Search - Ace High on DVD

MPAA Rating: PG-13 Content Advisory: Violence, Not For Children Movie Release: 1967 DVD Release: 11/09/2004 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Edition: Special Collection Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 2 mins Studio: Paramount Members Wishing: 2 Genres: Western, Spaghetti Western

There isn't much disagreement as to whether this spaghetti western is styled after the Director Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood blockbuster, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Ace High, directed by Giuseppe Colizzi, and filmed in Almeria, Spain, is missing at least two ingredients that could possibly lift it up to its predecessor, and they're Eastwood and Colizzi. The plot fits: An outlaw Cat Stevens (Mario Girotti) is saved from the noose and is then hunted by his saviors when he goes back to crime. But Stevens is on a hunt of his own, pursuing three roamers who'd sent him to prison years before. ~ All Movie Guide

Eli Wallach - Cacopoulos
Bud Spencer - Hutch Bessy
Brock Peters - Thomas
Kevin McCarthy - Drake

Giuseppe Colizzi's Ace High (1968) never got much distribution in the U.S., at least compared with other spaghetti Westerns of its era, and certainly was never widely shown on television -- so its appearance on DVD in letterboxed form, recapturing its proper anamorphic widescreen image (2.35:1 with enhancements for 16 x 9 screens) and in clean sound (capturing Carlo Rustichelli's brooding, lyrical score very nicely) is a pleasant surprise. The movie also offers a solid cast of visiting American actors, including Eli Wallach as the roguish bandit Cacapoulos, and Brock Peters and Kevin McCarthy working among Italian Western habitues Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. The widescreen image is vital to appreciating what Colizzi was trying to accomplish, which seems mostly to imitate what Sergio Leone had done on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Hill subbing somewhat inadequately for Clint Eastwood as a man of fast guns and very few words, and Wallach doing his lovably wily bandit turn one more time, a bit more articulate and clever than Tuco from the Leone movie but otherwise just as charismatic and sympathetic. The image looks great in a rich, detailed, bright transfer -- which looks good on large-screen monitors too -- and the 122-minute movie has been given 16 chapters accessible through a simple menu that opens automatically on start-up. There are no bonus features apart from an optional mono French audio track and English subtitles. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide