Review “Man of the East”

Cinema Retro

By Fred Blosser

March 3, 2021

“Man of the East” a comedic Italian Western starring Terence Hill and directed by Enzo Barboni as E.B. Clucher opened in U.S. theaters on May 1, 1974, as a release through United Artists. I saw it at the old Turnpike Cinema in Fairfax, Va., now long gone. Come to think of it, United Artists is long gone too, at least in its 1974 form. The poster outside the theater carried comic artwork of Hill in a goofy pose on horseback. The tagline read, “The Magnificent One!” an abbreviated version of the original Italian title, “. . E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico”, which translates more or less as, “Now They Call Him the Magnificent.” The advertising team at UA didn’t have to look far for a catchy phrase that might remind fans, however subliminally or satirically, of “The Magnificent Seven.” Most devotees of Italian Westerns look down on the comic offshoots of the genre like “Man of the East” but on its own terms, Clucher’s picture is a better-than-average example of its type. It even holds its own against Hollywood’s feeble comedy Westerns of the same era, like “Something Big” (1971), “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” (1972), and “The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday” (1976).

In “Man of the East”, now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Hill’s character, Sir Thomas Moore, travels to Arizona in 1880 at the final behest of his wealthy, free-spirited father, recently deceased after fatally suffering “a stroke in a bawdy house”. The elder Moore had rejected the conformist life of a peer in Queen Victoria’s Court to drift through the American West in company with three rambunctious pals, Bull, Holy Joe, and Monkey (Gregory Walcott, Harry Carey Jr., and Dominic Barto), as “The Englishman’s Gang”. Tom intends to homestead on the land where his father built a cabin, and wants to retain Bull, Holy Joe, and Monkey as his ranch hands. The three galoots have their own marching orders from their deceased friend: Tom is still a green kid. Make a man of him, and then -- hit the saddle. The trio feel civilization crowding in on them as the frontier shrinks, the dominant theme of Westerns in the 1970s, American and Italian alike. They agree to stay around long enough to toughen up their friend’s soft-spoken son by teaching him to fight, shoot, trade his bicycle for a horse, and change out his tweeds for his father’s old cowboy outfit. Then they’ll keep drifting West, trying to stay one step ahead of the railroad, which for them embodies the unwelcome idea of progress as it did for the characters in various Sergio Leone movies. Leone had sufficient budget to include real trains in his films; Clucher makes do with stock footage of the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad under the opening credits.

Tomâs plans run afoul of domineering cattle baron Austin, who wants the newcomer’s property. The big rancher employs his gunslinging foreman, Clayton (Riccardo Pizzuti), to intimidate the tenderfoot into selling out and leaving. Clayton has ambitious eyes on his boss’s fortune through Austin’s pretty daughter Candida (Yanti Somer), but she and Tom become romantically attracted to each other. This gives the rancher, and his henchman added incentive to drive the greenhorn out of the territory. These elements in the script (written by Clucher) lift a little of this and a little of that from several John Ford classics, including Ford’s sentimentality. Harry Carey Jr., billed here simply as Harry Carey, had appeared right before “Man of the East” in Clucher’s “Trinity Is Still My Name” (1971), but not coincidentally, he was also one of Ford’s famous stock company of players. Clucher magnifies the slugfests from “Donovan’s Reef” (1963) and other Ford pictures into two big, extended saloon brawls where dozens of stuntmen crash through windows and have their heads slammed into breakaway tables. As in most American Westerns, the fights end with the participants stretched out on the floor or staggering away woozily, but not critically injured. Hospital ERs probably wish that drunken bar fights ended that harmlessly in real life.

The movie’s violence is strictly PG, going no further than the hammy melees. Although the characters occasionally draw and fire their guns, the only things that get riddled with bullets are a hat and a tin can. This is the first Italian Western I’ve seen, the first Western I’ve seen, where no one gets killed -- no one gets shot! Alex Cox marvels in his audio commentary for the Kino Lorber Blu-ray. This would have been a selling point on movie night in 1974, when parents searched the listings for a family-friendly Western that they could watch with their nine-year-olds. Nowadays it may be a moot point. The nine-year-olds I know are busy competing against each other on Fortnite, to see who can rack up the highest body count in simulated search-and-destroy missions. Still, small kids may be amused by Clucher’s broad humor, including Hill’s daffy faces, long johns, and hop-frog jumps during Tomâs’ morning exercises. If you think Steve Martin and Will Ferrell invented the gimmick of a normal-looking guy who gets laughs by acting wacky, meet Hill and Clucher. There’s a gag about horse poop, ongoing verbal confusion where the unsophisticated characters misunderstand long words, and a fleeting gay joke. The latter is so benign that anyone inside or outside the LGBTQ community would be hard pressed to take offense. Even Spaghetti Western enthusiasts who disdain comedies like this may smile in a scene where Clucher pokes fun at Leone’s theatrics. Two bounty hunters in black (genre regulars Sal Borgese and Tony Norton) ride up to the ominous cello chords of Ennio Morricone’s showdown theme from â “A Fistful of Dollars”. Then, straight-faced, the two slowly dismount in perfect unison like synchronized swimmers.

At two hours and five minutes, “Man of the East” seemed leisurely even in 1974. As a captive audience in the theater, you might go for a restroom break when the saloon fights ran on too long, but to do so, you’d have to squeeze past everybody else in your row and stumble up the aisle in the dark. Home video makes it easier to control the dead air. Just skip to the next chapter on your Blu-ray player when you want Clucher to pick up the pace. The Kino Lorber disc presents the movie in sharp hi-def at the correct 2.35:1 aspect, nicely framing the final showdown where the two opponents face each other from the far opposite sides of the Techniscope screen. Incidentally, to my knowledge, this is the first appearance of “Man of the East” on digital disc in the U.S. Paramount issued the movie on Region 2 DVD in the U.K. in 2008, but there was never a Region 1 DVD release in the States. The only previous edition for home viewing here was a pan-and-scan VHS videocassette from Warner Home Video. That was way back in 1984, almost as long ago as the original theatrical release.

In addition to Alex Cox’s entertaining commentary, the Blu-ray includes the original trailer as a bonus, along with trailers for several other Italian Westerns available from Kino Lorber. SDH captions are provided for those of us who haven’t gotten any younger since 1974.