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A Fistful of Crash Town

So last night I watched A Fistful of Dollars, something I’ve intended on doing for some time. This is a film every Crash Town fan should watch. While the YGO Wikis are not completely accurate, one thing they do seem to have right is that Crash Town was heavily inspired by this iconic movie. There were so many things throughout the film that Crash Town referenced, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Let’s start with a brief summary of the film. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name arrives in the small town of San Miguel, where two rival gangs are locked in a war for control of the town. He arrives wearing a poncho and is accosted by several bullies. He takes them out and decides to pit the gangs against each other, which results in misunderstandings and bloodshed on both sides and eventually causes the death of the less powerful of the gangs. He has a showdown with the other gang leader in the town square to save his friend and successfully defeats him. With the town free, he heads on out to his next adventure.

Fans of Crash Town can immediately pick out references like the classic poncho, the warring gangs, and the town square showdown. There are many more.

Even the names themselves are references in some cases. The anime gives us Sergio, for the director Sergio Leone, and the game Over the Nexus gives us Clint, for our star. There is one other important name, and we’ll get into that in a bit.

Upon arriving in town, Clint asks which of the gangs is the most powerful. He is told the Rojo Brothers, and he sets about trying to join them with a show of his strength by killing the bullies from the rival gang who tormented him and his mule. He discovers the sadistic and lustful leader of the Rojo gang is holding a mysterious woman hostage, and later he is able to reunite her with her husband and son and get them safely out of town.

As with Crash Town, the more powerful and cruel gang is the one most widely developed. We see many instances of the Rojo Brothers’ sadism, including gunning down an entire military convoy trying to deliver some gold. By contrast, the sheriff John Baxter’s group is more mysterious and not as well-developed. Baxter certainly doesn’t seem to be a sadist, even if he isn’t strictly upholding the law. We’re told the Baxters are gun-runners, but we don’t see them engaging in criminal activities or shooting people down for no reason. They’re apparently participating in the war and hiring gunslingers, but judging from the Rojo gang’s attacks on them throughout the film, I would venture to say that Baxter is hiring men for self-defense and not to cruelly gun his enemies down in the streets. They certainly come across as more sympathetic, if either gang is so, and towards the end of the film the entire gang is massacred by the brothers. Baxter’s widow screams at them for shooting her husband and her son, as they were unarmed. She is then shot down as well.

Crash Town featured two brothers, Malcolm and Lawton. The movie has three. The movie opens with the most powerful and evil brother currently away, but he joins the action before long. This character is definitely the Lawton counterpart, despite what Crash Town does with his name.

And so we come to the third important name, the only character name from the movie that is retained for Crash Town. This evil brother’s name is Ramon. Of course, for Crash Town the name Ramon was switched and given to the John Baxter counterpart. Was this irony or complete seriousness? Baxter was the sheriff, the one possible force for law in town. The brothers muse at one point that the Baxters want peace in town. The name Ramon means “protector.” Instead of leaving the name with the Lawton character, where it would be a true irony, it was given to the one man who was standing in the way of a complete, totalitarian takeover of Crash Town. Ramon/Radley was indeed Crash Town’s protector until Kalin finally stepped up to the task himself and took Lawton down. Who knows how long Ramon held off the takeover before Kalin even arrived? As bad off as Crash Town was when Yusei got there, it became far worse after Malcolm and Lawton assumed total control.

Some may protest that Radley was part of the problem in town. Technically this is true, but the situation is not cut-and-dry. Radley’s Bunch is not as well-developed as Malcolm’s Crew and instead, they are much more mysterious. We never see their part of the dyne mine and we don’t know that they torture their miners like Malcolm’s Crew does theirs. Canon never says or shows this. For all we know, they may indeed be deliberately trying to protect the town as well as to make money from the mine.

It’s interesting that while Clint’s character is assaulted by members of Baxter’s gang, in Crash Town Yusei is cornered by Malcolm’s Crewmembers instead of Radley’s Bunch. Was this change deliberate? It certainly makes more sense, since Malcolm’s Crew is repeatedly shown to be bullies while Radley’s Bunch is not. And it makes Radley’s Bunch look more sympathetic than their counterparts, Baxter’s gang.

Since this is YGO, the entire gang doesn’t get wiped out when Malcolm and Lawton decide to assume complete control. But Radley does meet his fate similarly to John Baxter, when Lawton challenges him to a duel and then doesn’t let him get off one move, instead using effect damage to cruelly and painfully take him out on the first turn. The uncut version of this scene shows him being shot over and over by a Gatling gun-wielding Duel Monster. It is gruesome and horrifying and is very similar to some of the massacre scenes in A Fistful of Dollars. At the end of the round, Radley collapses unconscious.

Unlike poor Yusei, who is “befriended” by the traitorous Barbara, Clint’s character makes a genuine friend in the saloon owner. There doesn’t really seem to be a Barbara character in the film. The closest would be the woman Ramon is holding hostage out of lust. In Crash Town, Lawton certainly took a shine to Barbara, although there it was mutual (and the dub has it that they’re married).

Even the adorable boy West is represented in A Fistful of Dollars; the hostage woman Marisol’s son is likely whom West was based on. The child is always agonizing over not being able to see his mother and keeps trying to get over to her. Marisol, hence, becomes a female version of Sergio/Jordan, West and Nico’s father who becomes a prisoner in Malcolm’s sadistic part of the mine.

For the town square climax, Clint’s friend the saloon owner is abducted and held hostage, his arms strung above his head as he stands near a wooden pillar. Someone cracks a whip. This certainly brings to mind Lawton and Barbara tying up West and Nico to a pillar in the town square, and who could forget Barbara’s whip? Clint takes Ramon Rojo out during a climatic gun fight and he drops dead. It’s not quite as iconic as the moment where Lawton is defeated by Kalin and crashes to the ground, but at least it’s a relief. The friend is rescued and the film ends as happily as is possible considering everything that happened.

There are other parallels, such as that the Rojo Brothers like explosives just as Lawton does. At one point Clint’s character is captured and tortured by them, which could be thought of as a bit of a parallel with the mine and Malcolm’s Crew torturing the miners. There is an intense scene where he tries to escape their grasp. Earlier in the film, he also overhears the brothers plotting to kill him, paralleling that Malcolm’s true plan was to betray Yusei all along. We also have a live body being transported in a coffin when Clint hides in one.

All in all, this is an important piece of movie history that deserves to be remembered as a classic and as what launched both Clint Eastwood’s career and the spaghetti Western genre. Crash Town keeps its legacy alive and fresh. And for me personally, I am just so excited by the parallels running between John Baxter and Radley. Maybe things were deliberate, maybe not, but to me it looks like more possible evidence that Radley was indeed intended to quietly be considered the town’s first protector. Baxter having been the sheriff, and Radley’s original name Ramon meaning “protector,” and seeing how Crash Town fell apart without him there to push back against Malcolm, all says it loud and clear to me.