zardoz-13 Review of The Longest Hunt

The Longest Hunt (1968)

The Star of "Flipper" in a Spaghetti Western!

[5/10 · 6 August 2013]

Brian Kelly plays a swift-shooting gringo who searches for the errant son of a Mexican land baron in this contrived Spaghetti western. Sergio Corbucci' s brother Bruno wrote and directed "Shoot, Gringo, Shoot," with "Hate for Hate" scenarist Mario Amendola. Our unshaven gunslinger hero, Chad Stark (Brian Kelly of "Around the World Under the Sea") engineers an improbable escape from prison when he fakes a guard off with what appears to be a case of leprosy. After he breaks out, Stark washes the dirt from his face, finds horse, and kills a man. During this frenzied gunfight, he kills four of Don Hernando Gutierrez's pistoleros. Gutierrez's vaqueros bring Stark before the landowner who gives him a chance to live if he will find his boy, Fidel (Fabrizio Moroni), and bring him home. Unfortunately, a predictable pattern sets in, and Stark loses but then recaptures Fidel. Meantime, Major Charlie Doneghan (Keenan Wynn of "The War Wagon") is searching for Fidel, too. The big revelation occurs when Don Hernando tells Stark that Fidel isn't his son. The sun-scorched, Spanish scenery, Sante Maria Romitelli's evocative orchestral score, and Carl Chan and Fausto Zuccoli's cinematography cannot make up for the mediocrity of the plot. Sadly, Wynn spends more time off screen than on but easily steals every scene that he has. Corbucci stages the gunfights with reasonable finesse in a western that is devoid of humor. The scenes in the desert with Stark leading Fidel by a rope as his prisoner recalls Eli Wallach leading Clint Eastwood across the desert in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Brian Kelly makes a good anti-heroic gunman.