A solid spaghetti western outing, with James Woods look alike Giuliano Gemma in one of his many leading roles for the genre. ONE SILVER DOLLAR shows influences from Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, not least in the title, but also in the opening animated drawings accompanied by a tuneful whistling on the soundtrack. However, the plot is different enough and complex enough to be totally interesting. There are good production values and well-staged scenes of action, with never a dull moment. Plenty of fist-fights, beatings, shoot-outs, and show-downs highlight the movie and its near classic stuff here.
Gemma - not one of my favourite actors, I have to admit - is solid enough to be a hero, and charismatic with it. He's well supported by the ever-lovely Ida Galli as his loving wife Judy, and French actor Pierre Cressoy as the slimy villain McCory. The film even manages a couple of moving scenes along with all of the excitement, including the moment when innocent farmer Donaldson is shot dead by the traitorous sheriff, or the bar room scene where the two brothers unknowingly kill each other (or so it seems), a set-up by McCory. The ending has a huge body count as O'Hara just goes around wiping out every single villain in the town, and Giorgio Ferroni is careful to have lots of imaginative twists and minor turns in the plot, as well as plenty of surprises like guns turning out to be empty, coins saving people's lives, and friends suddenly becoming enemies and vice versa. Good genre material.
Gemma - not one of my favourite actors, I have to admit - is solid enough to be a hero, and charismatic with it. He's well supported by the ever-lovely Ida Galli as his loving wife Judy, and French actor Pierre Cressoy as the slimy villain McCory. The film even manages a couple of moving scenes along with all of the excitement, including the moment when innocent farmer Donaldson is shot dead by the traitorous sheriff, or the bar room scene where the two brothers unknowingly kill each other (or so it seems), a set-up by McCory. The ending has a huge body count as O'Hara just goes around wiping out every single villain in the town, and Giorgio Ferroni is careful to have lots of imaginative twists and minor turns in the plot, as well as plenty of surprises like guns turning out to be empty, coins saving people's lives, and friends suddenly becoming enemies and vice versa. Good genre material.