Wanted Ringo (1970) User Reviews

Death By Grand Mal Seizures & Stuffed with Cheese

[marthahunter · 5/10 · 30 January 2018]

A campy voice over the beginning scene with Mickey Hargitay, conjures up the feeling of watching a grade-Z, Ed Wood film. Suddenly, there is a head scratching scene of a voodoo doll in Hargitay's hand. Pressing onward, there are plenty of meandering conversations between time filling characters. Random people constantly wander into scenes and get shot or beat up. One the most bizarre aspects of this film is that several characters die by having grand mal style mal seizures!!

For pure camp weirdness, there is a "witch" in a cave climax. Trying to get this film in the can ASAP, the two "protagonists" spit out incomprehensible explanations for the bewildering scenes that we have just witnessed. BTW, did the camera man pass out during the extended addendum? When the credits finally roll, there is a super imposed, lighter fluid fire in the foreground!

On the plus side, this film features a fiery femme fatale named Pilar (Lucia Bomez). Bomez certainly knows how to light up her scenes. In addition, Felice Di Stefano delivers an excellent score that helps to offset the tedium. All in all, this film is an offbeat curiosity that is fully loaded with guilty pleasure cheese.

Strange

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 30 November 2023]

Ringo, It's Massacre Time (AKA Wanted Ringo, Revenge of Ringo and Reward for Ringo) is at once an Italian Western and a mystery. A series of deaths at a ranch - the victims are all foaming at the mouth - brings Mike Wood (Mickey Hargitay) to solve things. Yet he soon mysteriously disappears (he was actually the star of the movie, but had to fly home to California when he learned that his son Zoltan was mauled by a tiger at Jungleland during a publicity shoot for his wife Jayne Mansfield) and his brother Ringo (Jean Louis) comes on board.

Director and writer Mario Pinzauti starts with those basics and then goes wild, bringing in elements of the giallo and even voodoo dolls, something you may not see in a single other Italian Western. Pinzauti made several movies that cashed in on other films, like Let's Go and Kill Sartana, Mandinga, Passion Plantation, Due Magnum .38 per una città di carogne and Clouzot & C. Contro Borsalino & C., which looks like Borsalino quite a lot from the poster.

There is a femme fatale named Pilar (Lucia Bomez) and a witch - yes! - that lives in a cave that has caused all of this. The film feels like it was being written as it was shot, as people literally stop speaking in scenes and some characters walk on and never get seen for the rest of the movie. It's just a blast of complete wildness and while I appreciate just how strange it all is, if you're looking for a complete film, this is in no way it.