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the audience applauded

Excellent but underrated film

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I must admit I first heard of this movie after playing the game Red Dead Revolver for the PlayStation, as the game producers used the Stranger's theme song during one of the levels. I thought the tune was pretty cool, and scoured the internet for its name, and then came upon a website dedicated to spaghetti westerns. When I first saw shots of this film on the site, I was a bit apprehensive that Tony Anthony could actually pull off being a hero in one of these films. Then I bought the film off Amazon along with its sequel "The Stranger Returns." At first, I couldn't get into Anthony. He reminded me of a Mob informant from Jersey on TV crime dramas from the 70s rather than a cool and calm spaghetti western hero. But, when he gets the living daylights beaten out of him and goes on the rampage, my view changed. I have to say this is one of my all-time favorite films, along with its sequels and the immortal 'Blindman'. It's no Leone work, that's for sure, but it has its own unique quality. It's simple and violent, and I think that's all that really matters. If you're looking for something like Unforgiven or Open Range, move on. But if you want a bare-bones precursor to action films, this may float your boat.

"A Stranger in Town" is the first of Tony Anthony's "Stranger" films - a character heavily borrowed from Eastwood/Leone's "Man With No Name". As I understand it, the aim of these films was to take the European vision of a western to a wider American audience. Which it successfully achieved.The Stranger (Anthony) arrives in town to witness a brutal massacre of Mexican soldiers by a gang of bandits led by Aguila (Frank Wolff). Before the execution, Aguila assures the soldiers that he is "a fair man" - a regularly uttered pronouncement throughout the film. The death of so many men demonstrates otherwise.The Stranger agrees to work with the bandits, who are now clad in the soldiers uniforms, to help steal gold from the US army. The plan is successful, but the Stranger is soon double-crossed once he arrives to collect his 50% share (despite Aguila being "a fair man"). After a beating, he escapes with the gold, and is pursued by the gang......Whilst there are obvious similarities between this movie and the Dollars Trilogy - in particular a Fistful of Dollars - this is an enjoyable film in its own right. It lacks the class of Leone, and the cool of Eastwood, but Anthony and Director Luigi Vanzi never tried to mimic these aspects, concentrating instead on the action and violence. Indeed, Anthony's Stranger never appears invincible, and remains likable throughout what is a very simplistic story.The star of the show however is Frank Wolff - a man that does not know the meaning of a bad performance. Based largely on Volente's Ramon, Aguila is equally as barbaric, but just a little more clumsy. And "a fair man!". Of course! There is very little dialogue in the whole movie, playing on the cliché of what we (or I imagine, more realistically, what the general American audience of that time) expect from a Spaghetti Western. Quite intentionally. The fact that there are few words puts great pressure on the quality of Benedetto Ghiglia's score - which thankfully stands up to this task.All in all, A Stranger in Town makes up for what it lacks in class and story with entertaining characters and good fight sequences. The beginning sequence where the Mexican soldiers are led into town by a group of singing monks - who soon cast off their robes and reveal themselves as Aguila and his gang - immediately persuades the viewer that this will be an enjoyable film. The final confrontation between the two main stars is equally as effective.It is not (and doesn't pretend to be) one of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns. In fact, Aguila would probably proclaim it as a "fair" film. And this time he wouldn't be lying. Good fun, and recommended.

There are few films that can demonstrate in a nutshell what spaghetti westerns are about. The particular strength of "Un dollaro tra i denti" is that everything that isn't required was stripped off. Here you get the basic ingredients straight in your face: a mysterious stranger (Tony Anthony) arrives in a town. He is not a hero - his only motivation is money, and he offers the villain (Frank Wolff) a deal. After the deal isn't kept, i.e. the money isn't shared, the stranger will have his revenge. Nobody talks very much, the first minutes are without any dialogue at all. The musical theme is returning again and again, supplying the feeling that whatever is going to happen will be inevitable. Doomed to die with his boots on, Wolff may fire as many bullets with his machine-gun on Anthony as he likes, there's no escape...

Making no apologies in borrowing from the Man With No Name mystique, Stranger in Town has wormy Tony Anthony as the poncho clad, nameless drifter. Anthony's Stranger is the Man With No Name equivalent of Frank Stallone in Rocky instead of Sylvester. He is greasy instead of grizzled (literally, he looks like they dunked him in a batch of olive oil before every take.), and doesn't possess the enigmatic presence and deadliness to fully pull off the role. He lacks the confident squint of Eastwood, the cold eyes of Franco Nero, and the reptilian stare of Van Cleef. The Strangers saunters into a town overrun by bandits waiting to steal a cache of gold. He convinces their stock villain bandit leader to let him help them by impersonating officers and easily getting the gold handed over. The plan is successful and there is the subsequent double cross by the bandits, the Stranger narrowly escapes and follows the bandits to their hideout- this is something they clearly see, and he makes clearly known, yet they don't kill him? Basically he gets captured again, beaten up, narrowly escapes (again), and then backtracks to the abandoned town for the big showdown (making it pretty obvious the low budget, only two real locations, both abandoned towns). The ending is pretty weak and sloppily executed, so his `outwitting' of the bandits throughout the town doesn't really come off very cool or smart.One thing is for certain, they didn't have to pay the voice dubbers or dialogue writers very much, because for a solid twenty-five mins of the film (when he arrives at the bandit hideout) there are only a handful of sentences spoken for the duration, and it becomes agonizingly dull, and the soundtrack theme so annoying you want to strangle the composer.A Spaghetti Western curiosity in that it was successful enough to spawn two (better) sequels. I'd say Stranger in Town is for completists only.