It Can Be Done, Amigo

When I bought the Spaghetti Western Collection and its 44 movies in January, I pretty much knew what to expect.  For $15, I was getting 44 movies which by my math is about 35 cents per movie. So at that value and knowing that these are public domain movies, I was rolling the dice on the actual film quality on the DVDs. I wasn't worried about the actual movies -- I can find a redeeming quality in even the worst spaghetti -- but I was only hoping that the quality was watchable, was bearable, enough that I could understand what was actually going on and hear what was being said.

I thought I had stumbled onto a gold mine when I watched the first three movies in the set, and all three were average to above average widescreen movies.  We're talking able to see and hear everything.  Novel concept, huh? It didn't hurt that all three movies were pretty good in their own right regardless of the quality.  Well, it had been a couple months since I actually watched anything from the collection, and at the rate I was going it would have taken me about six years to watch all 44 movies.  After three winners, I finally got a dud in terms of video quality, 1972's It Can Be Done, Amigo.  Not to say it was a great movie, but the quality certainly wasn't helping.

A drifter in the west with no particular goals or direction where he is going, Hiram Coburn (Bud Spencer) finds out he's being followed. In his travels at some point in his past, Coburn had a mistaken romantic encounter with a dance hall girl, Mary (Dany Saval), and now her brother, Sonny (Jack Palance), wants Coburn to marry her.  Naturally, he then plans on killing her new husband. Coburns hits the trail, trying to put some distance between him and Sonny but is slowed down when he meets young Chip Anderson (Renato Cestie) alone on the trail. Chip's uncle has been killed, and now the youngster is all alone. Coburn agrees to help, bringing him to Westland, a small, corrupt town where the boy has been given a deed on land in the area. There's something of value on the land though so now Coburn finds himself with enemies on all sides.

In a lot of ways, Bud Spencer is a perfect example of the atypical spaghetti western hero.  Where actors like Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Franco Nero were the ideal strong, silent, glaring type who let their guns do the talking, Spencer was a big, lovable, goof of a hero (in most of his movies at least).  Comparing him to most spaghetti western heroes -- anti-heroes I guess -- there is nothing typical about Spencer as Coburn here.  He talks to his horse, asking for advice...and getting it, wears eye glasses and puts them on before a fight, and never wears a gun much less uses one.  As was the case with any other Bud Spencer movie I've seen, I genuinely liked him as a star and the characters he played.  Standing 6-foot-4 and weighing at least 300 pounds with his wild hair and crazy beard, he is a galoot of a teddy bear on-screen.  Different from most spaghetti western leading men, but in a positive way.

Where Spencer made a name for himself in European westerns was alongside fellow star Terrence Hill in comedic westerns, especially the Trinity series.  Without Hill here as his sidekick, the tone and story still go down that comedic route.  If you're unfamiliar with Italian/European comedic westerns but familiar with the Clint Eastwood movies, take out the cynicism, the shootouts, the staring and glaring, but replace them with bumbling villains, eccentric weirdos all around, and fistfights and brawls instead of guns, and you've got the Italian comedic western.  Of the Trinity movies I saw, I liked them, but didn't love them.  Here with 'Amigo,' I liked Spencer but didn't love the attempts at laughs. The brawls go on too long -- how many times can we see Spencer pound someone on the head? -- and the premise with the marriage subplot seems thrown on so Palance can be his usual weird self.

Now let's talk about the video/DVD quality which is...how do I say....piss-poor.  Public domain means anyone who can or wants to distribute the movie can do just that.  You don't need ownership rights because there aren't any.  It's in the public domain!  Translated that means no quality-control has been done on the films, in this case in the almost 40 years since it was released.  The hearing and audio were fine here, and the dubbing was above average, but the actual viewing was hit or miss.  One scene looks immaculate -- or as good as pan-n-scan can -- and the next looks washed out with colors changing mid-scene.  One scene is rich and full of color, the next looks like a first season colorized episode of Gilligan's Island.  I've seen worse prints of movies, but this one was pretty bad.

Poor quality aside, I just didn't find myself drawn into this western.  Spencer is as reliable as ever, and Palance is an ideal choice to play the weird, eccentric, possibly crazy gunfighter.  He's not as evil here as say A Professional Gun or Companeros, but because it's Jack Palance you just know he's up to something.  There are some cool locations used (including the McBain ranch from Once Upon a Time in the West), and the score has its moments.  Francisco Rabal is a sub-par villain as Franciscus, a reverend/sheriff/judge in Westland with Sal Borghese and an unidentified actor as his twin brother deputies.  The movie was okay without being memorable, but you can do worse.

It Can Be Done, Amigo <---trailer (1972): **/****