{"id":4531,"date":"2017-05-05T20:55:50","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T20:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4531"},"modified":"2017-05-01T20:56:17","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T20:56:17","slug":"the-two-sons-of-ringo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/the-two-sons-of-ringo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two Sons of Ringo"},"content":{"rendered":"

aka I due figli di Ringo
\n1966
\nItaly
\nLeo Cevenini and Vittorio Martino for Flora Film, Variety Film
\nDirector: J. Seemonell [Giorgio Simonelli]
\nStory & screenplay: Marcello Ciorciolini, Roberto Gianviti, Amedeo Sollazzo, Dino Verde
\nCinematography: Tino Santoni {Techniscope \u2013 Technicolor}
\nMusic: Piero Umiliani (Nazionalmusic)
\nEditor: Giuliana Atteni
\nSet design: Enzo Bulgarelli
\nCameraman: Gianni Bergamini
\nFilmed: Cinecitta (Rome)
\nOriginal running time: 105 mins
\nRelease information: Registered 01.12.66. Italy (07.12.66)
\nCast: Franco Franchi (Franco, aka Django), Ciccio Ingrassia (Ciccio, aka Gringo), George Hilton (Joe, a bounty hunter), Gloria Paul (Dorothy, a showgirl), Orchidea De Sanctis [Santis] (Marisol, a showgirl), Pedro Sanchez [Ignazio Spalla] (Indio), Ivano Staccioli (Burt), Umberto D\u2019Orsi (Simpson, the Mayor), Ivan G. Scrat [Scratuglia] c.s.c (Jack, Burt\u2019s man), Guido Lollobrigida (Fred, the saloon owner), Galliano Sbarra, Enzo Andronico, Armando Carini, and with Fulvia Franco (Margharet, Fred\u2019s wife), Mimmo Palmaro (the sheriff)
\nUncredited: Fortunato Arena (Indio\u2019s man)<\/p>\n

This was Hilton\u2019s second appearance \u2013 following I due mafioso contro Goldginger<\/strong> (65)\u2013 alongside the popular comic duo, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. In the former film, they had turned their parodic eye to the prevalent espionage films of the time, and most particularly the omnipresent Bond series, but I due figli di Ringo<\/strong> takes aim firmly at the another genre: the Spaghetti western. It\u2019s all much more of the same – a trivial concoction of slapstick routines, humorous misadventures and excessive face pulling \u2013 but comes off as being slightly less successful than the previous outing. If you don\u2019t expect too much, though, it\u2019s certainly not quite as bad as is often made out.<\/p>\n

The hopeless twosome play a pair of con-men who have managed to dupe virtually every town in the West: Franco pretends to be a ruthless bandito, Ciccio pretends to kill him, and they both pocket the money happily proffered by the grateful townspeople. Until, that is, they arrive in Asta Nueva, where their scam is interrupted by the arrival of a proper bounty killer, Joe (George Hilton).\u00a0Rather than shoot them, however, Joe has another plan: that they should imitate the two long lost sons of a respected \u2013 and wealthy \u2013 lawman called Ringo, thereby being able to claim that they are the only rightful heirs to his substantial fortune. Despite this ruse being successful, matters are made more difficult by the fruitless endeavors of some local outlaws, who want to exact their revenge upon the men they suppose to be the sons of their (former) mortal enemy.<\/p>\n

After all of this has been dealt with, they finally find out the details of \u2018their\u2019 inheritance; it isn\u2019t quite what they expected. The \u2018fortune\u2019 is in the person of Indio (Pedro Sanchez), a ruthless bandit \u2013 the only one who Ringo was never able to catch \u2013 with a price of $100,000 on his head. And Indio has absolutely no intention of allowing anybody to claim it, not least a pair of blithering halfwits.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Two Sons of Ringo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By this time their comic partnership had experienced over five years of success at the box office, and the formula was already well set, with Ciccio playing the slightly more sentient foil to Franco (who often appears to be closer to a bonobo than a human on the evolutionary scale). As with many of their films, it\u2019s actually surprisingly well made, with a capable director and crew making sure that everything looks and plays as smoothly as possible. There\u2019s even a very well-handled bank robbery that wouldn\u2019t have been at all out of place in a more serious movie. For some reason the background story \u2013 with its manipulative stranger, duplicitous authority figures, avaricious Mexicans and assorted suspicious and \/ or disposable characters \u2013 reminded me of the later Sartana films. This link is further implied by the crediting of Giuliano Carnimeo, who went on to make most of them, as an ambiguous \u2018collaborative director\u2019, and the involvement of Roberto Gianviti, later to act as co-scripter for Have a Good Funeral, My Friend\u2026 Sartana Will Pay <\/strong>(Buon funerale, amigos!… paga Sartana, 70<\/em>).<\/p>\n

As you\u2019d expect, Franco and Ciccio both have plenty of fun with Spaghetti Western conventions, from glasses of beer being slid down the bar to a game of \u2018anatomical poker\u2019 (in which the players have to stake parts of their own body). The film that appears to have particularly inspired them is For a Few Dollars More<\/strong> (Per qualche dollaro in pi\u00f9, 65<\/em>), as is reflected by the mildly amusing opening sequence; a virtual recreation of the famous \u2018dual\u2019 scene in which Clint Eastwood (Franco) and Lee Van Cleef (Ciccio) try to out-macho each other. Interestingly, though, the whole \u2018falsely claiming bounty\u2019 scenario was central to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly<\/strong> (Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, 66<\/em>), which was registered 22 days after this.<\/p>\n

Hilton has a much bigger role than in Goldginger, and turns in an effective Eastwood impersonation. He displays a decent sense of comic timing, and it\u2019s not hard to see why this acted as a calling card to directors planning bigger and better things (most especially Enzo Castellari and Any Gun Can<\/strong> Play<\/strong> (Vado… l’ammazzo e torno, 67<\/em>), in which he plays a virtually identical character). Other reliable veterans in the cast include Pedro Sanchez (taking on the Gian Maria Volante \u2018Indio\u2019 role), and Mimmo Palmara (good fun as a Sheriff driven to distraction by the dimwitted duo). Gloria Paul, an English actress who was popped up in the essential Three Fantastic Supermen<\/strong> (I Fantastici tre supermen, 67<\/em>), provides sex appeal, and gets to wear a number of fetchingly kitsch costumes.<\/p>\n

Bizarrely, the guy who dubs Franco in the English version occasionally sounds like a dead ringer for Micheal Crawford doing his Frank Spencer \/ Some Mothers Do \u2018Ave \u2018Em<\/strong> shtick. Whatever, this wasn\u2019t the only time that Sr.\u2019s Franchi and Ingrassia ventured into the fictional west., with other titles include Due Mafiosi nel Far West<\/strong> (64) and Due Rrringos nel Texas<\/strong> (67).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I due figli di Ringo finds popular Italian comedy due Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia in a very silly parody of For a Few Dollars More, complete with all the expected slapstick routines, humorous misadventures and excessive face pulling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1212,8],"tags":[812,82,407,939,774,1346],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4531"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4535,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4531\/revisions\/4535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}