewhere, a screenwriter in 1970 wept into his typewriter and said, “Good enough.”
It’s not just that the jokes don’t work—it’s that they don’t even feel like jokes. They’re placeholders for comedy. Like someone wrote “insert gag here” and forgot to actually insert it.
🪦 The Tone: Western Parody by Way of Psychic Collapse
Is it satire? Is it homage? Is it an acid dream about masculinity and capitalism? No. It’s just bad. Occasionally, it stumbles into the realm of “so bad it’s funny,” but mostly it just meanders like a lost mule on peyote.
There’s a surreal dream sequence at one point involving a priest and a treasure and possibly divine intervention, and you think, “Ah, now it’s getting weird!” But then it just gets stupid again.
🧾 Final Verdict: Bava’s Worst? It Just Might Be
Roy Colt & Winchester Jack is not just a bad movie—it’s a bad idea. A confused, half-hearted lunge at a genre Bava never wanted to touch. It feels like a contractual obligation wrapped in sandpaper and served lukewarm.
There are worse spaghetti westerns out there—but few made by a director of this caliber, and fewer still that feel this uninterested in their own existence. Bava’s brilliance deserved better. So did we.
Final Score: ★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5 unfunny six-shooters)
For Mario Bava completists only—and even then, consider skipping it and just eating a plate of spaghetti while watching paint dry. Same result, less pain.
