Dead for a Dollar (1968)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

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

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Looks like this one had many names over the years -- the DVD case says "Dead for a Dollar", but apparently it's also known as "Trusting is Good, Shooting is Better!", as well as various titles in various countries. I saw the 91 minute DVD version, which has English dubbing, thank goodness. Stars Jorge Acosta Y Lara aka George Hilton, born in Uruguay, as Glenn Reno, on a mission. "The Colonel" is played by John Ireland, who has quite the interesting story on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ireland_(actor) Such a rambling plot, although it looks like there are about fifteen minutes missing in the version I saw. Everyone seems to be searching for the buried loot. Shooting. Killings. Digging. Great outdoor scenery. Written by Tito Carpi. Directed by Osvaldo Civirani... looks like his brother Walter was the camera-man on all his projects, a family affair. Moves crazy slow. I wonder if the original script was any more exciting than what we hear in English in the dubbed version. Sound and picture quality are terrible, but it does seem to be a copy of a copy....?

I like Hilton and Gordon Mitchell so I gave this one a try. The DVD I saw is an ugly, full-frame transfer, probably from VHS. English dub. It's a "funny" story of a man (Hilton) that runs afoul of a gang of three bank robbers (Mitchell, John Ireland, Piero Vida). The robbers are busy trying to double-cross one another and Hilton joins the party. A pretty blond (Sandra Milo) takes her turn at tricking each of the men also. The story is very reminiscent of double-cross pics like ONE DOLLAR TOO MANY or ANY GUN CAN PLAY. However, this film is a little tedious, a little boring. Some of the comic scenes are pretty well-done but the action sequences are slow-moving, boring, very poorly staged. Generally the pacing of the film is too slow, too boring, everything takes too long to happen. Music is an annoying carnival-style motif which is supposed to sound whimsical but features too much acid rock-style organ and guitar. Mitchell's part FWIW is basically a cameo, he is dead after 15min of the film. Hilton is charming but can't save the film on his own. As of this writing the full film is available on YouTube. 5/10 stars.

Handsome George Hilton, slippery John Ireland, and a fat blustery Portuguese each try to outmaneuver the others in order to make off with the two-hundred-thousand dollars in stolen money taken from them by the deceased Gordon Mitchell.Sometimes this spaghetti western is amusing but mostly it's pretty talky stuff. Ireland and Hilton are game but this tries to be another The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly without any real visual excitement or fun twists in the story. These two have definitely done better.The worst part of the film (and I mean worst!) occurs near the end, a disgusting dinner scene between George Hilton and the dressmaker (Why wasn't she shot before this?) as they smack their dripping greasy chicken, the camera lingering on closeups of them chewing the stringy chicken with oily open mouths and food hanging out!At over a hundred minutes the movie wasn't too long already that they had to include this?! It was pointless, irritating, and gross! Obviously they struck a raw nerve, at least with this viewer!

"Dead for a Dollar" makes the grade just barely as tolerable spaghetti western comedy about three gunslingers and a lady searching for a fortune in loot stolen during a bank hold-up. The cat and mouse games that the principals indulge in here are the usual, run-of-the-mill variety for an Italian western. American character actor John Ireland of "Red River" adds a distinctive touch of class to these sagebrush shenanigans with his bearded performance. Second tier Spaghetti western star George Hilton and former muscleman turned-western-villain Gordon Mitchell of "Atlas Against the Cyclops" (1961) provide solid support for Ireland. Unfortunately, tough-guy Mitchell doesn't last very long as a gut-shot adversary in what constitutes a cameo as a ruthless bank robber. Writer & director Osvaldo Civirani and co-scenarists Luciano Gregoretti and Tito Carpi play everything for laughs with our amoral protagonists constantly turning the tables on each other with double-crosses. Tunisian beauty Sandra Milo of Federico Fellini's "8 ½" (1963) holds her own against these six-gunners as a dressmaker with larcenous fingers. The fact that she is a dressmaker instead of a saloon proprietress is one of the few things that defy the usual role playing in this predictable dustraiser.As the action unfolds, an outlaw gang has robbed Hartmann's Bank of $200-thousand dollars. During the robbery, outlaw chieftain Roy Fulton (Gordon Mitchell) takes a bullet in the belly and doesn't have long to live. Roy's heir Glenn (George Hilton of "The Ruthless Four") steals the loot after Roy dies. Against Roy's wishes, Glenn takes the money out of the grave where Roy was supposed to be laid to rest and puts Roy in place of the money. The Colonel (John Ireland) and another thick-set gunman called 'the Portuguese' ride out to recover the money. No sooner have each of them double-crossed the other than they learn to their chagrin that somebody has replaced the dollar bills with paper or clothing scraps. Eventually, all three gunmen discover that shrewd Liz (Sandra Milo) is using her pulchritude to take advantage of them. Imagine an episode of the ABC-TV western series "Alias Smith & Jones" with Sally Field double crossing Ben Murphy and Roger Davis, and you've got a good idea what to expect from "Dead for a Dollar." When our heroes aren't playing turnabout's fair play with each other, they spent their time gunning down bad guys in a sufficient number of shoot-outs to make this western worth watching at least once.Cinematographer-turned-director Osvaldo Civirani knows what an Italian western should look like and he inserts several quintessential Sergio Leone type close-ups of holstered revolvers and gunmen's eyes in the showdown sequences. This is one of prolific writer Tino Carpi's lesser films; Carpi's numerous writing credits include "Django Shoots First" (1966), "Few Dollars for Django" (1966), "Any Gun Can Play" (1967), "Seven Winchesters for a Massacre" (1968), and "Between God, the Devil and a Winchester" (1968). The surprise ending is not much of a surprise, but solid production values, good photography, and jaunty orchestral score by genre veteran Angelo Francesco Lavagnino keep this opus distracting enough to watch. A.F. Lavagnino's western soundtracks include "Five Thousand Dollars on One Ace" (1965), "Gunmen of Rio Grande" (1965), and "Pistol for a Hundred Coffins" (1968). If you toted up the 100 best spaghetti westerns, "Dead for a Dollar" would rank somewhere in the upper 200.