For forty years (oops, revealed my age, oh well), I have been trying to track this down. I first saw this film at age twelve, in a drive in theater, on a double bill with (I think) a re-release of "The Great Race". Historical note: the version I saw was dubbed, not subtitled (I long thought it Italian in origin); the tinting was not sepia with yellow highlights, it was just glaring yellow; and it was called "The Lemonaid Kid" not "Lemonaid Joe" (hence part of the difficulty tracking it down). (Since this release title is reminiscent of "The Lemondrop Kid", I can imagine paranoid lawyers at MGM giving this film's release a lot of hassle, which may explain how it got so buried.) I thought it the funniest thing I had ever seen and that impression stuck with me as I grew older and developed a taste for the more absurdist and aggressive style of comedy, e.g., the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, etc. i knew I had seen something very special in "Lemonaid", but found no references to it in movie catalogs like the Maltin book, and nobody who knew films seemed to know anything about it - and I come from Rochester, NY, home of the second largest collection of film in the country, the Dryden-Eastman collection. People there know film. But nobody knew this film.
This film had a major impact on a very young man and changed his taste in comedy forever, and perhaps changed all of his perceptions, insofar as humor is one of the most important responses we make to the world. That says a lot for the power of this film. I certainly hope another viewing will justify my warm memories of it.
Note added August 26, 2009:
Well, I finally found it - it is currently available in 10 chapters at Youtube.
It is not only everything I remember it for, but far more - one of the wildest visual comedies of its era and one of the sharpest satires I have ever seen.
The only weakness is the ending - while it makes its point, it's too blunt and too easy.
But the rest of the film is basically Brecht-Weill remaking "Support Your Local Sheriff" (which hadn't been made yet, of course) - absolutely incredible mix of pop culture and art-house comedy styles, as unforgettable now as it was 40 years ago (well beyond mere 'camp,' it hasn't aged a bit), decidedly one of a kind.
(PS - I've read Leone fans wondering if this film references "fistful of Dollars" - oh, no - Leone, Corbucci, and other Italian directors were almost certainly influenced by this.)
