Friday, April 19, 2024

Spaghetti Western Trivia Identification of the “Any Gun Can Play” opening scene trio.

We’ve finally been able to identify who the actors are at the beginning of Enzo G. Castellari’s 1967“Any Gun Can Play” starring Edd Byrnes, George Hilton and Gilbert Roland. When Variety reviewed the film, their hapless scribe didn't know who Franco Nero & Django were, and said it was a "Robert Taylor" look-alike!!!

At the beginning of the film, we see three riders from behind riding slowly down a windblown street approaching a wagon driven by a lone driver with a man dressed in black walking behind. The camera pans around to the front of the riders, and we see their faces: obviously to Spaghetti western fans they are dressed to represent Colonel Mortimer, Django and The Man With No Name. Mortimer stops the wagon when he sees it is carrying three coffins and asks who they are. The man in black behind the wagon says in a calm voice Paco Diaz, José Huerta, and

Jesus Sanchez. Long ago we identified Mortimer (José Huerta) as José Torres but the other two remained elusive to say the least in identifying them. I and Michael Ferguson even

e-mailed Enzo Castellari over the years and both of us were told he didn’t remember who the actors were. Well Mike finally Senor Ferguson in his unendless pursuit was able to find out who the remaining two actors are.  Django (Paco Diaz) was Sergio Testori and No Name (Jesus Sanchez) was played by Luciano Odorisio. This entire scene is cut on most releases of the film but it was true genius on Enzo’s part of parody and has been restored on later DVD and Blu-ray releases.

                   Django (Paco Diaz) was played by Sergio Testori

           No Name (Jesus Sanchez) was played by Luciano Odorisio

  

          Colonel Mortimer (José Huerta) was played by José Torres

 

[Thanks to Michael Ferguson for clearing up a long-standing mystery and cinema-italiano-db.de.]

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