A Stranger in Town (1966), whose original Italian title translates as A Dollar Between the Teeth, is a little-seen example of the popular spaghetti Western genre, as it has become known in the U.S. One of the singular strengths of Italian cinema during this period was its ability to penetrate foreign markets, including America, with popular genres such as the "peplum" (the sword-and-sandal epic), horror, and of course, the spaghetti Western. From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, the peak period of the Italian Western, some 400 were produced. Sub-categories of the diverse genre included: operatic epics, such as the Sergio Leone films; "picaresque" films (i.e., following the adventures of a wily rogue character such as the Ringo cycle); politically themed Westerns; and overt comedies such as the Trinity series. A large number of spaghetti Westerns were international co-productions, filmed in foreign locations such as Spain. The genre often attracted established directors, writers and actors. Bernardo Bertolucci, for example, was a writer for Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). Other films featured such talents as Yul Brenner, Orson Welles and Klaus Kinski.
Like a number of actors in Spaghetti Westerns, Tony Anthony was a Hollywood refugee. Born in 1937 in Clarksburg, West Virginia, he made three obscure films in Hollywood--Force of Impulse (1961), Pity Me Not (1960) and Without Each Other (1962)--before heading off to Italy for greener pastures, not unlike compadres Clint Eastwood and Cameron Mitchell. The move paid off, as Anthony landed a role in Lina Wertmuller's Let's Talk About Men (1965). Next followed the Stranger films, the first being A Stranger in Town. Expanding his range of skills, Anthony wrote the story for the sequel, The Stranger Returns (1968). The other two entries in the series, also starring Anthony, are The Stranger in Japan (1969), also known as The Silent Stranger, and Get Mean (1975). All were directed by Vance Lewis (Luigi Vanzi), except for Get Mean, which was directed by Ferdinando Baldi. Anthony achieved renewed notoriety in the 1980s with the 3-D Western Comin' at Ya! (1981) and 3-D Indiana Jones-inspired actioner The Treasure of the Four Crowns (1982), both directed by Baldi. In the 1990s he would try his luck as a producer, working on such projects as the spy-caper parody Honeymoon Academy (1990) and most recently, the TV movie Dollar for the Dead (1998), an homage to the Spaghetti Western starring Emilio Estevez.
Director Luigi Vanzi started out as an assistant to Michelangelo Antonioni on Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Il Grido (The Outcry, 1957). Like many Italian genre directors, Vanzi adopted English pseudonyms in order to appeal to the lucrative English-language market: for the Stranger series, he became "Vance Lewis". For other projects such as Seven in Thebes (1964) and The Secret of the Silver Soldiers (1970), he became "Roy Ferguson". A Stranger in Town was first released in the U.S. in 1968 for Metro by Allen Klein, who would later make a small fortune distributing the infamous midnight classic, the psychedelic western El Topo (1971), directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Although not generally taken seriously by critics at the time, minor Spaghetti Westerns such as A Stranger in Town have maintained a steady cult following over the years, thanks to their campy English dubbing, visceral thrills (most notably, sadistic violence) and mannered visual style. Variety, while not overly complimentary about Vanzi's direction--"[It] could set westerns back a generation..."--praised Masciocchi's cinematography.
Director: Vance Lewis (Luigi Vanzi)
Producers: Carlo Infascelli, Allen Klein
Screenplay: Giuseppe Mangione, Warren Garfield
Cinematography: Marcello Masciocchi
Editing: Maurizio Lucidi
Music: Benedetto Ghiglia
Art Direction: Carmelo Patrono
Cast: Tony Anthony (The Stranger), Frank Wolff (Aguila), Gia Sandri (Maruka), Raf Baldassarre (Ivan Scratuglia), Jolanda Modio (Cica).
C-87m.
by James Steffen
