Comin' At Ya!

Comin' At Ya! (1981)
Dir. Ferdinando Baldi
Staring Tony Anthony, Gene Quintano, Victoria Abil, Ricardo Palacios

When a man's wife is taken from him on his wedding day, he goes after the brothers that kidnapped her. IN 3-D!!!!



This is a late spaghetti western, being made in the early eighties. The idea behind the movie was to make something in 3-D, and it reignited the format and lead to a bit of a resurgence of the format. Written by the Gene Quintano (who also plays the lead villain), the movie is a fairly straight forward Leone homage. But even if you didn't know that it was made to be shown in 3-D, it's pretty obvious from all the shots of things being dropped or thrown at the camera. Some of them aren't bad but some of them get tiresome. There's also a scene that includes all the kidnapped women being menaced by bats that get into the space where they are being held captive. The scene only exists to show the bat puppet moving towards the camera, and it goes on for a bit too long. But on the other hand there's a scene near the end of the film that homages the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West where the villians gang is waiting for the hero to arrive. They are sitting around doing things to past the time, like throwing knives or playing with a yo-yo, which means thing are being thrown at the camera. It's a fun little scene that takes advantage of being in 3-D.

The story is nothing special and kind of derivative of other films. Man's wife gets kidnapped. Man goes for revenge. He hunts down the men responsible, gets ambushed and injured, manages to escape and is able to achieve victory. But really it didn't matter cause it's a fun breezy movie. I complained about the bat scene, but I was still entertained by it. This is a fun movie that just kind of flies by thanks to its short runtime.

It's a cheesy B-movie, but it's a fun movie. It doesn't have to be high art for it to be good. The crew that made this set out to make a fun movie that used 3-D, and I'd say that they achieved that goal.