Ace High

Cat Stevens and Hutch Bessy are about to leave with money taken from a banker when a third man appears: Cacopoulos. He robs them and disappears with it. But Cacopoulos does not spend the money on himself; he goes looking for the three men who once left him to hang and settles with them one at a time. Cat and Hutch follow. Giuseppe Colizzi directs. Terence Hill plays Cat, Bud Spencer plays Hutch, Eli Wallach plays Cacopoulos. It is the middle part of Colizzi's trilogy. The Hill and Spencer pairing was formed in these films and became the highest earning comic duo in Italian cinema; here their register has not yet turned fully to comedy and the western is still serious. Eli Wallach is the centre and this is one of the best known parts an American actor took in an Italian western; after The Good, the Bad and the Ugly he was identified with the genre. The circus section is the most unusual material: the scenes with Thomas the tightrope walker take the narrative outside the western entirely, which is rare in the form. Carlo Rustichelli wrote the music. Who it is for: viewers curious about spaghetti westerns and the beginning of the Hill and Spencer pairing. Who it is not for: it runs long, the plot is loose, and the revenge line and the comedy never quite fit together.