Brief Thoughts - LOLA COLT (1967) (a.k.a. The Black Tigress)

I’m not going to tell you that I think this Spaghetti Western is great. In fact, I don’t think it is actually very good at all, but I am glad that I was able to see it. The film has several points of interest starting (and almost stopping) with the American star Lola Falana in the title role. Miss Falana was a singer and dancer who got pulled before the camera to appear in a few movies and television shows over about twenty years. In the early 1960’s she was discovered by Sammy Davis Jr. and launched her successful musical career in 1965. Falana became a major star of Italian television in 1966 and cinema in 1967. In Italy, she learned to speak fluent Italian while starring in three movies and this is the first I’ve ever seen. The film is also known as The Black Tigress but that is a less effective title than Lola Colt, I think. Her character does serve to inspire reluctant townspeople to stand up to the local bad guy landowner but Tigress seems a little much.

 

Miss Falana is used in the film primarily for her beauty as she plays the leader of a troupe of showgirls on their way west. She also has three singing scenes which show off her vocal skills or at least her lip-synching ability. The songs in two cases are hilariously modern and out of place sounding like a couple of pop singles plucked right off the radio. As soon as the music started I laughed as the five members of the onstage band were missing at least four musical instruments audible on the soundtrack, unless there was a hidden drummer and horn section behind a barroom wall. Still, the songs were fun although I did begin to wonder what the other ladies she was travelling with actually did as part of the stage show.

 

The non-Lola parts of the film that I enjoyed were a couple of pretty well-done fistfights that felt surprisingly visceral. During these sequences the movie takes on a life it otherwise is missing. But other than that, the film is mostly a collection of standard western scenes scattered around the running time culminating in a gun battle that wraps things up happily. One small surprise is the fate of a barefoot urchin running around the town but that isn’t enough to make this more than a barely passable 77 minutes best left for the genre curious.