Garringo (1969)

A young boy watches as his father is gunned down by the U.S. Cavalry. He wanders off until he’s rescued by a friendly rancher named Klaus.

Klaus takes him in and raises him along with his own daughter, Julie. Part of Johnny’s education: Learning to handle a six-shooter as the side of the man he calls his uncle.

Flash forward several years, and Johnny (Peter Lee Lawrence) has returned to the home of his “uncle” to find Julie grown and looking lovely, Klaus wearing a sheriff’s badge and life pretty quiet in Bell City.

But Johnny has changed — though Klaus and his daughter don’t know it yet. He’s been using his considerable skill with a gun to even the score with the U.S. Cavalry, and steal a few payrolls in the process.

Before long, a second stranger, this one badly beaten, shows up at the Klaus ranch.

He’s Lt. Garringo Harris (Anthony Steffen). And he’s a man on a mission. His assignment: Track down and bring back alive a psychotic killer.

And he’ll need to get there before the bounty hunters who are on Johnny’s trail.

Review:

Interesting variation on the Spaghetti revenge theme, because this time the gunman seeking revenge is hardly someone viewers will sympathize with. Instead, he’s the clad-in-black bad man, tortured by his past.

Jose Bodalo turns in a fine performance as the adoptive dad who blames himself for the fact that his son has gone bad. Solvi Studing looks lovely as the daughter.

Steffen wastes no time messing around once he’s on Johnny’s trail, tracking down his gang members in rapid succession. He forces one to march along behind him, a timber strapped to his shoulders.

Another interesting touch is a sign in front of the church bell in Bell City. It has a small hole in it. Shoot through the hole, and you’ll ring the church bell.

Klaus can do it, a feat young Johnny admires. Naturally, when he returns home, he can do it, with either gun hand.

Marchent also gets a few chuckles thanks to a ranch hand who’s so taken with the doctor’s daughter that he doesn’t mind dabbing on cologne and hauling her furniture from place to place.

Then there’s the scene in which Johnny convinces an aging rancher to fulfill his promise to sell out to the doctor. He does it by plucking a feather from one of the man’s chickens, then using his knife to cut it, providing blood to sign the bill of sale.

Little touches like those — Johnny also places epaulets taken from the officers he’s killed on his father’s grave marker — make this a notch above the standard Spaghetti fare.

Directed by:
Rafael Romero Marchent

Cast:
Anthony Steffen … Lt. Garringo Harris
Peter Lee Lawrence … Johnny
Solvi Studing … Julie
Jose Bodalo … Sheriff Klaus
Raf Baldassarre … Damon
Frank Brana … Bill
Antonio Molino Rojo … Harriman
Marta Monterey … Nancy Grayson
Luis Induni … Doctor Grayson
Barta Barry … Wilson
A. Lawrence … Johnny as a boy
Maribel del Pozo … Julie as a girl
Xan das Bolas … Potter
Lorenzo Robledo … Tom
Luis Marin … Pete
Carlos Romero Marchent … Bob
Rossana Rovere … Sarah
Tito Garcia .. Ted
Beni Deus … Johnny’s father
Alfonso Rojas … Colonel

aka:
Garringo: I morti non si contano
Dead Are Countless

Score: Marcello Giobini

Runtime: 94 min.

Memorable lines:

Colonel: “I want him (Johnny) alive, not dead.”
Garringo: “Don’t forget. A live murderer will always be more troublesome for honest men than a dead one.”

Julie: “The doctor said you have to stay in bed a few days.”
Garringo: “I’m afraid doctors are well known for their tendency to ask the impossible.”

Sheriff Klaus: “You’re confessing to three killings, then Garringo?
Garringo: “Self defense for two. But the third one was unarmed and running hard. You see, I was too weak to follow him. Only my gun wasn’t. And I pulled the trigger.”

Gunfighter: “Ain’t no one in this world mister whose life means more to me than $45.”
Garringo: “How about your own?”

Trivia:

This was the only feature role in a Spaghetti for model/actress Solvi Stubing, who became famous in Italy as a blonde in a commercial for Peroni Beer in which she hugs a large beer mug, long locks flowing. She’s got dark hair in this film. Her only other Spaghetti appearance was as one of the 50 brides Tony Anthony is trying to reclaim in “Blindman.”

Jose Bolado plays a sympathetic character here — a sheriff who regrets teaching his adopted son how to shoot. But he’s best known playing a bandit leader in a pair of Sergio Corbucci films — Gen. Rodriguez in “Django” (1966) and Gen. Mundo in “Companeros” (1970).

The part of the young cowboy who will wear cologne to impress Julie and lug heavy furniture around to impress the doctor’s daughter is played by Carlos Romero Marchent, younger brother of the director.