ARIZONA COLT is a fine-looking spaghetti western made during the big boom of the genre and at a time when the films had the budgets to make them look good. This does look very good and I was more than happy with Amazon Prime's print which is of a far better quality than most of the spaghetti westerns they show. This film features Giuliano Gemma as a delightfully amoral gunslinger who rescues a group of prisoners only to fall out with them over their subsequent plans.Gemma is a guy who's only in the game for the money and the women and I liked the edge to his character here. He was one of the genre's most familiar faces and there's little to dislike about him overall in this film. Fernando Sancho does another larger than life villain and is loud and boisterous which fits his character nicely. The story was written by the reliable Ernesto Gastaldi and directed by genre director Michele Lupo, who made interesting titles like GOLIATH AND THE SINS OF BABYLON, BUDDY GOES WEST, and THE WEEKEND MURDERS over his varied career.The main problem with ARIZONA COLT is the running time, which at two hours is just too long. There's too much foot-dragging here and thus some of the scenes start to feel more than a little repetitive and forced. After all, there are only so many gun fights and bar-room showdowns that you can fit into the running time. Cut half an hour off the running time and this would have been much more fun.

The Man From Nowhere aka Arizona Colt is a spaghetti western with solid performances from a great cast. The main players are Giuliano Gemma and Fernando Sancho, both of whom are great in this film, as always. Sancho, always the villain, is even more ruthless than usual in this outing. The lovely Rosalba Neri, another familiar spaghetti western face, also makes an appearance in the movie.Gemma, as Arizona Colt, can be likened to Bugs Bunny having some fun being the foil to Fernando Sancho and his gang of Elmer Fudds, but that doesn't make this a comedy western by any means. While there are many amusing parts, the body count is high, and there is a strong element of revenge.The music score is very good, with lots of spaghetti style, and the movie is filmed and directed well. The story takes some time to pull you in, but it does, and it is a good one.I am giving this one 7 stars mainly because I don't think it is as good as Gemma's Ringo movies, but that having been said, I still highly recommend this film. It has a lot going for it.

I really enjoy spaghetti westerns, so obviously I have seen a lot of examples of the genre. Though I haven't seen every spaghetti western made, I have seen enough so that I can say with confidence that "Arizona Colt" (a.k.a. "Man From Nowhere") is below average. I wouldn't say it's a TERRIBLE movie - it has some positive attributes. The scenery is nice, the production values and action sequences are acceptable, and Fernando Sancho makes a pretty good villain. However, the movie stumbles in two key areas. The first mistake is that the movie is very slow-going - they should have really increased the pace. The second mistake is that the movie lasts almost two hours, which is far past the breaking point. Had they edited down the script before filming began, these problems may not have happened, and we might have had a pretty good movie. But as it is, I can only recommend this particular spaghetti western to die-hard fans of Euro westerns.

Released on DVD here in the states as "The Man From Nowhere", this entry into the Western All'Italiana oeuvre features pretty boy Guiliano Gemma as the good, veteran character actor Fernando Sancho as the bad, and a disappointing script as the ugly.Arizona Colt can never quite figure out what it's trying to be. As a Hollywood western there would have been a few too many deaths and too strong a focus on destruction. As an Italian Western it takes itself too seriously and leans too heavily on wide tracking shots of the ol' west. There is some good humor, and the reveal how Arizona is going to take on a town full of baddies is very slick, but this movie is a series of good moments and an overall weak effort when considered as a whole.Rating: 16/40