Today It's Me... Tomorrow It's You (1968)

This Spaghetti Western appears to be fairly well-liked – largely because of it's comparative simplicity and straightforwardness: Hardy's Encyclopaedia of Westerns (which doesn't usually like Spaghetti Westerns) rates it pretty well, and Glittering Images' Westerns Al Italiana (which usually succeeds in liking every Spaghetti Western also speaks highly of it).

Although it certainly isn't bad, I wasn't hugely impressed. The basic plot is fine: Brett Halsey (aka Montgomery Ford) plays Bill Kiowa, who has been wrongly jailed for 5 years and now wants revenge on the man responsible, James Elfego (Tatsuya Nakadai). To help him he enlists four gunmen (most of whom were/would become Spaghetti Western mainstays): Bud Spencer, (Franco Borelli or Jeff Cameron – they're both in it, but I'm not 100% sure who is who...), Wayde Preston, and William Berger. This was a little bit of a waste really: out of the four only Bud Spencer has a significant amount to do; Berger (who I always enjoy) has him moments as a devious cardsharp but they are only small scenes, and the other two barely speak.

The wintery forest setting is novel, and works well during the forest ambush climax, but honestly doesn't have much of a Western feel. The direction of competent, and the film generally looks good but unexceptional (the version showed on the channel Movies4Men is honestly quite blurry and unimpressive though). Some scenes initially look like they're lifted from more famous films (I'm mostly thinking of an early scene in a gunshop, which is clearly based on The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) but later goes in a different direction. The ending attempts an emotional bonding moment between the heroes that didn't really seem earned.

In short a competent but unexceptional Spaghetti Western: there's clearly a lot worse, but there's also a lot better.

• Spaghetti Western Database
• Shobary's review