Robin Hood, Arrows, Beans and Karate (1973)

Robin Hood, Arrows, Beans and Karate (1973)

 

Starring: Dean Reed, Chris Huerta, Iwao Yoshioka, Alfredo Mayo, Fernando Sancho
Director: Tonino Ricci

I went on a buying spree at one of my favorite online Brazilian DVD vendors of obscure movies back in August. I ended up buying some movies for my Halloween marathon, a few Jet Li movies that I needed in my collection, and a handful of Westerns. There was no unifying theme to the westerns: I bought a couple dealing with Mormons, a John Wayne favorite, the only good sequel to The Magnificent Seven from what I've read, and this one. The movie certainly looked obscure, and a little-known Spaghetti Western seemed like a great choice for a movie I could watch and supply the internet with a review of, so I threw this in the shopping cart along with the others.

RHABAK is an Italian/Spanish co-production (the version I watched was dubbed in German with Portuguese subtitles), so I guess you could call it a Spaghetti/Paella Western. It's also a comedy and a martial arts movie, although it certainly fails at the former. The story is pretty simple. There are two inept bandits named Sam (Dean Reed of The Corsairs) and Buddy (Chris Huerta of City of the Lost Children) who are practically starving to death. They try to join an order of Catholic monks in order to get food, but the experience only puts them in contact with another thief named Colonel Quint (Alfredo Mayo - doing a third-rate impression of Lee Van Cleef's character from For a Few Dollars More). Colonel Quint is hired by the town's local banker, Morgan, to rescue his daughter from a gang of Mexican bandits led by Espartero (Fernando Sancho of Return of the Evil Dead). Quint enlists the help of Sam and Buddy to get the daughter back.

Quint's first plan is to have an old friend counterfeit the ransom money and give it to Espartero. To that end, the three have to save the Goldenhand brothers from the noose. Also to be executed that same day is an effeminate Japanese cook named Mokaiko (Iwao Yoshioka, who also showed up in 7 Hours of Violence), condemned for killing and cooking the sheriff's dog. A big fight breaks out at the execution and our three heroes rescue both the Goldenhand brothers and Mokaiko, the latter of whom starts following Buddy around as if he were his master. When the counterfeit plan goes awry--the lead counterfeiter gave Abraham Lincoln a bald head--they decide to trick Espartero into leaving his stronghold so they can get Baby Morgan out themselves.

The movie's certainly not very funny, nor is it very entertaining. What sets it apart from most other films of the time is that there is practically no gunslinging in the movie. None. All of the action revolves around hand-to-hand combat. There are three traditional Western brawls (one at a saloon, one a restaurant, and one at the bandits' hideout) and three martial arts sequences. The brawls are energetic and well-mounted, with lots of people being thrown onto/through tables and getting bashed with chairs. Then there are the karate sequences:

1. In the first fight, Mokaiko fights his employer, Mr. Chen (the owner of the Chinese restaurant). They get into an argument as to what is better, kung fu or karate. The two trade blows for a minute or so before Mokaiko proves that karate is better. The choreography isn't bad for what appeared to be a European film with no Hong Kong input whatsoever. It's certainly better than your average Jimmy Wang Yu arm-flail-a-thon.

2. In the second fight, Mokaiko fights a bunch of hunters, including a guy in a coonskin cap. Mokaiko can kick fairly well, and the choreography retains the right amount of energy, despite his not fighting anyone who has a chance in hell of winning. The scene preceeding the fight is interesting, since it establishes just how much of a bad-a** Mokaiko is supposed to be: He cuts down a tree with a his karate chops, and then karate chops a rock until sparks start flying, allowing him to start a fire. It's goofy, that's for sure, but kind of interesting.

3. At the end, Mokaiko shows up and beats the [crap] out of the bandits. The choreography is about on par with what I saw in Sonny Chiba's The Streetfighter's Last Revenge, although the camerawork is often too close to Yoshioka to let us see what he's doing.

But really, unless you have some sort of burning desire to see every martial arts-themed Western ever made, you're better off just skipping this.

And there are no arrows in the film, either. The Portuguese and Italian titles (translated as "Karate, Punches and Beans") are lot more accurate.