White Comanche (1968)

All reputable sources report that this is terrible. I'm not going to disagree. Legendary actor and performer of spoken word poetry William Shatner plays two roles as twin brothers.

Notah (William Shatner) is a notorious half-Comanche renegade who (with the help of his band) is raping, robbing and killing his way across the West. His twin brother, Johnny Moon (also Shatner) is living a more honest life while periodically escaping lynchings based on his mistaken identity. Apparently their only distinguishing feature is the colour of their eyes, although this is not apparent to the casual viewer.

Moon rides into "the place called Rio Honcho", where he has arranged a showdown with his brother in 4 days time. In the meantime he deals with issues of mistaken identity, falls in love with a woman his brother has raped (Rosanna Yanni), and helps the Sheriff (Joseph Cotton) with an escalating range war. The latter plot in particular feels tenuously related and tacked on to draw out time.

There are a number of further problems with the film: it's obviously cheaply made (with jarring cuts throughout where the budget obviously didn't extend to getting a complete good cut of a scene). The script is of poor quality, with attempted made to imbue Moon with a deep inner pain that he's fighting which only come out through clunky dialogue. In it's favour, both Shatner's and Cotton's acting is basically competent – given what they have to work with they can't be blamed. Shatner gets his shirt off frequently throughout, which I suppose might be a treat for the ladies.

Really, this is no worse than some of the lower tier Spaghetti Westerns, but presumably has been seen by a wider audience due to its more famous star. Even so, it's not recommended (but neither is it bad enough to be entertaining for that reason).

The version broadcast on Movies4Men was fullscreen, which didn't look quite right (characters sometimes fall off the edge) but equally didn't look too wrong (so it could just be incompetent camera work), so I remain unsure of the correct aspect ratio. I doubt if it would be hugely improved.

• Spaghetti Western Database Review