Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is of course his unofficial remake of Yojimbo, being similar enough that the Japanese production sued and Leone eventually settled out of court. Being one of the earliest Spaghetti Westerns, the European crew members were so nervous that they adopted fake American-sounding names. This is why the musical score really is composed by Ennio Morricone as you can tell immediately upon hearing it but it is credited to Dan Savio.
An unnamed cowboy arrives in the eerily quiet town of San Miguel and a local innkeeper explains to him the conflict between the Rojo brothers gang and the Baxters. He confronts and kills four members of the Baxter gang who mocked him as he arrives to impress everyone and immediately gets a job as a gunfighter with the Rojos. However his new bosses refuse to initiate any violence and out of curiosity he follows them to find out why. The Rojos impersonate US soldiers to attack a shipment of gold from Mexican soldiers and massacre everyone to prevent news of it from leaking out. The cowboy takes two of the Mexican corpses and tells the Baxters that there are two survivors of the massacre to set up a big battle between the two factions. The cowboy also learns that one of the Rojo brothers is keeping the wife of a local man as his mistress and attacks the house where she is being kept, again blaming the Baxters for it.
The similarities between this and Yojimbo are many and obvious, even down to tiny details like how the hero wrecks the safehouse in which they keep the mistress and how one of the chief henchmen is physically huge and imposing. There are differences of course, the most important being the massacre at the beginning and certainly the villains here behave in a far more overtly cruel manner than in the Japanese film. But it’s plain to see that this was indeed copied from Yojimbo and it was ridiculous that Leone tried to deny it at first. It is also striking that even as a copy of previous work, this film is inferior on just about every count. It has worse cinematography, some really dubious editing as we watch scenes cut from one to another, worse action as a gunfighter who shoots faster than the eye can follow just isn’t as visually impressive as a samurai with a sword, the plot is less interesting as there is less of a back and forth between the two gangs here. The hero’s scheme to whittle down the numbers of both gangs here doesn’t even seem to work as the Rojos consistently have the upper hand the whole time.
About the only saving grace that this version has for me is that San Miguel feels like a more organically real place whereas the setting of many of Kurosawa’s films are often so stylized and tightly focused that they feel like they take place on a stage. It’s also notable that the film compares so poorly to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which would come only two years after this one by basically the same production team. I suppose that part of it is just a bigger budget but perhaps they really did become more confident and skilled over time.
Overall this film is entertaining enough but it’s a definitely letdown after watching Yojimbo. I mean the shot of the hero here setting off an explosive to create clouds of dust that he can stroll through is laughable in how it is so blatantly a poor imitation of Kurosawa’s version of the scene. I suppose it is still of interest to film historians but I don’t it’s worth going back to for most people.