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was followed by the best of the trio, Fort Yuma Gold (1966), an entertaining Civil War-set Spaghetti that has a similar atmosphere (roving bands of guerrillas, ruined towns) to Leone’s The Good , the Bad and the Ugly , though obviously on a lower budget. Here, Gary Hammond (Gemma) must deliver a warning despatch to the gold reserve at Union Fort Yuma before a gang of renegade Confederates infiltrate the stockade. It was followed by Wanted (1967), a more pedestrian tale of Sheriff Gary Ryan (Gemma) trying to expose a counterfeit branding ring. All three feature a strong central relationship between Gemma and a woman. Female characterisation was never a great strength of Spaghettis, but these films (especially the first two) make a commendable effort. Many Spaghettis didn’t bother with women and those that did made a pretty poor job of depicting them with anything more than cardboard conviction – epitomised by Gemma’s love interest in Fort Yuma Gold , a dance-hall girl named Connie Breastfull.
    Gemma’s character is always a good man, forced through circumstance to become responsible for other people’s lives. In two of the films he must clear his own blackened name; in the other he embarks on a mission that will save hundreds of lives. Gemma is an appealing hero, and the excellent villains (Cressoy, ex-muscleman Dan Vadis or Serge Marquand) and imaginative music (by Gianni Ferrio, sometimes in collaboration with Morricone or Alessandroni) ensured that the series was more interesting than run-of-the-mill Spaghettis. One Silver Dollar is so called because the scriptwriters used the cliché of the hero’s life being saved by a lucky coin in his breast pocket. The one aspect Ferroni did borrow from Leone, however, was the fact that the hero got tortured at some point in the movie (in Yuma he’s even temporarily blinded), making his vengeance all the more sweet.
The Verdict
     
    One Silver Dollar was overly praised in Italy for its realistic depiction of the post-Civil War South – which is as cliché-ridden in this movie as in any Hollywood attempt, complete with Southern belle. But it set Gemma up nicely for the first ‘Ringo’ film, A Pistol for Ringo , which appeared the following year.
Seven Guns for the MacGregors (1965) 
     
    Directed by : Franco Giraldi
    Music by: Ennio Morricone
    Cast : Robert Woods (Gregor MacGregor), Leo Anchoriz (Santillana), Fernando Sancho (Miguel), Agatha Flory (Rosita)
92 minutes
     
Story
     
    A family of Scottish horse ranchers live with their seven sons on their secluded homestead. When the sons take their horses to market, they have them stolen by a gang of Mexican bandits in league with a local sheriff. The sons set off to try to recover the herd and Gregor (the cleverest of the brothers) infiltrates a Mexican gang, led by Santillana. Gregor dupes the bandits out of some gold, but they capture him and his girl Rosita. She tells Santillana where the brothers and the gold are hiding, but Gregor manages to save his siblings just as they are about to be executed. The bandits surround them and all seems lost until Rosita arrives with a rescue party, who save the day and rout the bandits, leaving the MacGregors rich.
Background
     
    This is the first successful comedy Spaghetti and the best Italian Western directed by Franco Giraldi (who also used the pseudonym Frank Grafield). Giraldi was Leone’s assistant director on A Fistful of Dollars , while one of the scriptwriters on Seven Guns for the MacGregors was the talented Duccio Tessari.
    The violence of Giraldi’s film recalls some of the more brutal moments of A Fistful of Dollars , but the humorous narrative, parodic performances and slapstick fistfights lighten the mood. At one point, a gringo is dragged alive through a fire, but the moment of horror is offset by the Mexican torturer moaning that gringos are ‘much too soft’. A more interesting plot twist is when Gregor joins Santillana’s band (like Eastwood in For a Few