Johnny Yuma

After some difficulty, Johnny Yuma arrives at his ailing uncle's ranch to take over day to day operations, only to find out that the old man has been murdered by his beautiful gold-digger wife and the woman's vicious brother.

Good production values, a likable performance by Mark Damon, and a breezy action packed script combine to make this an entertaining, if not exceptionally deep, above average addition to the spaghetti western genre.

Co-star Rosalba Neri is one of the hottest European babes ever to grace the screen. Here she's absolutely perfect as the cold-hearted user (and abuser) of weak men.

Damon and Neri appeared together in at least one other picture, The Devil's Wedding Night, a pretty good horror movie that's of particular interest for those of you that want to see what's underneath Rosalba's dresses.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. From the title song on I felt like it was trying hard to find it's place within this competitive genre, but was misguided. All the ingredients are here for this to be a fantastic Spaghetti Western, but I think it took itself too seriously. There is some basic comic relief with his best friend and the score is OK, but makes the movie feel more like an American Western than it's Italian compadres. The lead female villain is pretty fantastic, but overall I think there are better movies within the genre. If you are into watching gun fights there is a pretty solid one that lasts quite awhile near the end of the movie.

This film essentially begins with a married woman by the name of "Samantha Felton" (Rosalba Neri) arraigning to have her wealthy husband killed in order to inherit his sizeable ranch and fortune. The problem, however, is that her husband had recently written to his nephew "Johnny Yuma" (Mark Damon) who has agreed to give up his life as a gunslinger in order to work on the ranch and eventually inherit a part of it on some future day. Not at all content with that idea, Samantha reaches out to another gunslinger by the name of "Linus Jerome Carradine" (Lawrence Dobkin) to help her out in that regard. But what she doesn't realize is that both Johnny and Linus have previously met under somewhat amicable circumstances, and both share a healthy respect for one another--and this complicates things to a certain degree. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was an interesting film due in large part to the involvement of several different characters with their own individual agendas. That being said, while it may not be the best Spaghetti Western ever produced, it's certainly worth a watch and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

Johnny Yuma sure is smug. I think that's what might put people off this film a bit (cos it sure ain't Rosalba Neri). Johnny's just inherited a ranch from his uncle, who's just died from sudden bullet to the back of the head, courtesy of Neri and her brother. They know Yuma's on his way, so they arrange for an ageing gunslinger to come and do the business on Yuma too.

Yuma's lightning fast with a pistol, however, and blasts his way through enough bad guys to populate a small African country. His got a Mexican sidekick too, and I was fairly surprised at the sudden change in tone halfway through the film, as both Yuma and his sidekick play the film for laughs, so when the bad guys start doing stuff like executing Mexican folk for no reason and at one point beating a child to death (!), I was thinking that perhaps they were making up this film as they went along. They also give Yuma a good beating at one point too, but it only temporarily takes that stupid smug grin off his face.

Rosalba Neri, as usual, is lush and great. She manipulates every man in the film, including Yuma (who thinks he's got her sussed out, but he's wrong). She's the best thing about the film and greatly helps where actor Mark Damon (Yuma) just yucks it up at every given opportunity. This is an overly violent western that's well worth a watch, especially the epic gun fight at the end and the way over the top killing of one of the bad guys – a bit of a jaw dropper, that bit.

The likeable mark Damon stars in this ok western that is mildly entertaining, especially in the latter half, however, I found it quite plodding at times with too much emphasis on comedy with the side kick, which distracts from an interesting storyline. Still, it has some good shootouts, and the voluptuous and deadly Rosalba Neri steals every scene she is in. The title song is good, reminds of that John Leyton song ( Johnny remember me).