Watch The Stranger and the Gunfighter For Free

Memorable, crazy movie

Fantastic!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

No buts about it! Wang was sent by a rich Chinese warlord to California to make good investments with a large amount of gold. In the interim, having acquired 4 mistresses: of American, Russian, Italian, and Chinese descent, respectively, he decides to tattoo partial instructions to the hidden location of the gold or whatever investments he made with the gold, on the buttocks of each mistress! Thus, anyone else wishing to know this location would have to obtain access to all 4 buttocks! The message within a fortune cookie later found in Wang's safe: "The bottom of every woman is fortune", suggests that old Wang had a buttocks fetish, so why he came up with this bizarre method of hiding instructions for locating his treasure. But, he forgot that 4 is an unlucky number for Chinese, associated with death. When safe cracker Dakota(Lee Van Cleef) is caught ready to blow open his safe, he dies in the explosion, which yields only photos of the backsides of the 4 women plus the fortune cookie. As you will see in the finale, old Wang was devious with respect to this fortune in more ways than one. A huge hole in the plot is the lack of a clear connection between the women's buttocks and the location of the fortune. It's merely guessed that there is, based on the suggestive, but far from clear, message in that fortune cookie.As in a typical kung fu film, there is a large surreal element, with the hero(s), at times, taking on supernatural powers, and with many unlikely coincidences to aid in accomplishing their goals. Having learned of the death of Wang, the warlord holds all his extended family accountable for the recovery of his fortune. The responsibility for recovering it within a year is thrust upon young Ho Chiang(Lieh Lo),kung fu expert, demonstrating his skill for the warlord. Upon contacting Wang's lawyer, Ho obtains $1000. inheritance, plus the 4 photos with the women's addresses on the back, plus the fortune cookie. Learning that the safe cracker(Dakota) responsible for his uncle's death is in the local jail, Ho enters a saloon with a clear 'no Chinese' policy and is arrested for disturbing the peace, in order to be put in jail so he could talk to Dakota. Released a few days later, he saves Dakota from a hanging, in dramatic surreal fashion, and they decide to become partners in the search for the women, and thereby Wang's fortune.(Given the extreme anti-Orientals attitude in CA in this era, it's difficult to believe that Dakota would be hung for the accidental death of a Chinaman, even a wealthy one!)The search for the women and access to their buttocks is seldom straight forward. To find the American mistress, they must track down the horse-drawn traveling church-house of charismatic arch -villain Yancey Hobbit. Typical of classical villains, he's dressed all in black ,including a wide-brimmed hat, moustache and beard. He has come to this town to extol the promotion if sinful activities, then shoots several men dead as punishment for their sins, while quoting bible passages! The heros gain entry to his mistress by intimidation, then have to pick the lock on her chastity belt to read her message! Unfortunately, this induces Yancey to question his mistress why they are interested in her bottom. She guesses it has to do with Wang's fortune. Unable to read Chinese, Yancey copies down Wang's tattoo, then teams with his giant Native American friend Indio to look for the other 3 mistresses. This is another huge hole in the plot. How does his mistress know there are 3 more(scattered) mistresses, with tattoos, and where they are likely found??Our heros manage to stay one step ahead of the evil duo for a while. Ho wins much money from the house, gambling in the saloon where the Russian mistress is. Instead of bankrupting the owner, be asks to be allowed to examine the bottom of the owner's wife. But, he finds nothing remarkable, as she is the twin sister of the woman he is looking for, who is also present. They accomplish their goal, despite the fact that her bottom is covered with autograph tattoos. To find the Italian mistress, they must catch a moving train with a private car, and Ho masquerades as a doctor, treating her ailment with acupuncture needles in her bottom. The Chinese mistress is easy to find, but Ho hesitates to ask her that day, as her father is present. This gives Yancey an opportunity to kidnap her, with the help of acquaintance Calico's Mexican bandit gang. Dakota is later captured trying to recover her and, while locked in a room, she is suspended in a cage over a fire to induce her to translate all the Chinese characters. Ho arrives later and frees Dakota for a final drawn out confrontation with the collective villains, Ho taking on Indio, and Dakota dealing with Yancey to finish things.I will stop here in my brief summary. I don't want to reveal the rather unexpected, ironic, and dramatically-presented finale. Currently, you can discover this for yourself by obtaining a copy of the 8 westerns DVD pack by Echo Bridge; well worth it for a number of the films. I should add that I'm not normally a fan of Kung fu-type films, other than Jackie Chan's, nor a big fan of spaghetti westerns. However, I found this hybrid of the two intriguing, with a good blend of intrigue, humor, action and irony, despite the holes in the plot.

This Spagnetti Western treasure hunt movie hit the bottom. By bottom, I meant the whole plot of this movie by Antonio Margheriti with help from the Shaw Brothers is having a gunfighter Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) and a martial artist Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh) search for treasure by searching for tattoos marking on the bottoms of naked women. I would tap that ass of a movie! How weird is that! Still, it's one over the top entertaining movie, just a little crappy. That's if you can find this rare film. The movie goes by many titles from "The Stranger and the Gunfighter", 'East meets West" to "Blood Money" due to the movie being translate from Italian to whatever language, its being shown. The English dubbing isn't that great in my opinion. I know some of it was lost in the translation, but gees, the synchronization is bad. Also, some of the characters English names is pretty laughable. Ho Chiang's fat bald uncle name happens to be Wang, and he has four mistresses that hide his hidden long treasure. How can you not find something funny about that!? Anyways, the 1970's Kung Fu craze was still in high gear, but Lo Lieh isn't no Bruce Lee. The fight scenes are just awfully choreographed with over the top rewind film jumping and not even near close kicks and hits. Lo Lieh is nothing special playing the stereotypical Chinese guy who happens to be a kung-Fu master. At less, he's a bit charming, even if I can't understand what he is saying in some scenes. While, not fighting random people. Ho Chiang and Dakota are chased by over the top Bible-quoting madman Yancey Hobbitt (Julian Ugarte) and his Indian sidekick. Julian Ugarte reminds me of Roger Rees from 1993's Robin Hood: Men in Tights with his delivery. He was just interesting to watch. Dressed all in black with a long leather duster, gloves, and wide brimmed hat, looks like mix with Al Pacino and Jesus. The character is just as quick to use a gun as quote passages from the bible to any sinners, he seek unfit to live his lifestyle. He has cool bad guy written all over him. While, Lee Van Cleef looks pretty old in the film, as his hair plug is barely hanging on his head. It really does like Lee Van Cleef is just having fun overacting. What other Western movie has the main character autograph a woman's butt? The women in the film, Erika Blanc, Femi Benussi, Patty Shepard and Karen Yeh were pretty sexy in their roles, but this film doesn't had anything, more to the female characters than parading their sexy butts and had the girls sexually frustrated that men only have interest in the map. The movie makes them into young, dumb, female with little to no personality. If you like pointless nudity, you might like this film. The music is by Carlo Savina, nothing interesting. It gets annoying when the same theme plays over the action. The music sounds like some type of Blaxploitation film. The sound effects like whistles, bells, and whip cracks seem really canned. The print is surprisingly good, considering the film's age and obscurity, and fans of more lighthearted Spaghetti Westerns should be pleased. Still, in some versions of the film depending if you're watching it on DVD, on the internet, or just had on VHS. A few scenes are missing like the basement distillery fight. Most DVDs should have this scene. Still, if you don't. You're not missing much. It was badly shot, anyways with it being too dark. The running time is only 102 minutes, but after a while watching it; it does get kinda boring due to the hammy material. The humor is hit and miss. We get forced obligatory jokes about cultural differences and confront the racism at the time. I do like, the dog scene a lot. Overall, this was Shanghai Noon (2000) of its day. Just a little bit more obscure low-brow tongue-in-cheek comedy western.

Okay, here's a delightfully oddball and inspired handy-dandy combo genre hybrid: a totally goofy and cheerfully low-brow tongue-in-cheek comedic Italian spaghetti Western romp crossed with a swiftly chopping and kicking martial arts fight-ridden Hong Kong actionfest, shot on location in Spain, done in collaboration with the Shaw Brothers and directed by tireless exploitation flick director supreme Antonio Margheritti.The blithely dopey plot centers on an amusingly unlikely partnership between boozy ne'er-do-well drifter outlaw Lee Van Cleef (doing a disarmingly dippy send-up of his redoubtably stern'n'steely Sergio Leone tough guy sharpshooter persona) and smart, amiable Chinese fish-out-of-water karate master Lo Lieh (the star of the original breakthrough chopsocky hit "The Five Fingers of Death"), who trek across the wild'n'woolly Old West in search of a fortune in gold. Naturally, there's a catch -- and it's a hilariously bawdy one at that: individual parts of the treasure map are tattooed on the lovely bottoms of four luscious young ladies. The fact that three of said beauteous damsels are played by sexy Eurobabe scream queens Erica Blanc of "The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave," Femi Bunussi of "Strip Nude for Your Killer," and the always enticing Patty Shepard of "The Witches' Mountain" -- the latter portrays a couple of radically contrasting Russian twin sisters (a classy rich woman and her kittenishly lascivious prostitute sibling, respectively) -- only makes matters that much more entertainingly tacky and raunchy in comparable measure. Funniest scene: Van Cleef croaks out "Rye Whiskey" in a hoarsely off-key voice as he's about to be hung in the town square. Sure, it's really dumb and unsophisticated, but the energetically asinine fun's still quite enjoyable all the same.

The "East Meets West" idea of an Asian fighter in the Wild West was not new anymore (see Terence Young's "Soleil Rouge" from 1971, or "Il mio nome e Shanghai Joe" by Mario Caiano, 1973), but "The Stranger And the Gunfighter" was the first time (1974) that an Asian production company, namely Shaw Brothers, came to Italy for a Western production, bringing Lo Lieh as a seasoned star of their own. The kung-fu fighter has to recover a treasure that once belonged to his uncle and return it to China. The map leading to the treasure is tattooed in 4 parts - on the backs of 4 ladies. Yes, that's a bit of a different idea for once ;-). Lee Van Cleef plays a bank robber who assists very unwillingly, but in the end even enjoys a little trip to Asia. The movie is nowhere near "Soleil Rouge" and Lo Lieh isn't Toshiro Mifune, but it's an entertaining action movie with a story you haven't seen before. "Il mio nome e Shanghai Joe" is a very violent flick, whereas recent movies such as "Shang-High Noon" are silly comedies. What I like best about "The Stranger And the Gunfighter" is that it's well balanced between action and comedy.