Little Rita nel West

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gunslinger Rita Pavone is out to get all the gold in the west and destroy it, since gold is te root of all evil. She takes on various spaghetti western types, shoots them, and takes their gold to be guarded by Indians led by Gordon Mitchell, who wears full Cherokee head dress and carries a putter. She and Terence Hill fall in love. But when he tries to get away with the gold, he is condemned to death. Handed over to the Indians, they refuse to execute the sentence because he saved Miss Pavone's life. He becomes the local sheriff (displacing a willing Teddy Reno, Miss Pavone real life husband); like a character out of Gilbert & Sullivan, he can't kill anyone until he kills himself first.

Signorina Pavone has been a popular recording artist since the early 1960, which is why there are about five big production number sung by her in a 1960s pop style with elaborate backing singers and dancer in bright Technicolor. Apparently some more silliness was added after Hill became a comedy star in the Trinity movies. It's a thoroughly enjoyable piece of nonsense.