Roy Colt & Winchester Jack

Roy Colt & Winchester Jack is a 1970 Italian Spaghetti Western film directed by Mario Bava.[3][4]

Roy Colt & Winchester Jack
Directed byMario Bava
Produced byMario Bregni[1]
Screenplay byMario De Nardo[1]
Story byMario De Nardo[1]
Starring
Music byPiero Umiliani[1]
CinematographyAntonio Rinaldi[1]
Edited byOlga Pedrini[1]
Production
companies
  • PAC (Produzioni Atlas Consorziate)
  • Tigielle 33[1]
Distributed byPAC
Release date
  • 30 August 1970 (1970-08-30) (Italy)
CountryItaly[2]

Plot

Gunslingers Roy Colt and Winchester Jack fail to make a living through crime and Roy dissolves the partnership to earn an honest buck in Carson City as a sheriff. Sheriff Roy is then entrusted by the townsfolk with a replica of a treasure map said to lead to a fortune in buried gold, and his old partner Jack and a gang of desperados try to get to it first.

Cast

Production

Roy Colt & Winchester Jack was Produzioni Atlas Consorziate's Mario Bregni reward for director Mario Bava for coming into complete the film Five Dolls for an August Moon.[5] The film was written by Mario De Nardo who had also written Five Dolls for an August Moon, a script which Bava did not care for.[5]

Mario Bava biographer Tim Lucas commented that following the release of Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968, Italin Westerns seemed to in competition of who could come up with the most flagrantly bizarre characters and situations.[1] This led to Italian Westerns ranged from featuring kung fu, exploitive scenes of rape and gore, and gothic themes.[1] These extremities led to Bava approaching Roy Colt & Winchester Jack as a broad spoof of the genre.[6] Brett Halsey who was in the film stated that it became a comedy as "the script wasn't very good; it kind of lent itself to having fun with it." and stated that Bava had the idea of playing the film for laughs as early as signing on the cast.[7] Lucas felt that despite being described as a comedy, the film "more correctly belongs to the category of farce or satire."[8] Lucas felt that as it wasn't a straightforward story with humorous dialogue, it was more closely related to a Mad magazine sketch that pokes fun at the traditions of Westerns.[8]

Charles Southwood stated that Roy Colt & Winchester Jack was "the best thing I did over [in Italy]" and stated that the film was improvised on a day-by-day basis.[9] Southwood continued that "everyone contributed ideas. It was hilarity every morning. We'd make up scenes in the trailer!"[9]

The credits of the film state that it was filmed at DePaolis Studios but Halsey believes only the interios were shot there as he didn't recall DePaolis having any standing Western town, and believes the town scenes may have been shot at Cinecitta as the studios were so close to each other.[10]

Release

Roy Colt & Winchester Jack was distributed by PAC in Italy on August 13, 1970.[1] It premiered in Rome in the same month.[11] Lucas noted that it took until the success of the humorous Western They Call Me Trinity before the film received an international release and was accquired by Spanish, West German and American distributors in 1972.[11]

In the United States, the film was acquired by Cinevision but with the possible exception that it was released for two minor play dates to qualify for a tax break, the film appears to have not been released in the United States.[12] [12] The films rights owner, Alfredo Leone said that he doubted more than a few prints of the English-dubbed version were ever struck and when the film was prepared for its American DVD release in 2002, no print or negative of the English-dubbed version was found to exist.[12] The film was released by Image Entertainment in the United States on DVD.[13]

Reception

In his biography on Mario Bava, Lucas commented that the film "involves a deliberate element of grotesquerie, resulting sometimes overbearing exaggerations of nature, overstated action and distorted performances that are all too easy to interpret unfavorably." and that the film "contains more artless shots than any other Bava film"[14]

gollark: Also, congratulations on successfully (so far) navigating the horrors of the UK university system.
gollark: Our culture has such a bizarre obsession with hard work.
gollark: I don't see how replacing humans in jobs is a *bad* thing.
gollark: I was curious, since someone mentioned that they were annoyed by sunlight and such.
gollark: Does anyone know what the weather implications of locally blotting out the sun with a giant space mirror would be?

See also

References
  1. Lucas 2013, p. 828.
  2. Grant 2011, p. 455.
  3. Jones, Josh (7 May 2003). "The Creepy, Campy Stylings of Mario Bava". PopMatters.
  4. Jane, Ian (October 5, 2017). "Roy Colt and Winchester Jack". DVD Talk.
  5. Lucas 2013, p. 827.
  6. Lucas 2013, p. 829.
  7. Lucas 2013, p. 831.
  8. Lucas 2013, p. 838.
  9. Lucas 2013, p. 833.
  10. Lucas 2013, p. 836.
  11. Lucas 2013, p. 841.
  12. Lucas 2013, p. 842.
  13. Lucas 2013, p. 1047.
  14. Lucas 2013, p. 839.

Sources
  • Grant, Kevin (2011). Any Gun Can Play. Fab Press. ISBN 9781903254615.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Lucas, Tim (2013). Mario Bava - All the Colors of the Dark. ISBN 0-9633756-1-X.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)


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