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The OId West: Drifter Freddy (Freddy Quinn), sometimes known as outlaw
Black Bill, returns home after many a year, to find his uncle Ted (Josef
Albrecht) abducted by outlaws who want to know the location of his
goldmine, and uncle's daughter (and his childhood sweetheart) Anita (Beba
Loncar) having set out after the outlaws on her own. ... and indeed,
Anita has tracked down the outlaws to a small gold town, where she has
completely lost their trail, but has become the town's deputy sheriff to
be able to investigate rather in the open. And since the actual sheriff's
(Carlo Croccolo) is a diehard drunkard, she soon enough is the law of the
town ... well, not really, because the town is actually run by banker and
saloon owner Perkins (Rik Battaglia), a respectable and enormously rich
citizen on the outside - who of course is also the head of the gang that
kidnapped Anita's dad, and the keep it in the saloon's basement. Freddy
rides into town, and he soon is at odds with Perkins because Perkins' moll
Olivia (Mamie Van Doren) shows more than a fleeting interest in him. But
he's also soon at odds with Anita, who believes him to be nothing more
than a no-good drifter and thief - of course, neither Freddy nor Anita
know who the other is. After much to and fro though, our two heroes find
out each other's identity, join forces, take on Perkins and gang, and with
a little bit of help from Olivia set a few wrongs right and free Anita's
dad. In the end though, Freddy does not the girl (in fact neither Anita
nor Olivia) because he prefers the life as a drifter and rides on to new
adventures. After the success of the initial Winnetou-movies,
Westerns were considered box office gold in West Germany (even if they
hardly were, actually). This was another attempt in cashing in on the
Western-boom, starring then popular Schlager star Freddy Quinn (who made
quite a few musicals of different genres in the 1960's) and American
import bombshell Mamie Van Doren ... and it's not a very good movie: While
the Winnetou-films
brought a novel fairy tale-like approach to the genre, this film is made
very much in the tradition of the singing cowboy movies from Hollywood of
the 1940's - in pretty much everything: limited budget, story, structure,
even placement of the songs. And while the films of old at least
occasionally had a charm to them, this film has way too little to offer to
least occasionally shine. Now don't get me wrong, this is not a
trainwreck of a movie, it's competently filmed, Freddy Quinn might not be
a great singer but he's a likeable enough chap to carry the film, and
there are definitely worse Schlager singers around - it's juist that the
film feels like you have seen the same before at least a thousand times,
so it makes no difference whether or not you watch this.
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