The Stranger Returns (1967)

The second of Tony Anthony's "Stranger" series, still filmed of a negligable budget (much of it looks suspiciously like a disused Italian quarry). However, there's good fun to be had here (coupled with some suspension of disbelief).

The plot has to do with a gang of bandits (lead by a twitching, slightly pyschopathic guy), a stagecoach made of gold, an almost identical stagecoach not made of gold (no-one seems to notice the difference in handling of the two stagecoaches), a duplicious post-office employee called "Good Jim", an amount of double-crossing, and an itinerant prophet/preacher (played by an actor that's obviously much younger than the character) The Stranger stumbles into this mess with a view to making money and quickly pretends to be a postal inspector (a key quote is "in this day and age, everyone's walking around try to be somebody else"). As in the first film, he doesn't always think things through and inevitable ends up in danger, but seems pretty adept at escaping.

Tony Anthony adopts his familiar "novelty shotgun" look towards the end when there's some good quality shootouts. The film feels a little more professionally made than the first in the series (although the budget is almost certainly little bigger that the first in the series). The fallible title character makes a nice change from the slightly frustrating "predict everything" heroes that sometimes inhabit the Spaghetti Western. It's not perfect, but it's an interesting entry.

The German DVD (by Colosseo) has a wide range of language choices (including English) and two decent looking versions (I think the same cut, but trimmed widescreen or a fullscreen version depending on personal preference – I've shown pictures from both here), and is an excellent, if expensive way, to watch this film.

Pictures