Dorado Films has released 1973's comedy Spaghetti Western, The Three Musketeers of the West (Tutti Per Uno...Botte Per Tutti, which Babel Fish translated for me as, "All For One...Blows For All"). A very mild, very loose reworking of Dumas' famous novel, The Three Musketeers of the West came out during the very last stages of the Spaghetti Western cycle (or Westerns All'Italiana), when comedy had overtaken and eventually choked the life out of the genre, and, when everything else failed to rejuvenate the form, martial arts elements were worked into the traditional All'Italiana plots (the genre that replaced Spaghetti Westerns in grindhouses and drive-ins all over the world). As such, The Three Musketeers of the West is a pretty childish outing, with lots of silly slapstick and broad mugging, which no doubt will appeal to kids or to genre completists.

In the peacefully, stinky Cheese Valley, a boisterous barn dance celebrates the announcement of Dart Clotheswater, Junior's ("Timothy Brent"/Giancarlo Prete) appointment to the fabled Texas Rangers. After receiving gifts such as a double-barreled shotgun, a hollowed-out Bible with a brick in it, and a particularly smelly green cheese, Dart saddles up his obstreperous mule General and sets off to join up with his troop. But on the way, he happens to break bread with Riche LeDuque (Eduardo Fajardo), the president of a New Orleans bank - a fact that upsets Dart who believes financiers like LeDuque - and their gold - are the causes for the revolutions happening south of the border. LeDuque, wary of the crusading Dart, and believing he may be an undercover agent for the U.S. (who has ordered all gold shipments to Mexico stopped), orders twin assassins to kill Dart (they fail, obviously).

Later, Dart meets Dr. Alice Fergussen (Karin Schubert), who is taking her heavily-laden ambulance into Mexico to fight a plague outbreak. Dart thinks the wagon is a little too heavy by the looks of the deep ruts it's cutting in the desert, so he enlists the aid of his father's friends, "The Inseparables," to track down the ambulance. Mac Athos ("George Eastman"/Luigi Montefiori), Aramirez (Leo Anchoriz), and Portland (Chris Huerta) have been drinking and gambling and eating for two years...on credit...at Fort Delivery when Dr. Fergussen and Dart arrive, so it takes some persistent prodding by Dart to get the lazy, washed-up mercenaries involved in his scheme - a scheme that involves finding some hidden treasure, and stopping the flow of cash to President Ortega's operations against the revolutionaries.

SPOILERS ALERT!

I'm certainly no expert on the Spaghetti Western genre, but I would imagine the people that enjoy Leone's work and Corbucci's (Sergio, that is), the fans that enjoy the surrealistic, hyperkinetic violence of films like Django and A Fistful of Dollars, probably don't take too kindly to films like The Three Musketeers of the West (directed by Sergio's brother, Bruno, who ironically penned, among other Westerns, nasty Django). I only saw a few of the more popular examples of the genre in theatres when I was a little kid (a Leone triple feature once, and later, a Trinity double feature that seemed to go on forever), and except for some of the signpost titles in the genre I've caught sporadically over the years, most of the 600+ titles that make up the core All'Italiana oeuvre are unseen to me. I don't have enough of a background in either sub-set for a preference (I've enjoyed both, actually). The Trinty farces in particular are bones of contention with enthusiasts of the genre because their overwhelming popularity, which temporarily staved-off the death of the genre, caused a glut of slapstick Spaghettis to be produced, leaving behind the darker, more somber, more nihilistic earlier examples of the cycle. Eventually, with the international successes of martial arts films (courtesy of Bruce Lee), horror films and giallos, and urban thrillers (initiated by big-budget successes like Bullitt and The French Connection and Shaft), the Spaghetti Western ran its course and faded out by the mid-70s.

Certainly, The Three Musketeers of the West, by its date alone, falls into this final phase of the genre. But if a viewer was unaware of its release date, he would still know immediately that this is a long way from Django. Gone are the whipflash gun fights (replaced by Three Stooges-like face slapping), the almost supernaturally-possessed anti-heroes (replaced by goofy clown adventurers), and the dark, grimy, gritty atmosphere of simmering violence (replaced by an absurdist, sunny disposition). If it weren't for the gratuitous shot of Karin Schubert getting out of her tub stark naked, The Three Musketeers of the West would get a "G" rating with no problem: a Spaghetti Western for the whole family to enjoy.

A little bit of everything is thrown into The Three Musketeers of the West's plotting and scripting, giving it a hodge-podge feeling that doesn't work against its own picaresque structure. While Richard Lester's farcical The Three Musketeers (released the same year) keeps the novel's same plot set-up of having d'Artagnan be challenged simultaneously to duels by Athos, Porthos and Aramis, Corbucci has Dart as the instigator, causing grief for the three "inseparables," pushing them until they all gather together to give him a fight. Only then do they learn that Dart was using them to dispatch all of the Doctor's personal bodyguards, so as to get closer to the suspected gold. Once this set-up is in place, The Three Musketeers of the West then combines elements of "Mexi-Westerns" (the subplot of revolution down in Mexico, fueled by smuggled gold), "Circus-Westerns" (where we literally have a circus troop, complete with clowns, battling our heroes on a runaway train, in addition to other elements from that subgenre, including acrobats and sleight-of-hand displays: the great card sequence with Mac Athos), along with obvious nods to the Trinity films (fast-motion slapping and punching), an epic "pie" fight with stinky, running cheese right out of Laurel and Hardy, some patty-cake shenanigans from Hope and Crosby, and even an opening ode to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with frontier dancers leaping all over the place.

Considering the episodic nature of the script, action set-pieces dominate, and for the most part, they're well done. The big saloon brawl is fun, while the final train battle is quickly staged, as well (one of the best jokes comes when a tiny clown/villain jumps into Dart's arms; he's rocked to sleep like a baby before he growls in a deep voice, "Let me out!" as he's locked in a trunk). Dart's fight with the twin Black Barts was too clumsy and drawn-out to fit in, while the central martial arts sequence was manic, but not particularly distinguished. The obviousness of including this scene in the hopes of elevating the box office is all too apparent when the viewer notices it's totally unmotivated in the script - and then dropped out-of-hand after it's over (we expect the Asian hero who helped out the boys to continue on with them in their journey, but he's left behind). At the opening of the film, there's a title card thanking Union Film Corp. of Hong Kong for the scenes shot in Taipei, but watching this one sequence, it looked like it could very well have been shot on a small, cramped city street at the credited Cinecitta Studios, where the rest of the movie was filmed. Did the producers actually go to Taipei? I don't know, but if they did, they didn't get much bang for their buck up on the screen. Other story elements seemingly come out of the blue (I love the dirty, smelling mountain men, led by jabbering Carlo Rustichelli's Groby, who squawks like Woody Woodpecker, and who has a morbid fear of getting washed), and the film comes off breezy for that fact (any potential political meditations on revolutions are left strictly at the door). While not on a plane with the Trinity films (it doesn't have that manic, transcendent feel those films had, nor is "Timothy Brent" anywhere near as charismatic as Terence Hill), The Three Musketeers of the West is light and goofy and innocuous, juggling enough disparate balls in the air to keep your attention from set-piece to set-piece.

The DVD:

The Video:
Dorado Films presents an anamorphically-enhanced, 2.0:1 widescreen transfer of The Three Musketeers of the West. Overall, the quality isn't bad for a film I can't imagine anyone thought would be around 35 years later. Scratches and print damage are evident, with sometimes faded color and a contrasty look to a few of the sequences. The authoring of the transfer, though, isn't bad, with compression issues kept to a minimum. Not bad, considering the obscurity of the title (and the fact that better known Spaghettis, such as the Trinty films, still haven't been released with decent widescreen DVD transfers).

The Audio:
Most of the actors mouth English (even though the film is overdubbed), and all the signs are in English (even in the Italian language version), so I'm assuming this was originally intended with an emphasis on the English-language market. The English 2.0 stereo soundtrack has its fair share of pops and hiss, but again, it's surprisingly strong considering the source. There are alternate Italian and Spanish 2.0 stereo tracks, but anyone looking to find differences with the "original" Italian soundtrack had better speak Italian: there are no English subtitles.

The Extras:
There's an alternative take for the bathtub scene, taken from a full-screen video dub by the looks of it, that shows stacked Karin Schubert getting out of her bath full clothed in a corset (???). Actually, that discretion would be more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the film; the nude scene, while welcome, seems out of place in the "G"-rated The Three Musketeers of the West (Schubert has a terrific body, but man, those are the coldest, meanest, hardest eyes I've seen on an actress in a long time).

Final Thoughts:
Easy to take. I don't know where The Three Musketeers of the West stands in the pantheon of comedy Spaghetti Westerns, but viewed on its own, it's an enjoyable piffle. Enough weird characters come and go to keep things interesting, and the set-pieces show enthusiasm (if not skill every time out). And Dorado Films did a good job with the transfer for a genre notoriously mistreated on video. I recommend The Three Musketeers of the West.