The Last Gun (1964)

What a waste of my time!!!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Blistering performances.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Well what can I say this really is more of a comedy than anything else from the voice overs and just comments that are made are simply hysterical. If you're having a bad day or hungover or something this film sure will help cause it helped my hangover, felt way better after watching this movie which I picked up from Fry's electronic for a couple bucks well worth it. One comment which i found amusing was when he tells this cowboy "he looks like he sorry" and this other guy says "more like sorry looking", sure didn't see that one coming. But I must say the best part has got to definitely be all those gunshots but no blood, I mean none at all whatsoever, I guess it wasn't in their budget, this one guy says "you're gonna shoot me in cold blood", kinda funny when there was absolutely any.

Nothing about "Stranger in Sacramento" director Sergio Bergonzelli's largely predictable horse opera "The Last Gun" qualifies as original, but this derivative Spaghetti western is more than palatable with solid production values. Cameron Mitchell, who appeared in his share of westerns in Tinseltown, stars as a notorious gunslinger who hangs up his hardware so he can settle down as a respectable storekeeper in a frontier town. Meanwhile, a trigger-happy outlaw, Jess (the ubiquitous Livio Lorenzon), who looks like the Europe's answer to Telly Savalas, plots with a corrupt, local banker to hijack a shipment of gold. Not surprisingly, things don't go as planned for Jess and his army of gunfighters. It seems that a mysterious pistolero turns up when they least expect him and thwarts our villain's every move. "The Last Gun" is an appropriately loquacious sagebrusher when one of the villains isn't being gunned down by an enigmatic figure in black leather with a bandanna covering his face. The townspeople quarrel among themselves about these intruders, but they are powerless to evict them. Clearly, "The Last Gun" draws inspiration from those traditional Hollywood oaters where an unsympathetic gunslinger struggles to blend into the scenery and not call attention to himself. Eventually, our reluctant hero must decide whether to maintain his anonymity or behave like a vigilante to preserve law and order. This movie pays homage to 1950's westerns with its opening ballad. Actually, "The Last Gun" recalls John Wayne's first singing western "Riders of Destiny" (1933)because one of the key characters rides through the rugged terrain warbling a tune to the accompaniment of his own guitar strumming. After the opening theme ballad, things settle down as Jess's gang terrorizes the town of Sanderson. Moreover, "The Last Gun" hero is a reformed gunman instead of a swift-shooting bounty hunter. Bergonzelli and scenarists Ambrogio Molteni and James Wilde Jr., unveil the film's the best-kept secret during the final moments of the action. Livio Lorenzon makes a thoroughly slimy villain. His men and he run roughshod over everybody in town and the dutiful sheriff has to tolerate their presence because he is only one man.

The fact that Cameron Mitchell is in this movie should give you a warning as to what is to come. If not, let me put it bluntly - this is a TERRIBLE western! Though made in the same year as "A Fistful Of Dollars", this probably came first - if the makers of this movie had seen that movie, they probably would have given their plans a major overhaul. As it is, this movie seems to be trying to capture the feel and style of American westerns made in the '50s, but totally botches it. It has a sterile feeling to it, with scenes playing like loose dress rehearsals instead of having any kind of strong feeling. Most of the movie is just boring talk, and while the few action scenes have a few unintended chuckles (like a woman being molested protesting blandly due to the rotten dubbing), they are at best dull and mechanical. Even the music score, which it typically great in a Euro western like this, is unmemorable!

I've seen a lot of westerns, but I've seen few like this one. At first I thought it was a comedy or a parody. It starts off with what has to be the most mind-numbingly awful "theme" song in motion picture history by an off-key singer who stumbles over his words, actually loses his place once--why they didn't just re-record it is beyond me--and not a single line of this opus rhymes. Then a short, chubby, beer-bellied "gunslinger" standing on top of a large boulder calls out some guy walking his horse (!), gets shot for his trouble, slides down the boulder, and in the next shot his body is lying at least 25 feet from it--and it's on flat land! Then, although I didn't think it was possible, the film goes downhill from there. Everybody laughs hysterically all through the movie: the bad guys, the saloon girls, and especially the leader of the bad guys, who has apparently ingested a year's supply of laughing gas because he can't stop roaring with laughter, even as he's shooting everybody within eyesight--civilians, cowboys he meets on the trail, women he's just raped, his own men . . . you name 'em, this guy shoots 'em. And, of course, he does so without reloading his pistol; at one point he fires at least 12 rounds in a row from a six-shot revolver. What's even more hysterical is that he's wearing a hat that is at least two sizes too small for him. It was only after about 15 minutes of watching this atrocity that it finally sunk in that this was NOT a parody or a comedy. The people who made this stinkeroo actually thought they were making a "serious" western. Amazing.Another curious thing about this movie is the dubbing. We all know that the English dubbing of Italian movies of the time, whether westerns or Hercules-type epics, was atrocious beyond belief, and this one carries on that noble tradition. But even star Cameron Mitchell's voice is dubbed, and not by Mitchell, which is very odd. What's even odder is that Mitchell is obviously speaking English but the English lines the dubber speaks don't match Mitchell's lip movements, which makes no sense at all. But neither does anything else in this relentlessly stupid, senseless idiocy (wait until you get a load of the "masked avenger" who shows up about a quarter of the way through this thing). The "action" scenes are laughable, the cinematography is terrible--it looks like it was shot on an 8mm home movie camera--the "script" is something even Ed Wood would have been too embarrassed to put his name on, the "acting" wouldn't pass muster in a one-day-wonder porn flick. In other words, this movie is not only worthless, it's BEYOND worthless. Shoving your head into a drill press wouldn't be as painful as having to sit through this thing. Don't waste your time.