Review for
"Get Mean"
Oddness ensues in this spaghetti western as everybodies favorite under dog of the genre "The Stranger", is hired by a witch to escort a princess to Spain. Once in Spain The Stranger must ward off evil Barbarians, a crazed Hunchback, a gay man(played by Anthony's brother), Lesbian warriors, a raging bull, magic and even spirits who want to turn him into a wolf (
) in order to escort the Princess back to her castle and collect his reward of 50,000 dollars. Unfortunatly for our poor anti-hero the princess is kidnapped by the leader of the barbarians, Diego(played by Raf Baldessare), and so The Stranger must rescue her. By the first hour of the film Anthony's character has been buRnt, hung up by his feet, beaten down and roasted like a pig until finally he takes up his trusty four barreled shotgun, some dynamite and a jar full of scorpions and decides to GET MEAN!
This is the fourth and final flick in "The Stranger" series and it is easily the weakest(have not seen "Stranger in Japan"), however it still manages to be entertaining and worth a view or two. In fact the only dull moment I can think of is when Anthony must go through some sort of magical quest through a cave. The scene is silly and unfunny and gets old quickly.
As far as acting goes Anthony is in his usual bad acting form(which mysteriously took a hike during the filming of "Blindman") but that is part of Anthony's charm and one wonders if he is really that bad or he just acts bad to get a laugh. Either way his hammy performance works!
There is also an inspired role by Loyd Battista as a crazy hunchback who fancies himself a great shakespearean actor!
The editing and action is sub-par as opposed to the usual Baldi film. Usually he combines fast paced editing with equally frenetic action sequences, but here his professionalism kinda takes a hike and it is missed. But it all sort of holds together some how mostly due to Anthony's performance as the lovable rogue.
It is a real shame this movie did poorly in the cinema. The intention was that if "Get Mean" brought in the dough there would be more sequels that featured The Stranger as a time traveler.
Worth a view.
