Left debut It was only a matter of time to wait for the missing stars from the sky, but the untalented Italian director Gianfranco Parolini will turn his attention to the Apennine westerns, just gaining popularity. He did this, however, not too successfully, somehow breaking away from the peplums, on which he essentially made a name for himself. The first such experience was the early "spaghetti" "Left Johnny West" (1965), following the famous proverb, which came out in a natural lump.
The main reason for the unimportant perception of the movie from Signor Parolini are two storylines, at first not in contact with each other, but clearly conceived with the intention of further merging them. Their emotional multipolarity, apparently designed to create in the viewer a constant feeling of tragicomic action, is too excessive, making some fragments perceived as stupid and unnecessary buffoonery. In general, this concerns part of the adventure of the three “sworn friends”, constantly bullying and mutating each other, which is the main part of their pastime.
Against this rather dubious background, the main events unfold concerning the two evil twin brothers performed by Adriano Micantoni and willy-nilly forced to confront them with the classic single hero Johnny West. Despite the obvious dramatic bias, it is not possible to properly submit it to the director due to the excessive primitiveness of the characters and their actions. Showing cruelty for the sake of cruelty is about the same kind as failed attempts to betray a certain tear in order to elicit empathy.
Since there is no point in showing outstanding acting in such conditions, you will not find it here. A group of actors, including the "wooden" Mimmo Palmaru, representing the main character, without a light, leaves the room, which makes it almost impossible to imbue the story told. Not much use from the Spaniard Roberto Camardiell, exploiting the usual image of a comical man, able to work in the picture above the class, and here producing the impression of ordinary clowning at the level of “fighting again, oh how fun.”
All the above problems make the climax of the film, in which all the main characters converge face to face, an indistinct mess, where it was never possible to qualitatively reduce intrigue, humor and sharpness. Without really investing in the work, Parolini concocted his first western of cheap entertainment, thereby adding a clumsy log to the common crucible of the emerging genre. Later, the director completely corrected, launching franchises about the cult Sabata and Sartan, but left-handed Johnny West was not destined to be in this company.
Nevertheless, the clumsy "Johnny West il Mancino" deserves indulgence in connection with the early year of release, contains elements later used in acclaimed tapes, such as "Django", and therefore can attract a connoisseur for one view.
5 out of 10