One of the more fascinating people to rise out of the spaghetti western craze that launched in the second half of the 1960s is Tony Anthony, an American actor and former pop singer who became allied with Allen Klein, the famous music producer (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc.) who also launched the first midnight movie, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo. Anthony made something of a splash with three MGM-released westerns, A Stranger in Town, The Stranger Returns (aka A Man, a Horse, A Gun), and The Silent Stranger, which was enough for Klein's ABKCO theatrical releasing arm to handle two Anthony projects, the surreal counterculture menage a trois tale ComeTogether and the fascinating, Zatoichi-inspired western, Blindman (which were produced by and co-starred Ringo Starr, respectively). In America, Anthony is now best known for launching the short-lived '80s 3D theatrical craze with Comin' at Ya!, one of the last spaghetti westerns widely released in America, and his last film to date, the 3D adventure Treasure of the Four Crowns. 
Get Mean, was made halfway through that decade and found him saddling up as the Stranger one last time. We first see the Stranger, a wry and often comic character, tied up at the wrists being dragged behind a horse through rocky terrain, with a giant mysterious crystal ball popping up nearby and then being caressed by a strange woman who seems to have a hand in his mystical destiny. Eventually the horse drops dead after depositing him in a nearby town where the villagers offer him a stash of 50 grand in gold for a very special mission. The present heir to their people, Princess Elizabeth Maria (Spanish horror vet Lorys), needs to be escorted to Spain to help overthrow the barbarian Viking invaders, and the locals are being suppressed by a horde of Moors who like to beat up our hero to the accompaniment of jaunty country music. Cue some animation as the Stranger and the 
Princess cross the ocean via steamer to Europe, where they wind up in Moor territory with an approaching barbarian horde on the horizon (complete with a sassy fey adviser, played by Anthony's brother Dreyer, who spits out bon mots like "She's not a princess, she's an ill-bred bitch!"). Soon it's one adventure after another as the Stranger comes across a gold treasury guarded by ghosts, gets covered in black tar and pursued by an frisky bull, tangles with a cursed necklace called the Scorpion's Sting, crosses paths with a hunchback named Sombra (Battista) obsessed with Richard III, and dispenses witty insults like "You're worse than trash. You're garbage!" 
piling on seemingly every nutty adventure element it could think of regardless of petty issues like appropriateness of period or locale. (Why they didn't add some rampaging Zulu warriors is anyone's guess.) Anthony's sleepy-eyed, laconic line delivery can be something of an acquired taste, but he's in fine form here grounded all the insanity, which is accompanied by a peculiar, minimal harmonica and string score by Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera, the composing trio who went on to Lucio Fulci's The Psychic and Silver Saddle before they all went solo.
of a mystery figure since the '80s given his absence from the screen and lack of any substantial interviews, so it's gratifying to see him turn up here for some very welcome, valuable extras. Moderated by Severin Films' David Gregory, the film's audio commentary features Anthony, "presenter" and executive producer Ron Schneider, and co-writer and actor Batista chatting about the film shortly after the restoration premiere at the Cinefamily in Los Angeles. It's a very business-oriented chat at times but there are some great anecdotes about shooting in Spain and 
going through the dubbing process, with a lot of discussion of the film's late director, Ferdinando Baldi, who also worked with Anthony on Blindman and Comin' at Ya! with other credits including Nine Guests for a Crime, Terror Express, and The Sicilian Connection. 