19th century. Englishman Thomas Moore arrives to the United States to inherit a real estate from his late father. His stagecoach is robbed by three men wearing bandit scarves: Bull, Monkey and Joe. Later, when they meet again and Moore tells him who his father was, the three bandits become his friends since they worked for his father. However, criminals want to chase them away and take their land. Moore falls in love with a beauty from the nearby town, Candida, but a rough ranch administrator, Morton, wants to marry her, so he beats up Moore. Bull, Monkey and Joe train Moore, who becomes skillful enough to win against Morton in a shooting duel, and thus Candida stays with Moore.
E.B. Clucher's third cooperation with comedian Terence Hill, "Man of the East" is a fun western comedy, but it doesn't have a single unforgettable joke as did their first two films, "They Call Me Trinity" and "Trinity is Still My Name". As is the case with Italian 'Spaghetti Westerns", even comical ones, the Italian film crew again pretends to be somewhere in the Wilde West of the United States while never setting foot off Europe (in this case, the exteriors of the Plitvice Lakes). The meandering story is all over the place, not really able to decide what its plot tangle is, but Hill's physical jokes and Clucher's sense for comedy manage to carry this (overlong) film. Some jokes really do work: for instance, bandit Monkey is introduced behind bars in a prison, stealing money from the pocket of the prison guard (!) behind his back. His friend, Bull, is introduced as a mute worker at a stagecoach station, but suddenly speaks up in defiance as two bounty hunters sitting at the table badmouth his late friend, an Englishman, calling the latter a "bastard". Hill isn't in top-notch shape and is rather "subdued" as the late Englishman's awfully polite son, which works badly for him in the rough Wild West. In one of the most insane gags, after some criminals wanted to buy off their land and house, Hill's character Moore picks up some rubbery molasses from the ground, pressing it with his fingers, saying how the soil here is very fertile and that they could plant a lot of seeds here and expect a god harvest, but then Bull tells him he is actually holding horse's manure in his hand. The concept of the story that Moore should stop being polite and become a "tough man" is misguided, yet the actors all are fine, especially Yanti Somer as Candida, Moore's love interest, the opening song is catchy, the running gag involving the two bounty hunters always forgetting about the third member of the bandits who sneaks up behind them is amusing, as is the allegorical final scene about the end of the Wild West.
Grade:++
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