Release year: 1971
Director: Ferdinando Baldi
Starring: Tony Anthony, Ringo Starr, Lloyd Battista, Magda Konopka, Raf Baldassarre, Marisa Solinas, Franz Treuberg, Agneta Eckmyr
Editor: Roberto Perpignani
Cinematographer: Riccardo Pallottini
Music: Stelvio Cipriani

The ’60s saw the rise of the three B’s — Bondmania, Batmania and er, Beatlemania. It also saw the rise of the Spaghetti Western — which didn’t quite reach the ‘mania’ status. Over the years, these disparate ‘signs of the time’ melded. The Beatles made their equivalent to a Bond film when they made Help. Sean Connery tried his hand at a quasi Spaghetti Western when he made Shalako. And as my Teleport City colleague Todd presented, James Batman from the Philippines co-joined Batmania and Bondmania. But what about the mixing of The Beatles with Spaghetti Westerns? Well one Beatle had a shot at it, and it will come as no surprise that it was Ringo — well, he had the name for it! I would have liked to see Ringo play a character called Giuliano Gemma — to me that would have been funny (well, slightly!) Anyway, the film under discussion is Blindman and Ringo plays a scruffy Mexican bandit named ‘Candy’ — and much to my surprise, the film and Ringo are really quite good. If A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Yojimbo then I’d guess that Blindman is a reinterpretation of the Zatoichi films.

The film opens with Blindman (Tony Anthony) riding into a western town. It seems like a ghost town as all the streets are deserted. He rides back and forth, around and around. Finally a door opens and a scrawny looking fellow pops out. He approaches Blindman who climbs down from his horse. Blindman inquires about a man named ‘Trouble’ — get it? He’s looking for trouble! The scrawny man directs him to the undertakers where Trouble is holed up. Blindman walks down the street towards the undertakers, but to wake up the townsfolk and alert everyone to his arrival, as he walks, he shoots at the bell in the church tower. The ringing wakes everybody, and Trouble comes to greet the Blindman. It appears that these two men had a contract. Blindman paid Trouble for the delivery of fifty women, but ladies have not been delivered. Blindman has come to collect his women. The women are not for the Blindman’s own personal pleasure however. He has a contract to deliver them to a mining community in Texas.

Trouble explains that he does not have the women anymore. A chap named Domingo took them to Mexico. But Blindman has paid for his goods and he wants then so he asks Trouble to accompany him to Mexico and take him to meet Domingo where he can reacquire the ladies that are rightfully his. Trouble refuses. So Blindman, with the aid of some well placed sticks of dynamite, blows up the undertakers building.

Blindman sets off to Mexico on his own, but he is facing an uphill battle that even a man with full ocular capacity would be better advised to avoid. Not only does he have to face the brutal Domingo (Lloyd Battista), but added to the conniving mix is Magda Konopka — you you may remember from Satanik. Here she plays another evil character called ‘Sweet Mama’, but as you’ve no doubt guessed, is not so sweet. So what does Blindman do to lower the odds? He kidnaps Domingo’s young brother, Candy (Ringo Starr). Then all hell breaks loose.

Tony Anthony as Blindman is a fairly engaging hero, and at times I wondered whether the contact lens used actually made Anthony unable to see because his performance is top notch. Anthony and director Ferdinando Baldi would re-team again on the western Get Mean (1976), and more famously in the ’80s with the 3-D films Comin’ At Ya (1981) and Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). Incidentally, Four Crowns was Anthony’s last film as an actor.

Blindman features plenty of gratuitous violence and nudity, which makes it an enjoyable film. The premise may make the film seem like a comedy, and while there are a few comedic moments, thankfully most of it played pretty straight. But it is pretty quirky though — how could a film with a blind hero not be? The fact that the film also features Ringo Starr is not a hindrance either. He doesn’t carry any ‘Beatles baggage’. Ringo plays his role straight. There is no mugging, in-jokes or asides and the film is all the better for it. The Spaghetti Western is a pretty mixed genre. There are films that are masterpieces, and there are films that are turkeys. Blindman, while having no pretensions of being a masterpiece, does what it sets out to do very admirably – it aims to entertain and it does.