Crazy Westerners (1967) User Reviews

Spoof musical Spaghetti Western with Rita Pavone facing off known gunfighters as Ringo , Django and Sancho

[ma-cortes · 6/10 · 22 May 2017]

Little Rita (Rita Pavone) is a female gunfighter who travels to the Far West , she has a glorious dream , to get the best world , that's why she is chasing bandits . Little Rita believes that all the badness in the world comes from the gold rush . Pavone takes the valuable gold from them and hides it in a cave and assisted by Sitting Buffalo she has decided to destroy it and to blow it up by dynamite . In her mission she is helped by the Indian Chief Sitting Buffalo (Gordon Mitchell) and by her colleague John Fitzgerald Francis (Lucio Dalla) . All of them undertake several adventures and risks . Along the way Little Rita takes on the speedest gunslingers as Ringo (the muscle man Kirk Morris) , Django (Natale) and others as Jesse James (Remo De Angelis , ordinary master of arms) and Zorro (Romano Puppo , habitual Pasta secondary) . Rita meets a reformed Pistolero called Black Star (Terence Hill)and she decides to share his way of life . Later on , Rita is taken prisoner by the Mexican nasty Sancho (Fernando Sancho) and his ominous henchmen who try to rob her precious gold . The draw-fast Black Star seems determined to help her , he then rescues her , but things go awry .

The film is a Rita Pavone recital , as she dances , sings , stooges , make acrobatics , tongue twister and put faces and grimaces . This ¨Little Rita¨ film blends the common scenarios , as invincible and tough antiheroes , difficult and fast showdowns with numerous deceases , impulsive and quick zooms as well as amazing musical numbers . Lots of gags and sketches , some of them funny but in the movie lacks a real freshness . Parody movie with a myriad of silly and amusing gags , laughs , comedy with tongue in-cheek and it has its good moments here and there . This is a disconcerting and fun farce with the famous singer and it displays too much fights , punches , shootouts and hilarious as well as spectacular musical numbers , such as : dancing at the Indian settlement , the Pecos town choreography and saloon dances . This ¨Rita in the West¨ belongs to a sub-genre , the Musical spaghetti western along with ¨Una Donna Per Ringo¨ by Rafael Romero Marchent with Sean Flynn , Pili and Mili and ¨Per un Pugno Di Canzoni¨(66) by Jose Luis Merino with Gustavo Rojo and Renzo Palmer . Picture is a Rita Pavone vehicle , as she plays as Little Rita who has a dream : she dreams to avoid the evil that emerges from human ambition and attempts to get a better world and as she schemes to blow up one day all the gold she can put her hands on and get rid of the root of all greed : money . That's why she confronts outlaws as ¨Ringo/Kirk Morris¨ but this role has nothing to do with Giuliano Gemma/Ringo , but he bears a remarkable resemblance to ¨Clint Eastwood/Man without name , including his Poncho ; besides , she contends Django who is dragging his coffin , adding his known machine gun and he subsequently attacks Rita in the customary cemetery full of crosses similarly to Sergio Corbucci's Django . This is an attractive flick which many consider her best musical comedy . As Rita is an nice singer , authentic comedian and real Farceur . If you like Pavone's crazy interpretation , you will most definitely enjoy this one .

Cinematography by Enzo Barboni or E. B. Clucher (author of ¨Trinity series¨ with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer) is well made . It contains a catching , original musical score by Robby Poitevin and Alessandroni and enjoyable songs sung by Rita Pavone and Lucio Dalla . The motion picture titled ¨Little Rita nel West" , "Crazy Westerners" , "Little Rita" (USA title) or "Locuras En El Oeste" was professionally directed by Ferdinando Baldi , under pseudonym , Freddy Baldwin . Ferdinando was a craftsman who directed all kind genres but especially Western such as "Carambola's Philosophy : In the Right Pocket" , "Blindman" , ¨Il Pistolero dell'Ave Maria" or "Forgotten Pistolero" , ¨"Django Sees Red" , ¨Rita in the West¨ and ¨Adios Texas¨ at his best . The pic will appeal to Rita Pavone , Terence Hill fans and Spaghetti Western buffs . Rating : Nice and acceptable. Well worth seeing .

Must Be Seen To Be Believed

[chow913 · 6/10 · 22 May 2015]

My hobby is watching bad movies. Every week I watch about 20 bad movies. Really bad movies. I try and seek out the most obscure and bizarre films I can possibly find. After 'The Gods Must Be Crazy' parts 3 and 4 I thought I'd seen it all. Just before this I watched a French Nazixploitation film starring Brigitte Lahaie and it barely phased me. So as you can tell I've built up a tolerance. But I am just at a loss for words to describe this film!

So it's obvious this is a spaghetti western about a female gunfighter. Nothing odd here, there are plenty of spaghetti westerns like 'The Good the Bad and the Ugly' there are plenty of westerns with female leads. And it's a comedy parody of westerns, no problem, there have been many parodies of westerns like 'Blazing Saddles' and 'Support Your Local Sheriff.' And it's a musical, no problem, there have been many western musicals like 'Paint Your Wagon Red.' Combining all FOUR of these themes is pushing it.

My point is, I went in to this knowing it was spaghetti western parody musical with a female lead. But nothing of 38 years on this earth could prepare me for this!!! This is something which must truly be seen to be believed!!!

At 6:00 in we truly enter a parallel universe!

The only way to describe it is that the characters who up until now have been dubbed to English break into a rock and roll dance number in Italian which I can only compare to an Elvis Presley movie. 48 hours later I still can't get the tune out of my head even though all the lyrics were in Italian.

The music and singing this film are done very well. Remember, it's all rock and roll and all in Italian.

So after that I was unfazed by anything which happened after that. And A LOT of bizarre things do happen. It turns out Little Rita has been robbing stage coaches for the Indians so they can gather all the white man's evil gold and destroy it. NOT KIDDING that's the plot! Obviously it would be impossible for one person to amass the entire world's gold and it's impossible to destroy gold! It's an element. You can melt it down but it's impossible to destroy.

Anyway, first Little Rita must battle the evil gun fighter Ringo. Yes, Ringo! She does this by strapping a golden RPG to her .45 and blowing him up. Whatever... I'm still in a daze from 6:00. I guess John, Paul, and George must now avenge his death.

This isn't the last time Little Rita uses her golden RPGs to win a gunfight. She takes out an entire gang of Mexican bandits with one blast.

Finally after a few more musical numbers Little Rita "returns to where she came from." and just rides her horse into outer space! Yup, I'm not making up any of this. So she's an alien and her horse is a space ship? Still not as shocking as what happens at 6:00.

So yes I would endorse this film. It is highly entertaining. I loved it. Just be prepared for an out of body experience. Your brain may have a hard time processing this. After 48 hours mine still hasn't. I'm still in a total daze.

Little Rita is a spaghetti-western mess of a musical movie, it's no Oklahoma.

[ironhorse_iv · 4/10 · 25 June 2013]

Known as Crazy Westerners or Little Rita in the West. This movie is directed by Ferdinando Baldi, this film was suppose to be a funny musical spoof of Spaghetti Westerns genre! Little Rita (Rita Pavone) has a dream: she dreams of a better world with her Indian Chief pal Bisonte Seduto (Gordon Mitchell) and her German friend Francis (Lucio Dalla). In some versions, Rita is known as Little Jane, and her Indian Chief Pal name is Sitting Bison, Silly Bull, and others. So she has decided to blow up all the gold she can put her hands on by stealing from famous cowboys and outlaws. One by one, Little Rita track down some the Old West biggest legends such Ringo (Kirk Morris) and Django (Lucio Rosato) and go toe to toe with them. Kirk Morris playing Ringo looks and is dressed more like Clint Eastwood's No Name, and Lucio Rosato looks like a mirror image of Franco Nero's Django. It was until she met Black Star (Terence Hill) that she finally met her match. Hill's character Black Star was called Texas Joe in the German version by the way. In an obvious attempt to exploit the later success of 1970's Trinita played by Terence Hill, this film was rereleased in France with all the music sequences edited out and the character of Black Star baptized Trinita. A certain amount of jocks and puns was also added in the French translation of the dialogue supposedly to reinforce the comical dimension of the film. The fair amount of jokes are hit and misses. It poke fun at the anti-capitalist idiosyncrasies of some of the early political westerns, scripted by Franco Solinas. The movie is full of cheese moments that are just hilarious or awful. The bullet hitting a bullet scene was pretty awesome. Twice. It got a bit silly when a bullet go into another man's gun. The gold rocket launcher was just insane. It made me laugh, but gees, I didn't know they had gold rocket launcher in the old west. I guess this movie is really not going for historic accurate with such references such as dirty movies, machine guns, golf clubs and the silly gold bullet proof vest. Sorry, but bullet proof vest don't work that way. You can't get shot at, and not have any bullet holes in your shirt, or no kick back react to getting blasted at. The action scenes are pretty OK, but it's those one shot kill that make Spaghetti Westerns so messy. Bodycount: ca. 10 Gringos, ca. 13 Mexicans. It's weird in a way, that after a bit of action and death. Everybody starts singing and dancing as if the Wicked Witch was dead. The movie is full of clumsily choreographed dancing scenes. I do like the scene in which an Indian brave pantomimes the various ways of torturing a prisoner to death. That was pretty funny. There is a lot of mediocre songs sung by Italian pop star Rita Pavone. Pavone sings with a high-pitched, shrill voice and a strong Turin accent, which makes it hard to understand her lyrics. Rita Povone sounds like an annoying chipmunk in some of these songs. "Little Rita", "You are like", "For a gunshot" "A sheriff that you are respected" are songs that is hard to tell apart, because they all sound the same to me. It's catchy, but it doesn't help that the songs were not dub in English, while everything else is. The dubbing is awful. Not only does it not match, but characters names keep changing throughout the film. It was a bit funny that the Native American Silly Bull was talking in one scene as if he was a German. The editing isn't that good. Some scenes ending very quickly after the last line of dialogue and giving the film a rushed feel in a few places. The picture quality is decent - only light grain, but colors are slightly faded and there is minor speckling and print damage throughout. During some scenes, there is a slight bar on the left of the screen that changes colors - this is mostly covered by over-scan and not generally noticeable during watching. This movie is insultingly stupid to Spagnetti Westerns fans. To have Rita Pavone, a pop singers make fools out of Western legends like Ringo and Django is just lame. Reportedly Pavone was very dynamic and her restless behavior on the set led to minor incidents with other actors. To give you an example of what I meant by this, let's say American produce a film in which Lindsey Lohan play a cowboy who kill off all the great American Westerns characters like Clint Eastwood's Man with no Name or John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn because they were a bit greedy. That would angry you. Thus this is why this film isn't that good. The film wasn't for any Spagnetti Westerns fan, it was intended to be a showcase for Italian pop star Rita Pavone. It mocks or parodying typical most love characters. The Title sequence to this movie is like Grease or Pink Panther, a stupid cartoon that really doesn't help make the movie any better. While Rita Pavone is pretty cute, and her singing isn't nails scratching on a chalkboard horrible. Just seeing her in this film seem out of place. That's why this movie has no home in Spagnetti Western collection.

Is Rita a woman or not ?

[marc242 · 8 November 2003]

Weird Mixture of Western-Parody and Musical. Rita Pavone looks strangely androgynous in this movie, I can't say if she's really a woman or not. O_O

the musical scenes are typical 60s style,and a bit annoying. The overall atmosphere is light-hearted, although the jokes are VERY dated.

I only know the german-dubbed version, so I'm sure the italian dialogue had to be extensively rewritten to make sense in german. This is generally a enjoyable,but still very strange western-parody with outlandish musical songs and equally weird dancing sequences.

Good for your weekend thrash video night. :-)

Tu Sei Come

[markwood272 · 4/10 · 26 January 2014]

One of those Col. Tom Parker-ish vehicles for the rising pop musician, but even at their worst, the Elvis movies would manage a moment of wit that made them bearable. Little Rita nel West is a decidedly inferior offering in the category. All but one of the musical numbers terrible, with star Rita Pavone English-dubbed for dialogue, Italian lip-synched for the songs. The Monkees did this sort of thing better. Little Rita is one big labored joke, a clunky spoof of spaghetti Westerns so lacking in subtlety that it's easy to tell that the movie was made for an audience no older than twelve. Little Rita's appearance in defiance of her chronological age seems to have been expressly engineered for that demographic. Then after an hour of cinematic imbecility she sings "Tu Sei Come", a longing, melancholy ballad perfectly shot day for night, and with one song nearly redeems this silly movie.

The Pest Of The West

[FightingWesterner · 5/10 · 29 May 2014]

Little Rita Pavone is on a holy mission, given to her by Indian chief Gordon Mitchell, to steal and destroy the root of all evil, all the gold in the west!

With Rita singing over the bodies of murdered people, laughing at other people's demise, and stealing gold, she seems more like the villain than the hero!

Though a terminally silly musical-comedy, this has a few modest things going for it, like good production values, photography (by Trinity creator Enzo Barboni), and an all-star cast that includes Terence Hill, Kirk Morris, Fernando Sancho, and a slew of other familiar European faces. However, the plot and musical numbers are pretty bad.

There is some novelty value to be had though, especially for those that endeavor to see every spaghetti western ever made, with a lot of it's latter-day notoriety having to do with Rita's showdown with a surprisingly accurate depiction of Django, looking almost exactly as he did at the end of the first film.

Scattershot spaghetti western spoof wastes a talented cast

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 2 November 2016]

This scattershot spoof of the spaghetti western genre starts off appealingly enough, with guest appearances from famous characters like Sancho, the Mexican bandit leader, the gunslinger Ringo, and the mysterious Django. However, all of these guys are killed off early on, leaving the film to meander through pointless scenes of romance between its two leads and indulge in some fairly lame humour with a Native American tribe. The biggest flaw is the central casting of Rita Pavone, who may be a good singer but who certainly cannot act; her Calamity Jane-wannabe type heroine is grating and obnoxious to watch throughout, with few redeeming qualities.

For such a hit-and-miss film, there's a large amount of talent involved. The reliable Ferdinando Baldi is the director and works through the film methodically, but without any real style or talent. His pacing is spot on, however. Then there are the stars: Terence Hill is the male lead Black Stan, but fans be warned as his is a boring character who doesn't actually achieve much throughout the film; he plays the straight man to Rita's joker. Former peplum icon Kirk Morris appears all-too-briefly as anti-hero gunslinger Ringo before getting blown up, whilst fellow muscleman Gordon Mitchell has a hilarious role as Native American chieftain Silly Bull. Other than these appearances, the film isn't very interesting, relying too much on dated and unappealing humour and trading on the stereotypes it fails to build on.

Great time-burner...

[humanoidzombie · 7/10 · 2 February 2002]

Fun little movie that pokes fun at many other spaghetti westerns -- and movies in general. The script is uneven, but most of the (in) jokes are fun. Lots of references to semi-famous western movie titles, scenes, and characters... Terence Hill doesn't do much, the real star is Rita Pavone in this one. I won't spoil it for you, just try and find it, some scenes are worth it -- when you're feelin' stupid!

The Little Girls Understand....

[Poison-River · 8/10 · 31 March 2004]

The 'Spaghetti Western' fan's Bible, 'The Good, The Bad and The Violent' by Thomas Weisser really gives this movie a hard time, even voting it one of the Top 10 Worst Spaghetti Westerns Of All Time(No.9 to be exact)...but that's all a little too harsh. Compared to the Franco and Ciccio efforts, or any movie by Demofilo Fidani, or indeed any of the cheap, shoddy Sartana cash-ins; this is quite a solid little movie.

And it's good for a laugh.

Weisser and his cohorts even admit that the sequences in the movie featuring Django are quite droll. As are the scenes with Johnny Ringo and Black Star(called Black 'Stand' in the subtitles of the version I watched). Indeed, the scenes which parody the Spaghetti Western cliches are extremely stylish and very well done.

The song and dance numbers, often cut from American prints, are quite bizarre and I feel that this movie would be better served on a double-bill with 'Head', the Monkees movie.

A word of warning though, if you see this movie on the Japanese DVD then you'd be as well turning the English Subtitles OFF if you want to follow the plot as they make no sense whatsoever...especially in the lyrics to the songs. Or keep them on and get an extra few laughs for your money.

All in all I enjoyed this fun movie and it's certainly an alternative to, say, the vile misogyny of something like Cut-Throats Nine.

Pure "Frontier Humor" at its best!

[thomas-korn · 10/10 · 22 January 2023]

The quote "Frontier Humor" is from the movie. That sums up this amazing movie. "Little Rita of the West (A. K. A. "Crazy Westerners") is mind blowing. The fact that it is a "Spaghetti Western" - made in Italy a week after the Spaghetti Western was born - and its a rock n' Roll musical exists tickles me to no end!

The songs are catchy and memorable...even if you don't understand what they are saying. I'm shocked this movie didn't get on the Midnight movie circuit. It has everything Rocky Horror has.. but its not a parody or spoof of the Spaghetti Westerns..as they just started making them a year or two prior. "LIttle Rita of the West" is its own glorious creation.

There are some scenes where it drags. Mostly one or two in the middle ..and at the very end. There is one moment with Terrence Hills character that brings up a personal story for him..but gets totally dropped not 2 minutes later and never brought back up.. but at that point, you don't care as it doesn't effect the main and Rita's story at all.

Why people rate this below a 7 out of 10 baffles me.

Must-see dramatic-comedy musical western spoof

[statusreport · 9/10 · 16 November 2021]

If you're like me, you found this movie researching other westerns to watch with Terence Hill in the cast. If you've seen a lot of westerns, then this one from 1967 is a treat, not to be taken seriously. It's a parody (note the intentionally blue-eyed Indian chief). Elvis Presley was doing westerns around the same time, so I guess it was decided to do one to showcase an Italian female rock star. The song-and-dance production numbers are first rate with large numbers of dancers and extras and choreography. Sometimes the audio sounds mono on the quick-paced songs (in Italian), that's my only complaint. I've seen things in this western I've never seen in other westerns. There's even some cartoon animation. Since it is a western, there is some shooting of guns and death (sometimes portrayed with humor), some physical fighting, but no foul language or nudity and it is suitable for the entire family to sit down and watch in my opinion. The filmmakers wanted to ensure that teenage fans of Rita Pavone could see it so they kept it clean.