"Potato Fritz" or "Zwei gegen Tod und Teufel" or "Montana Trap" is a West German German-language film from 1976, so this one had its 40th anniversary last year. It is not too long of a film, runs for under 85 minutes not counting credits and is one of the longer works by Oscar nominee Peter Schamoni, neither one of his earlier nor later efforts. The cast is partially German, partially foreign. Hardy Krüger, almost 90 now, plays the title character and the other big name is Stephen Boyd, a Golden Globe winner for a true classic, but this film he made here came out around the time of his untimely death already. Then there's Rainer Basedow, Diana Körner, David Hess, so the cast sure had something to offer. And you will even find soccer professional Paul Breitner here for some reason, but his role is not big enough to really do damage. The writer is Austrian Paul Hengge, maybe one of the lesser known names attached to this project.
The title and poster give away that this is a Western film and this one is already from way past the great glory days of Winnetou in Germany. And as this one is at least as much about the comedy as it was about the drama (at least according to IMDb), it is quite a challenge as making a good film out of the two genres western and comedy is a huge challenge. I don't think they succeeded here. However, it was not a real failure either, so great (spaghetti) western fans can check it out and perhaps they will not be too disappointed. The physical appearance of the cast makes up occasionally for the flaws in story-telling, but the acting wasn't too great here either. These days, it is certainly fairly difficult to still get a hand on this film, but that's not too bad. If you skip it, you won't be missing that much really. The atmospheric take and the cinematography are also not as good as I hoped they would be and eventually the characters, no matter if good or bad, are just not memorable enough to stay in the mind and make an impact on the audience. I give this one a thumbs-down overall. Don't watch.
The title and poster give away that this is a Western film and this one is already from way past the great glory days of Winnetou in Germany. And as this one is at least as much about the comedy as it was about the drama (at least according to IMDb), it is quite a challenge as making a good film out of the two genres western and comedy is a huge challenge. I don't think they succeeded here. However, it was not a real failure either, so great (spaghetti) western fans can check it out and perhaps they will not be too disappointed. The physical appearance of the cast makes up occasionally for the flaws in story-telling, but the acting wasn't too great here either. These days, it is certainly fairly difficult to still get a hand on this film, but that's not too bad. If you skip it, you won't be missing that much really. The atmospheric take and the cinematography are also not as good as I hoped they would be and eventually the characters, no matter if good or bad, are just not memorable enough to stay in the mind and make an impact on the audience. I give this one a thumbs-down overall. Don't watch.