Apocalypse Joe

Apocalypse Joe, also known as The Man Called Joe Clifford, is a fun Spaghetti Western directed by Leopoldo Savona and released in 1970. It doesn't have any depth, and it has no semblance of reality, but the gunfights are structured like video games (which didn't even exist then).

Antony Steffen starts as Joe Clifford, an actor in the old west, who is also a deadly shot. He inherits a gold mine, but when he goes to check it out he finds that his uncle, who left it to home, lost it in a poker game, and also died mysteriously. The new owner (Eduardo Fajardo), is a smiling damned villain, and Steffen causes trouble for him.

The movie is so over the top that you can only smile. Fajardo sends scores of men to eliminate Steffen, but they are killed one after the other. Steffen is aided by the comic relief character, a frizzy-haired doctor (Fernando Cerulli) and the owner of the saloon (Mary Paz Pondal). But he doesn't need much help. In these films, the goons are stupid, and the hero never misses.

In the climactic gunfight, which takes up the last third of the film, the bad guys descend upon the town, but Steffen has set up booby traps, such as attaching wires to money. In a way, this is like a Warner Brothers cartoon and Steffen is Bugs Bunny.

I had fun with this movie, but it is not a great film by any means. I did like the angle that Steffen is an actor, as he not only uses his deadly accurate guns but also disguises.