Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a Spanish western comedy from 1984. That movie is "Yellow and the Fortress of Gold".
I'm gonna tell you, guys, the only reason why I bought this movie at one of my local video stores was because of it's title. Something about it just sorta leaped out at me so I decided to purchase a copy of it for myself and thus here we are.
Now, upon doing a little bit of research going into this movie, I can tell you guys a couple of things. First of all, even though the movie is technically a Spanish film, the movie is still done in English. So there's a good chance that this movie will probably be dubbed over. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but then again, considering this thing came out in the 80's, I'm gonna suspect that it probably won't be. But hey, it could still either be decent or perhaps even funny by how laughably bad the dub is. I don't know yet, but I'll find out shortly.
Also, you probably noticed the title and how it's worded with it's font and everything, this movie is trying to cash in on the success of "Indiana Jones". In fact, this movie came out the same year along with Indy's second film "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". Also, I'm looking at the cover of the movie right now and our main female character is also holding a whip, which...yeah, the subtlety is ever so cleverly hidden. Also also, I find it really hilarious how this movie already attempted to do a female version of Indy nearly 4 decades earlier until Disney tried it in 2023 when they attempted to replace Harrison Ford with a shoehorned in female character and tried to make her a mary sue. And no, I'm not using the term "girlboss" because it's so overused and I really don't like using that term anyways. I'm kinda old school when it comes to using terms that I grew up with, dammit.
Anyway, I'm getting way off topic here. My point is during that whole rant there, this movie already tried to do a female version of Indiana Jones and I'm curious to see how they pulled it off here. I don't know if it's going to be any good, but I'm gonna find out right now. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold".
2 minutes later
Wait, so on the very first wording of this opening text for our prologue, it says "In the last episode". Was there more to this than I didn't realize? Because when I did my small research on this movie, I don't recall a prequel movie/or series ever being made. I guess, maybe, this was meant as some sort of inside joke, but its still kinda odd to see those words at the beginning of your text based prologue. Perhaps maybe that's just me, though.
2 minutes later
And someone just fell off their horse and also the cliff. And damn, him hitting the cliff before being killed was actually pretty painful there. And the riders don't seem to care that one of theirs is dead. I will admit, that actually is a little bit funny. So, at least this movie's comedy is off to a decent start.
6 minutes later
OK...I've never seen someone have their face covered in some kind gold plating and then you can just chip it off like it's nothing. That certainly is a fucked up way to die, I'll say that much.
15 minutes later
All right, guys, this is starting bother me slightly. I don't know why this is happening, but for some reason, there's some kind of weird motion blur going on with the camera when it's moving. And it's been doing that, mainly for darkly lit scenes. I'll try to get more into it a little bit later on, but I'm gonna let you guys know right now that the camerawork is a little bit on the uneven side.
19 minutes later
OK, I have a question here. Admittedly, it's a stupid one, but I'll ask it anyway. So Pecos has left the poker table and says that he'll be right back after he meets his, uh, girlfriend, I guess, to get the gold nugget back that he lent to her. If he's not coming back to the poker table, why don't you just disqualify him and leave his winnings to forfeit? I admit, I've never played real poker, for actual money anyway, but I do know that if you decide to leave the table, you normally take whatever winnings left you have with you. Either that, or, like I said, just disqualify Pecos for being away from the table for too long. At least, that's what I would do anyways.
12 minutes later
OK, as much as this movie has been more on the dull side for the last while now, I will say that Flores shooting that girl out of nowhere was actually really kinda funny. So, I gotta give them a little credit there.
14 minutes later
OK, that's sorta new. I've never seen anyone put rattlesnakes inside a tumbleweed and just rolling them down the hill towards our heroes, who are currently in hiding. That certainly is a creative method, that's for sure.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. So, where exactly do I start here? Well, I guess I can let you guys know that the movie is just OK. It certainly isn't great, but I wouldn't say it's completely awful either. It sorta ranges in the middle here. So yes, the is kind of enjoyable. However, I personally don't see myself watching this movie a second time. Mostly because, the movie is sorta dull. I'll get to why later, but just to let you guys know that while I did kinda enjoy the movie, it's not enough for me to keep rewatching it on multiple viewings.
So anyway, let's go ahead and start this review off proper here. I'm gonna start with writing, specifically, I want to start with the humor first. Since this movie is labelled as a comedy, I feel like it's important to gauge on how well the humor is handled here. Now I will say that, unlike previous movies where they were suppose to be some sort of comedy but didn't really have a whole lot of laughs, this movie was able to get a couple of laughs out of me. Which is totally cool, because that's what comedies are suppose to do. And while most of the humor here doesn't exactly land, there were a couple of moments here where it was actually really funny. And the reason why I thought those couple of laughs got to me was because the timing of these particular moments came out of nowhere. Which is what makes the humor all the more funny. And if the movie did more of that, I would've loved the humor here. That being said, what they did get out for jokes and everything was still sorta funny. So, at least there's that.
However, it's here where I have to start picking apart the story. OK, I understand that this movie was not only trying to cash in on the success of Indiana Jones, it also was suppose to be a homage to serial films from way back in the day. In fact, at the very beginning of the movie, it shows a bunch of the kids in the theater kinda horsing around until the movie starts playing and they introduce our cast of characters with captioned texts, while the kids cheer the heroes and boo the villains. And that certainly is a rather nice touch. But I have a feeling that if you showed this to kids nowadays, and unless they were into westerns like I was back then, I'm not sure they would be that interested in it. Not just because they're into the next flavor of the month movie that's currently out, but the movie itself is, as I've stated a couple of times already, really kinda dull overall. And even for someone like myself who grew up watching westerns and kinda enjoyed watching the movie, even I found the movie to be rather dull at times. Which is saying a lot, personally speaking.
Now one of the reason why this movie is more on the dull side has to do with it's runtime. This movie clocks in at about 101 minutes long, and that is just way too long, even for a comedy. This movie has quite a bit of padding to it, and I feel like that they could've trimmed the movie down to about 15 to 20 minutes and it would've flowed better. To give you guys an example, our opening prologue has Flores and his men trying to enter the mountain where the gold is hiding. And that scene by itself takes up about 10 minutes or so. And if it didn't have that out of nowhere kill, I probably would've said that you could've cut the whole scene and you really wouldn't have missed much of anything. I feel like they could've just trimmed it down by about 5 minutes or so and, like I said, the scene could've flowed better.
As for our characters, well, I would love to tell you that Pecos Kid and Yellow Hair are the most interesting characters of the entire movie, however, I would only be half lying to you guys. Because of our two leading characters, Pecos is the more interesting of the duo. He actually has something resembling a likable personality that makes you interested in him. Yellow Hair, on the other hand, doesn't have that same luxury. Even when you eventually learn her origin story from some blind old guy, it still doesn't give you enough reason to care about her. She's really bland both in personality and in depth. And it just really made want to see more of Pecos rather than Yellow Hair because she's that bland. And our villains are no different. Our enemy general borders on being cartoonishly evil, while Flores doesn't speak because he's mute throughout most of the entire movie. In fact, not only is he more interesting as a villain, but he also has more screen time than our enemy general, who disappears throughout most of the entire movie until the end.
So, to summarize for you guys, the writing here kinda ranges being kinda average. It's not entirely a bad story. I mean, it's about our characters trying to find gold. There's not much to fuck up with that sort of plot. But at the same time, it's not really all that engaging either. Especially if you were trying to show this movie to younger kids, unless, again, they were raised on westerns like I was. But that's just more speculation on my part regarding the latter. Now, let's talk about the acting next. Now earlier, I theorized that since this movie was made in Spain, part of me felt like this movie was more than likely going to be dubbed, as how a lot of spaghetti westerns were like back when they were filmed in Europe during that time. But surprisingly, outside of maybe two or three actors who are dubbed over, most of everyone else here actually speaks English. And as for the acting itself, well, it actually is OK. None of it is great, mind you, but it's not exactly bad either, like how I was predicting earlier. The only actress who I think sorta fumbles is the one who's playing our titled character Yellow Hair. Her acting ranges on being rather wooden. And that, in part, has to do with the script that she was given. Since her character is really kinda dull, there was only so much that she had to work with, given the script and all. So I can't necessarily fault her performance entirely here.
Costuming here is pretty good. I will also say that the stuntwork here is actually really good. The best one, in particular, I would give to the stagecoach chase. I couldn't even begin to imagine how many takes they had to do in order to get that successfully. And I would be shocked if it was done in only one take. Either way, though, it's still a really good sequence, probably one of the best scenes in the entire movie. Special effects here are also decent. Given that this movie was filmed on a rather low budget, the filmmakers did as much as they could to make due with what they could for special effects. And I would say, for the most part, the special effects are rather decent for it's time.
But now, let's get to one of the big problems with this movie, and, for me, anyway, is gonna be a deciding factor on whether or not I can recommend this movie as a whole. One of the things that bothered me about this movie is the camerawork. Now, it's not like it's filmed poorly or that you can't see anything, but one thing that really bugged the shit out of me about it is the fact there's a lot of motion blur in this movie. It's especially noticeable whenever there's something being filmed over a dark spot. Because whenever an actor is moving themselves, you'll notice a blur that follows the actor's exact movements and it's gonna stick at you really quickly. And I thought to myself that maybe this was only an issue during the first third of the movie, but no, it's prevalent throughout the entire movie! The only time that you don't notice these issues is whenever the movie is shot during the daytime in a clear background, like the sky, for example. You don't notice these issues because it's not filmed during nighttime or whenever a character is standing behind a dark background of sorts.
There's one scene in particular that really stood out at me as it being an issue. And it's the scene where Yellow Hair is trying to break Pecos out of jail. Now there's an Indian who is kinda sort of an ally to Yellow Hair who also tries to help out. And it's here where the motion blur really starts to become an issue. So, the Indian is trying to sneak past a guard. And there's a large wooden door that he's trying to get to, which is also covered in shadow. The moment that our Indian steps inside the shadow, that's where the motion blur really comes into play because you see it move along with the actor, as he's busily sneaking around. And at one point, I swear to god, it looked like the actors were moving in slow motion! It looks so fucking jarring that I had to wonder what exactly would be the cause of this sort of thing to happen.
Now, I do have a few theories regarding that. The first one would be that it's just how it was made during filming. Which, I could see that as a possibility, although I do have to question that if there was so much motion blur in this movie, was that also intentional because other serial movies of the time had that sort of motion blurs as well? I don't know, because I haven't seen very many serial films, so that leaves me wondering there. Another theory could be simply because this was a technical issue on my end. The third issue could be that this might've been a slip up regarding it's new digital transfer. Because, according to the back of the DVD case, this movie had a new digital transfer from when it was being filmed with a 35mm camera. And somewhere along the transfer, these motion blurs started to occur and the people over at Rhino Home Video didn't want to mess up the transfer, so they didn't have any choice but to keep the motion blurs in. I don't know. Perhaps maybe I'm just thinking way too deep into this, but it's really damn noticeable to not make mention of. Because the motion blurs really bugged the shit out of me throughout most of the entire movie. And there's no way in hell that, if you ever decide to watch this movie for yourself on DVD, I guarantee that you'll notice it as well and they'll stick with you throughout it's 101 minute runtime.
So anyway, camerawork here, minus the motion blur, is halfway decent. Lighting here is good, as long as you're not filming anything with a dark background, because the motion blur will definitely rear it's ugly head in. Sound-mixing here is actually competent. And the score here is also decent. So, I'd say the technical stuff works OK for the most part.
Ultimately, guys, when everything is said and done, can I recommend "Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold"? Um...kinda, sorta. I can't entirely say no here, because the movie is still OK despite all of it's faults. I would say that if you're into westerns, or if you're somebody who has children that are also into westerns, then I would probably say go ahead and give this one a look. Just don't expect anything special here. Also, the movie is sorta dull, even for someone like myself who enjoys westerns. And even though I've already said this earlier, I'm not gonna be rewatching this movie again because of it's dullness. It just slightly outweighs it more than the enjoyment here. Which is unfortunate to say, because I was really curious about it, and wanted to see if it was actually any good. And well...it doesn't really meet those standards, at least for me, anyway. Now...I'm gonna go and watch another western. In fact, I kinda want to watch a western comedy, and I kinda want to see "The Villain" again. I haven't seen that one in quite a long time, so I'm gonna go and do that next after I get done typing this review up.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
