Acquasanta Joe

Acquasanta Joe (Lincoln Tate) is a bounty hunter, and a successful one at that, with $50,000 of savings in the bank.

Trouble is Donovan (Ty Hardin) and his gang have just stolen Acquasanta's hard-earned dollars.

Still, this way Acquasanta can both recover his money and make a bit more for bringing them in.

But, true to form things get complicated as one of Donovan's gang (Richard Harrison) runs off with the money and hides it and then the others turn on their leader, giving rise to a precarious alliance between the bounty hunter and his former quarry…

A by-the-numbers spaghetti western, perfunctorily directed by Maurizio Garrazo AKA Roy Garrett, Acquasanta Joe offers little beyond a collection of Sergio Leone-inspired cliches and a couple of minor points of interest.

First, it's weird to see a spaghetti western that actually includes an Italian, in the form of the incongruous presence of 'The Sicilian' (Tuccio Musumeci), a travelling tailor who helps Acquasanta Joe at one point.

Second, Marcello Giombini's music runs the gamut from standard spaghetti twangy guitars and deguello cues to others more appropriate for a knockabout comedy or a poliziotteschi.

This Region 2 DVD was released a few years back by from C'est La Vie along with Sartana in the Valley of Death and Some Dollars for Django. Judging from the list of forthcoming titles mentioned on the disc, it looked as though they had plans to bring out quite a sizeable collection of Italian westerns but nothing much else seems to have materialised. The reason, I would venture, is that these early releases met with complete indifference as distinctly second-rate spaghettis given less than stellar treatments.

Sourced from a German print but with English audio, Acquasanta Joe has, judging from the trailer included as an extra, inexplicably been cropped from its correct aspect ratio of 2.35:1 to closer to 1.85:1 or 1.78:1.

Also included are filmographies and biographies of the stars, that for Ty Hardin glossing over his odder involvements.