After making the lightweight Dustin Hoffman comedy, MADIGAN'S MILLIONS (1967), expatriate producer Sidney Pink fashioned this tongue-in-cheek western.
In the movie's prologue, a narrator tells us an obscure 1890s inventor, Merriweather Newberry, was overlooked by history as one of the movers and shakers who tamed the Wild West. In the one-horse town of Limerick, mining baron Bear Bullock (Guy Madison) rules the town's wimpy inhabitants with an iron fist, with the help of steely-eyed gunman Killer Kissick (Riccardo Garrone). The town leaders advertise for a sheriff, and one by one the respondents are shot down by Kissick.
All seems lost until Newberry arrives with his latest invention, a remote-controlled, full-size gunslinger robot called Bang Bang. Although Bang Bang can easily outdraw Kissick and his henchmen (in fast motion!), he frequently malfunctions. It's up to Newberry to rally the town's demoralized citizenry to rise up against Bullock.
Writer Howard Berk (aided by José Luis Bayonas) relies on wacky sight gags to carry the action, even when the story line eventually grows tedious. The acting is suitably broad and crowd-pleasing -- Tom Bosley pretty much carries the whole movie, but Garrone is delighftully wicked and Sandra Milo throws a lot of gusto into the role of Limerick's only liberated female, who carries on a Burton-Taylor sort of romance with Bullock. As Bullock, Guy Madison pokes fun the stolid personae he perfected in countless spaghetti westerns.
Producer Sidney Pink, who had a hand in some of the most interesting genre movies of the 1960s, claimed the making of THE BANG BANG KID as a thoroughly happy experience. The movie even finished shooting a week ahead of schedule, which made him even happier until he got into the editing room, where he discovered the movie ran 20 minutes too short. Pink and Berk came up with the extended prologue, described above, which was shot to bring the film to 80 minutes and therefore feature length.
In the movie's prologue, a narrator tells us an obscure 1890s inventor, Merriweather Newberry, was overlooked by history as one of the movers and shakers who tamed the Wild West. In the one-horse town of Limerick, mining baron Bear Bullock (Guy Madison) rules the town's wimpy inhabitants with an iron fist, with the help of steely-eyed gunman Killer Kissick (Riccardo Garrone). The town leaders advertise for a sheriff, and one by one the respondents are shot down by Kissick.
All seems lost until Newberry arrives with his latest invention, a remote-controlled, full-size gunslinger robot called Bang Bang. Although Bang Bang can easily outdraw Kissick and his henchmen (in fast motion!), he frequently malfunctions. It's up to Newberry to rally the town's demoralized citizenry to rise up against Bullock.
Writer Howard Berk (aided by José Luis Bayonas) relies on wacky sight gags to carry the action, even when the story line eventually grows tedious. The acting is suitably broad and crowd-pleasing -- Tom Bosley pretty much carries the whole movie, but Garrone is delighftully wicked and Sandra Milo throws a lot of gusto into the role of Limerick's only liberated female, who carries on a Burton-Taylor sort of romance with Bullock. As Bullock, Guy Madison pokes fun the stolid personae he perfected in countless spaghetti westerns.
Producer Sidney Pink, who had a hand in some of the most interesting genre movies of the 1960s, claimed the making of THE BANG BANG KID as a thoroughly happy experience. The movie even finished shooting a week ahead of schedule, which made him even happier until he got into the editing room, where he discovered the movie ran 20 minutes too short. Pink and Berk came up with the extended prologue, described above, which was shot to bring the film to 80 minutes and therefore feature length.