Original subtitles

"Get three coffins ready."

If you use the term "spaghetti western" when speaking to your average Joe,

chances are he's not going to know what you're talking about.

Is it some kind of Texan take on the Italian dish?

Well, not to spoil the surprise or anything, but for you average Joes out there, it's a film genre.

Specifically, it's typically an Italian sub-genre of the once-dominant western.

While these films had their heyday between the mid-60s to 70s, many people don’t realize that

these films completely redefined the western genre as we know it.

They were hugely popular in Europe, and there were a lot of them.

By a lot of them, I’m talking somewhere around 500 different films.

Before the advent of the Spaghetti Western, westerns were stereotyped as happy,

wholesome films where the good guy was good and the bad guy was bad.

In films like the highly influential The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, however,

the typical western cliches were subverted. And the genre that started as subversive

with bounty hunters as morally grey heroes took over the western mythos.

That’s a big reason why I find these films so fascinating.

They completely changed and, as a result, kind of killed westerns.

I grew up watching the Dollars Trilogy films and started delving

into the spaghetti western genre as a teenager.

These movies maintain a significant influence

on me. But they also maintain an influence on all kinds of media over 50 years later.

I am making this list because,

while the Spaghettis have their devoted fans, they’re more or less a lost art.

Most people in the U.S. don’t know a lot about these films, save the ones I’ll be discussing on

the first tier of the iceberg, and, even then, the famous ones aren’t as popular as they used to be.

I also wanted to make this iceberg because this genre has a super interesting history

and many of its prime figures overlap with one another, as you’ll find out.

As for the actual content of the iceberg, I’ll be covering notable films, actors, directors,

and other intriguing points within the genre.

Now for some housekeeping.

There is a lot to cover on this list,

and I feel that I barely scratched the surface of this topic in some ways.

Like I said, there’s somewhere around 500 spaghetti westerns and

information about a lot of them, even the more well-known films, is scarce.

There’s also misinformation and uncertainty,

and most of these films are over or almost 50 years old.

A lot of the people behind them are dead.

And it doesn’t help that these are foreign films, so, as a filthy

GRINGO

accessing information was difficult at points.

With the information I did gather, it was hard to decide what was worth including.

So if you want to learn more about something,

I highly recommend you check out the websites and documentaries I am going to credit in a moment.

Also, for you spaghetti fans, if I don’t mention your absolute favorite western of all time that is

so totally epic and underrated, please just leave a comment and, if I get enough recommendations,

I might make a second iceberg in the form of an amendment to this one or totally new one.

I covered a lot of great topics though, and I want this to be a video that veteran

fans and people who have no idea what these movies are can enjoy.

Additionally, I want to be clear that I am going to be injecting this iceberg with a lot of memes

and jokes so if you’re expecting something super serious, this is not the place to be.

I’ll also talk about my research process at points and,

if I have seen the film I’m talking about, I will give a kind of mini review on it.

If my commentary doesn’t interest you, I have uploaded the iceberg itself to Imgur.

As long as you credit me and link to this video,

you’re free to upload the iceberg wherever you like.

So if you’ve found this video and discovered that someone has uploaded

my iceberg and claimed it as their own, please let me know or call them out on it.

I’m not worried about where this iceberg ends up but if there’s one thing I want,

it’s the bare minimum acknowledgment that I made this thing. All right, rant over.

My last disclaimer is that, I’m gonna level with you,

my dear viewers, and say the best films on this list are within the first two tiers.

But even some of the best films are only on par with your average B-movie.

If there’s a film in a lower tier that I think is worth checking out, I’ll make a point of it.

But, like most media, it’s safe to say that the well-known ones are usually the best.

Trust me, there are some amazing films on here, though, and, regardless of whether you are a huge

western fan, a film buff, or not even that big into movies, you should check some of these out.

Now, I want to endorse a few documentaries that I used in my research:

The first is Western, Italian Style–a 1968 documentary that is narrated by

recurring spaghetti western actor Frank Wolff and features interviews

with directors Enzo G. Castellari, Sergio Corbucci, and Sergio Sollima–,

The Spaghetti West–a 2005 documentary that

details the history of the genre with several important figures–,

The Leone Style–a short documentary that focuses on director Sergio

Leone’s techniques specifically in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly–,

and, if you want to check out some films (after watching my video, of course) but aren’t sure

where to start, I recommend you watch YouTuber kubricklynch’s “A Beginner’s Guide to Spaghetti

Westerns” as he goes over some of the significant films in the genre and analyzes them as a whole.

These and other documentaries are linked in the description.

Finally, just to give credit where credit is due,

I used three main websites when it came to my research.

These sites are the Spaghetti Western Database,

Westerns… All’Italiana, and Once Upon a Time in a Western.

I wouldn’t have found 75% of the things I did if it wasn’t for these pages. So,

massive, MASSIVE thank you to all the users and contributors on those sites.

“Now, we start.”

There’s no better place to start this iceberg than the Dollars movies.

These three films set the stage for all the spaghetti westerns that followed them.

They are by far the most influential films within the genre.

And thanks to them, the careers of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef,

Ennio Morricone, and many others took off.

The films center around the legendary Man with No Name, an iconic character in the truest sense.

Well, he was technically never meant to be seen as the same character,

nor were the films intended by their director to be a linked trilogy.

But the films are called the Dollars trilogy because, well,

the first two films have “Dollars” in their titles and each film is more or less about the

Man with No Name trying to make a fortune the only way he knows how: cold-blooded killing.

I guess it's not so cold once you consider that

all the people he kills are far more ruthless than he is.

There’s not much more to say about these movies because you should experience them on your own.

I would say they’re all essential viewing if you like film in general.

At the very least, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly certainly is.

All three of these movies have excellent soundtracks, cinematography, stories, and acting.

When it comes to dubbing, compared to most spaghetti western dubs,

these movies have the best ones in my opinion.

Please, if you haven’t watched any of these yet, do so.

I was originally going to leave the Man with No Name in the Dollars trilogy part as a quick

reference. However, he's such a notable character that I decided to give him his own section.

As I’m sure most of you know,

the Man with No Name is played by Clint Eastwood in all three Dollars movies.

Most will recognize him thanks to his poncho, hat, cigarillo, and squinty eyes.

What's funny about The Man with No Name is he is never called

The Man with No Name in any of the Dollars movies.

In A Fistful of Dollars, he is called Joe.

In For a Few Dollars More, he’s Manco.

And in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, he's named Blondie.

The No Name moniker was given to him after the films were released as a way

to market the Dollars trilogy as that: a trilogy, instead of three separate movies.

I would say every major character in the spaghetti westerns that came

after the Dollars movies are more or less modeled on the Man with No Name.

Most of the time, they're like copies of the character.

Strangers of few words who ride into town seeking something.

Either that or they're direct subversions of the character.

But I won't get too much into that right now.

Naturally, the Man has inspired many characters in other media,

whether that's books, anime, film, or even games.

If you’re already familiar with spaghettis, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t talk

about things like the cinematography of the Dollars movies more in-depth.

That’s because I wanted to save it for this section where I will

be discussing the films’ director Sergio Leone.

Leone was born in Rome and began his film career in the late 40s

as an assistant director and screenwriter.

His first stint as a director came in 1959 when

he directed The Last Days of Pompeii after its initial director fell ill.

After making his official directorial debut with another film in 1961, in 1964,

he wrote and directed A Fistful of Dollars.

In addition to some other films on this list,

Leone also directed the highly acclaimed Once Upon a Time in America featuring Robert De Niro.

If it wasn’t clear enough,

Leone was a huge visionary not just for these westerns, but for film in general.

His directorial style of extreme close-ups and long shots is still widely respected.

Leone was all about capturing atmosphere and mood, and he succeeds in all of his films with this.

He knew how to pick actors, even minor background characters, that had a look.

"You have to look at the film carefully."

"Lee had the tip of a finger cut off."

"Leone adored that."

"He had a man with no legs."

"He would find different people who have suffered in life, and he would focus on that."

These little details build up to create some magnificent scenes.

A lot of his best scenes are just a couple of guys staring at each other,

but the ways in which he depicts these moments are incredible.

If you don’t know the name, you’ll know the music.

And if you don’t know the music, I-I don’t even know what to say to you.

“Prolific” is an understatement when it comes to describing this man.

Maestro Morricone created the scores for over 400 films.

These films include The Untouchables, The Thing, The Hateful Eight, Once Upon

a Time in America, and, of course, some of the best spaghetti westerns.

He composed the scores for at least 35 films in the genre.

Morricone covered a wide range of genres and moods in his music.

From triumphant and energizing to haunting and beautiful,

it’s no wonder that he was highly sought after by filmmakers.

One cool fact about Sergio Leone and Morricone is that,

when Leone was directing, Leone had Morricone create the score first,

and Leone would play the music as he filmed his scenes to time them to the music.

In an interview, Leone once said,

It’s no surprise then that Morricone composed all the music for all of

Leone’s films starting with A Fistful of Dollars.

It just goes to show how important music was to Leone in his films,

as well as how much he respected Morricone.

For those of you who still aren’t quite sure if you’ve heard his music (which I

feel like you’d have to go out of your way to avoid if anything considering,

y’know, 400 film scores), his most famous song is by far “The Ecstacy of Gold,” sung

by the lovely Edda Dell’Orso, from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

If you haven’t heard that song before,

then you need to watch the film so you can hear the song as it was meant to be heard.

That scene is the most powerful one in the movie, and it is mostly due to that song.

After finishing The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Sergio Leone was tired

of directing westerns and decided to retire from creating films in the genre.

At least, that’s what he thought because Paramount Pictures had other plans.

Paramount gave Leone an offer: direct another western for us and we’ll give

you a big ol’ budget and the great Henry Fonda.

Henry Fonda was Leone’s favorite actor, so, with that and the cash incentive, Leone took the deal.

What he created was Once Upon a Time in the West.

Alongside the Dollars movies, this film is considered not only one of

the best spaghetti westerns but also one of the best films of all time.

The movie tells the story of a growing western

town where the McBain family hopes to make their fortune.

This dream is cut tragically short when the family is killed by the

ruthless Frank and his men, disguised as outlaws.

Little does Frank know that McBain's new wife Jill has just rolled into town,

meaning McBain’s land is now hers.

Someone else arrives, the mysterious drifter Harmonica, who seeks Frank for reasons unknown.

There is also Cheyenne, the outlaw whose group was framed for the murder of the McBain family.

These four figures and their inevitable collision will shape the town’s future forever.

Although it was a huge hit in Europe, Once Upon a Time in the West was a flop in the U.S.

These days, however, it is beloved by critics and audiences alike.

The film has some incredible performances by Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale,

Jason Robards, and, of course, Henry Fonda.

What a lot of people don't realize about this film is that Fonda was known,

at the time, for his heroic roles.

In Once Upon a Time in the West, however, he plays the utterly remorseless and unsympathetic

main villain, which was a huge shock to American audiences at the time.

"And then into the foreground of the little boy comes a figure."

"The camera very slowly is coming around."

"And Sergio Leone had cast me because he could imagine at this moment the audience saying-"

"JESUS CHRIST IT'S HENRY FONDA"

I’ll be honest, I wasn't too keen on this movie when I first watched it.

I thought it was pretty boring and in no way constituted a nearly three-hour runtime.

After rewatching it, I’ve changed my tune quite a bit.

The things I have loved since my first viewing are Leone’s masterful

cinematography, the amazing score by Ennio Morricone, and the film’s final duel,

which is my favorite one out of all the spaghetti westerns I have seen.

If you want to hear a review that praises the film more than my little

spiel here, I recommend you watch ralphthemoviemaker’s video on it.

He has a great passion for this film, and,

while I appreciate it now more than on my first viewing, it’s still not my favorite spaghetti.

If you want to spare yourself the whole viewing,

at least watch the final duel scene. It’s the best part of the film by far.

The cinematography, the music, the acting, and the suspense;

it’s all executed perfectly by Leone and his team.

Released in 1966, together with the Dollars trilogy,

Django played a massive role in boosting the popularity of spaghetti westerns.

At the time, it was a smash-hit in Italy but was highly criticized due to its gore and violence.

It was even banned in the UK and never properly released there until 1993,

almost 30 years after its original debut.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with spaghetti westerns will most likely

recognize Django and the theme from the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained.

I included this film in the first tier for this reason.

Also, it’s pretty well-known for the coffin the

titular character drags around at the beginning of the film.

Whatcha got there, Django?

OH

Yeah, that scene is probably the most memorable part of the film.

As for Django’s plot, it’s a story about a former Union soldier who seeks revenge for his lost love.

As a result, he is caught in the crossfire between a group of Mexican bandits and the Klu Klux Klan.

It has this sort of cheapish,

almost B-movie quality to it that a lot of spaghetti westerns have.

But, as I said, these films were more or less mass-produced after the Dollars

movies and most of them never got the big-budget Leone treatment.

For what it is though, it’s a great watch.

One final fact is that this film is also notable for its breakout star,

a then 25-year-old Franco Nero.

Franco Nero is an Italian actor who has appeared in several films.

Many of these productions have been Italian, but he has also starred in films like Camelot,

John Wick 2, and, his greatest role, Uncle Topolino in Cars 2.

Nah, I’m kidding.

Nero is most well-known for his spaghetti roles, especially as the eponymous Django.

Django is probably his most iconic character,

but Nero starred in roughly a dozen more spaghetti westerns after his big break.

He’s going to come up a lot on this iceberg since his westerns are some of the most well-regarded.

For a final cool fact, Nero made a brief cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s

Django Unchained as more or less his most famous role.

“The D is silent.”

“I know.”

I understood that reference.

I listed a lot of names just now because these are actors

who either reached stardom because of the spaghetti westerns they starred

in or are perhaps more notable now for having been in these westerns.

Franco Nero got his own section because, while he is a well-known actor, I wouldn’t

say he’s as known to the general American public as the actors in this section are.

Clint Eastwood is… well… Clint Eastwood. Though he was somewhat successful in television,

especially in the show Rawhide, his role as the Man with No Name in the Dollars trilogy catapulted

him to international fame. He continues to direct and star in films even at the ripe age of 92.

I discussed Henry Fonda in the Once Upon a Time in the West section due to his a-typical

casting as a villain rather than a hero for that film. In addition to his role as Frank,

Fonda was offered the role of the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars before Clint Eastwood.

Before Once Upon a Time in the West, he was and still is most notable for starring in films like

12 Angry Men, The Grapes of Wrath, How the West was Won, My Darling Clementine, and many more.

Lee Van Cleef began his acting career in the 50s but rarely received big roles due to his sharp,

“villanious” features. He was about to give up on acting when Sergio Leone offered him the

role of Colonel Douglas Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More. Van Cleef accepted,

and he finally broke out as a star, especially in Europe. His part as Angel Eyes, the bad,

in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly also helped cement his legacy. After the Dollars films,

he starred in several more spaghetti westerns.

Eli Wallach didn’t break out into stardom because of spaghetti westerns. However, he is most

remembered today for his role as Tuco, the ugly, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Though Wallach

starred in a few spaghettis outside The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, his better-known western

roles are American ones such as The Magnificent Seven, How the West was Won, and The Misfits.

Charles Bronson became an actor after serving in the United States Air Force during the

Second World War. Although he starred in a variety of films, the most notable of

the spaghettis he starred in was Once Upon a Time in the West as Harmonica. Funnily enough,

Sergio Leone offered Bronson the role of the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars and

For a Few Dollars More, as well as the roles of Angel Eyes and Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the

Ugly. However, Bronson declined all of these offers. As for his stardom,

Bronson didn’t become a huge name until the 1970s when he starred in The Mechanic and Death Wish.

Claudia Cardinale is an Italian actress who is best known for her role as Jill

in Once Upon a Time in the West. She mainly starred in European/Italian productions but

also American endeavors such as The Pink Panther and The Professionals.

She also starred in Federico Fellini’s renowned 8½ and continues to act today.

Woody Strode was one of the NFL’s first African American football players. After

his sports and military career, he took up acting. His best-known role these days is

probably as Stony, one of Frank’s goons, in Once Upon a Time in the West. However,

he also had roles in several famous films including The Ten Commandments,

Spartacus, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Italian Connection.

Jason Robards was a highly acclaimed actor, one of the few to receive the Triple Crown

of Acting (when one wins an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award). In addition to

the Triple Crown, he won a second Academy Award and a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.

Among the many plays, television shows, and films he starred in,

Robards also starred as Cheyenne in Once Upon a Time in the West.

James Coburn, Rod Steiger, and Jack Palance are the last three stars on my list. However,

none of them starred in any of the spaghetti westerns on this tier.

They’ll pop up later, but I included them due to their notability outside of these westerns.

James Coburn is best known for his roles in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape,

which also featured fellow spaghetti actor Charles Bronson. Like Charles Bronson and

Henry Fonda, he was also offered the role of the Man with No Name.

Rod Steiger, like many on this list, was also a prolific actor. You might

know him best for his role, which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor,

as Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night.

Jack Palance starred in a wide variety of television shows and

films. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for Sudden Fear

and Shane and won Best Supporting Actor for City Slickers in 1991.

Spaghetti Westerns are known for featuring many different actors from all different

countries. This little list was a small sample of the number of notable actors

it was connected to. And I think it's the best way to take us into the next tier.

This section of the iceberg will be dedicated, for the most part, to the Three Sergios.

I am starting here because the films by these three directors are the most

highly regarded and well-known among Spaghetti Western fans.

This will be an area where, as long as you're familiar with the term “spaghetti

westerns,” you’ll most likely have heard of these films and figures.

The Three Sergios refers to three of the spaghetti western genre’s most recognized

and widely acclaimed directors. The first and most famous of these three is, of course, Sergio Leone.

The next in the trio you’ll often hear about is Sergio Corbucci, who directed Django.

Aside from Leone, he is considered by many to be the greatest of all the

spaghetti western directors, and I’m inclined to agree.

Corbucci had a much more prolific career than Leone.

Leone only had eight directorial credits to his name, though he did much more direct.

But Corbucci has 66 writing and directing credits to his name.

When it comes to his style, he is known primarily for the violence

and highly cynical tone of his spaghetti westerns.

The last Sergio is Sergio Sollima.

Even though Sollima only made three westerns,

his films are continually praised and regarded as highly as Leone and Corbucci’s films.

Sollima’s other directing credits include Violent City with Charles Bronson,

as well as the TV miniseries based on the popular Italian character Sandokan.

Though his westerns are also dark and gritty like the other Sergios,

his films tend to have a slightly (and when I say slightly,

I mean slightly) more positive tone with their likable and redeemable protagonists.

Sollima thought of his protagonists, primarily Cuchillo in The Big Gundown and Run, Man,

Run! as childlike dreamers, representatives of the lower class, who were different

from the typical no-talk no-nonsense gunslingers from other spaghetti westerns.

Yojimbo is a 1961 film by legendary director Akira Kurosawa.

The film’s lead character is played by Toshiro Mifune who

also starred in Kurosawa’s other classic Seven Samurai.

The film’s title translates to “Bodyguard,” and it’s about

Mifune’s character taking advantage of two rival gangs to make some bank.

Sound familiar?

That’s because Sergio Leone heavily based A Fistful of Dollars on Kurosawa’s picture.

Due to the obvious similarities between the two

films, the company that produced Yojimbo sued Leone and his team.

The lawsuit ultimately delayed the release of the Dollars movies in the US until 1967.

Eventually, the groups settled out of court.

According to historian Sir Christopher Frayling, Kurosawa supposedly remarked at

one point that he made more from A Fistful of Dollars than any of his previous films.

Leone admitted that he took the ideas from Yojimbo and translated them into a western setting.

However, director Sergio Corbucci also claimed that he based Django on Yojimbo.

Annnnd Sergio Sollima said he based the character Cuchillo

off of Toshiro Mifune’s character, not from Yojimbo, but Seven Samurai.

And and, while it wasn't a spaghetti western, I’m sure many of you will know

that Seven Samurai was also the direct inspiration for The Magnificent Seven.

If anything’s clear from this, it seems we have not the Italian directors but

Akira Kurosawa to thank for the genesis of the spaghetti western.

If you have yet to watch Yojimbo or Seven Samurai, I also highly recommend those films.

Gian Maria Volonté is remembered by most for his roles as the main villains in the first

two Dollars films: Ramon Rojo in A Fistful of Dollars and El Indio in For a Few Dollars More.

During his career, Volonté was known for his

left-wing activism as well as his fiery personality.

According to some sources, though I haven’t been able to verify them, he often conflicted

with Sergio Leone during the filming of A Fistful of Dollars and especially For a Few Dollars More.

Leone was notorious for reshooting scenes over and over again.

But what I can’t confirm is that Leone would purposefully tire out

Volonté with retakes to make his acting less over-the-top.

A few sources also suggest he didn’t get along with co-stars of differing politics.

Rumors aside, Volonté had a long career on stage and in film.

He was renowned in Italy and starred in several award-winning films, including Investigation of a

Citizen Above Suspicion–which won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars–The Mattei Affair, and The

Working Class Goes to Heaven, both of which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

I am particularly fond of Volonté’s role as Indio in For a Few Dollars More.

This is mostly because, while the characters in spaghetti westerns are more dimensional overall,

the big bad guys tend to remain one-sided.

Though Indio is still an irredeemable character,

he has more depth to him than the average spaghetti western antagonist.

I’m not going to spoil the film, but you can see

from the start that Indio is haunted by something that he did in the past.

One could infer that Indio’s madness is a result of that event,

though it’s also possible that he was just as insane before.

“...and that’s why I feel your family is partly mine. I’ll take my part now.”

Whatever the case, it makes him a much more interesting villain

compared to a lot of the other ones in the genre.

When it comes to spaghetti westerns,

most scholars identify three different kinds of films across three different periods.

The first period is the genesis with Leone’s Dollars trilogy,

Django, and other early spaghettis.

The next is the golden age or political period, which I will be discussing in this tier.

And the last is the parody period.

Some also include what are often called the “Twilight Spaghettis,” made in the

mid-70s after most considered the genre dead.

I think most spaghetti fans will agree that spaghetti westerns have two primary subgenres.

The first of these is the political spaghettis or Zapata westerns.

The term Zapata comes from Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

These movies are usually set during the Mexican Revolution, of course,

and are allegories of the tense political climates in which they were created.

Some are allegories for the Vietnam War, fascism, capitalism, or other topics of political turmoil.

These films debuted in the late 60s, around the time the Years of Lead began in Italy.

This was an incredibly tumultuous period marked by terrorism from right-wing and left-wing groups.

Since the Years of Lead began in the late 60s, it's safe to say that many of these

mostly left-leaning directors were using their films to indirectly speak about the unrest.

That's not to say that every Zapata was necessarily inspired by the Years of Lead

or Vietnam, but knowing the roughness of the political climate at the time

certainly gives one perspective about the era these films were created in.

I’ll get into what films are Zapatas or not as they appear within the iceberg.

Several spaghetti westerns, despite almost all of them

being Italian endeavors, weren't filmed in Italy.

A lot of them were filmed in Spain.

One location that was used, primarily for the Dollars movies,

was the Spanish province of Almeria.

To capture the kind of western he wanted, Leone had his team build a town in Almeria’s desert.

And that's how Mini Hollywood was born.

According to Wikipedia, Mini Hollywood was built for the filming of For a Few Dollars More.

However, the official Mini Hollywood website and an interview with the

park’s manager (in 2017) claim that the set was built for A Fistful of Dollars.

Thanks for nothing, Wikipedia.

You’re probably wondering what I mean when I call Mini Hollywood a park.

These days, Mini Hollywood is just that: a theme park!

After Leone used the town in his films, other spaghetti westerns were filmed there.

When The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly finished filming, the set became a theme

park and expanded to include a zoo, a cactus garden, a pool, and, naturally, a film museum.

The park is still called Mini Hollywood, but its official name now is “Oasys.”

While Mini Hollywood is by far the most popular and well-known park of its kind,

two other western theme parks are in Almeria: Western Leone and Hollywood Texas Fort Bravo.

Western Leone is the former film set of Sweetwater and the McBain land from Once

Upon a Time in the West while Hollywood Texas was mainly used to film some more obscure spaghettis.

Klaus Kinski was a German actor who had a

long and prolific career from the late 1940s into the late 1980s.

Among general audiences, his most well-known role may be as the Hunchback in For a Few Dollars More.

Aside from this minor role, he is also renowned for his roles

in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo.

Another interesting fact about Kinski is that Steven Spielberg offered him a role

in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but Kinski refused with some rather unkind words.

Above all else, Kinski acted in several spaghetti westerns.

Though many actors have their fair share of controversies,

it's safe to say that Kinski was the king of them.

One of the craziest things about Kinski was that some of his co-workers

hated him so much that they either plotted or attempted to murder him.

Werner Herzog once admitted that he tried to set Kinski’s house on fire.

And then there’s David Schmoeller’s short documentary (that I highly

recommend) on the time he worked with Kinski,

where he claims several crew members were literally begging Schmoeller to kill Kinski.

Yeah, Klaus Kinski was a horrible human being. and I’m going off

on this little tangent because I think it’s important to talk about.

Especially this last part. (Skip to this time if you don't want to hear it)

Aside from his general awfulness,

Kinski was also notorious for sexually harassing his female co-stars.

In his autobiography, which Werner Herzog claims is almost entirely fabricated,

he admits to having sex with several underage girls and his sister, mother, and daughter.

It wasn’t until 2013 that his daughter Pola released her autobiography and said

that Kinski had sexually abused her since she was five or six years old.

Considering Kinski was completely insane–and

I mean that–I don’t doubt his daughter’s claims for a second.

As someone who only came to learn about Kinski’s behavior after I started watching

spaghetti westerns, I feel that it is only fair for you all to know these things as well.

I see Kinski’s involvement with spaghetti westerns as separating the art from the artist.

Considering the evil of his actions,

I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to skip out on one of his films.

In my opinion, since Kinski has been dead for decades,

he is in no way benefitting from me watching the films with him in them.

And I have an attachment to some of these films that formed before I knew what he did.

That’s my reasoning, but, like I said, considering he was a very notable actor,

especially in the spaghetti western genre, I want others to be informed.

How about we talk about someone much more pleasant than Klaus Kinski?

Tomas Milian was a Cuban actor who is best known for his roles in numerous spaghetti westerns.

His most notable works are his films with the latter two Sergios: Corbucci and Sollima.

Milian picked up a fairly large following in Italy. Though he was

able to play a wide range of characters, he is most recognized for his comedic roles.

In addition to his major successes in European films, he also starred

in plenty of American productions. Milian worked with Dennis Hopper,

Steven Spielberg, Andy Garcia, Oliver Stone, and Tony Scott.

Milian certainly had an exciting career,

and it was only kick-started because of the spaghetti westerns he starred in.

Now that I’ve rambled about actors and other background info,

how about we actually talk about some films?

Released in 1967, Face to Face is the second of Sergio Sollima’s three westerns.

I am talking about this one first because the other two

are closely related to one another while this is a standalone film.

It stars Tomas Milian and Gian Maria Volonte as the main characters: Beauregard Bennett

(an infamous outlaw) and Professor Brad Fletcher (a meek but compassionate academic).

The plot kicks off when Fletcher relocates to Texas to curb his tuberculosis.

Shortly after his arrival, he has a chance encounter with Beauregard.

Fletcher ultimately saves his life, and, from there, their paths become entangled.

Face to Face is probably my personal

favorite of Sollima’s films and most spaghetti fans consider it his best.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it a Zapata because while there is a political allegory–at least,

that’s how most interpret it– it is definitely under the surface instead

of in-your-face like the Zapatas set during the Mexican Revolution.

One of the most highly praised parts of this film is the transformation of the lead characters.

We watch Fletcher go from shy and sheltered to fascist dictator and Beauregard from ruthless

bandit to thoughtful and remorseful.

It’s done almost masterfully buuuut I do have one very strong criticism.

I was hoping to make this iceberg without needing

a spoiler warning but go to this time if you want to watch the film blind.

I am going to be talking about a rape scene so this will serve as your warning for that too.

...Yeah... here’s the deal.

The coolest part of this film is by far watching Fletcher and

Beauregard transform into the opposites of themselves, more or less into each other.

For the most part, it is slow and well-paced.

You slowly watch Fletcher become more and

more desensitized to all the violence and evil around him.

However, about midway through the film,

the sexually-repressed Fletcher sets his sights on one of the women in Beauregard’s hometown.

She is in an abusive relationship. So Fletcher will save her, right?

Well only after beating her to the ground and raping her.

While the point is to show that Fletcher is changing into a cruel and cold man,

this part comes up way too soon, in my opinion.

Maybe have him be forceful but her ultimately consenting instead of

having him beat her to the ground and forcing himself on her? Just a thought.

Yeah, that part really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And she winds up sticking with him, which could just be her leaving one

piece of garbage for another but like I said, I think it happens too soon within the arc.

Spoilers over.

Despite some elements, I think Face to Face is up there when it comes to spaghettis.

The soundtrack is also by Ennio Morricone.

And it's not my favorite but it’s still pretty good.

If you watch this one, make sure to get your hands on the

uncut version. I’d also recommend watching the subs instead of dubs.

The Mercenary is a 1968 Zapata western by Sergio Corbucci starring Franco Nero,

Jack Palance, and Tony Musante.

It is perhaps Corbucci’s best-known spaghetti western after Django.

You’ll probably recognize the final duel theme “L’ arena” because Quentin

Tarantino reused this song in Kill Bill Vol. 2.

And it is, of course, by Ennio Morricone.

As for The Mercenary’s plot, it is about a Polish mercenary who tries to make a quick

buck off of some Mexican revolutionaries only to be caught up in the revolution himself.

It was pretty successful in Italy, and fans rank it among the best spaghetti westerns.

The dubbed version features Franco Nero’s actual voice,

unlike Django which was dubbed by an American actor.

There’s a lot of trivia about this film which,

like a lot of the other factoids I’ve pointed out, is unverified.

Such as a claim that the film crew saw a UFO, recorded it, and sent the footage to NASA. What-

Anyhoo, this is pretty standard spaghetti viewing if you want to get into the genre.

It’s above average but by no means a masterpiece.

The main characters are likable enough.

And there's a scene where Franco Nero lights his

match on a girl’s boobie. I just thought that was funny.

god I wish that were me

Another Corbucci

Zapata with a killer soundtrack by

Ennio Morricone, Companeros is also a beloved spaghetti western.

With Franco Nero and Tomas Milian in the leads, it’s much more comedic than The Mercenary.

"Beautiful EYEEEEEEssss"

"Blue like the skyyyyyyy"

"Just like your sister, eh?"

It’s more or less a sequel to The Mercenary,

but instead of being a Polish mercenary, Franco Nero plays a Swedish mercenary.

"EH nooooooo, I am not clown: I am Sweden"

Much like The Mercenary, Franco Nero’s character is caught up in the Mexican Revolution while

Tomas Milian’s character is a misguided revolutionary trying to find his purpose.

From the data I scrounged up,

Companeros was more financially successful in Italy than The Mercenary but not by much.

It’s a pretty good film, but I think I prefer The Mercenary on

the merit of it having slightly better characters.

I forgot to mention that Jack Palance is also in this film as

a crazy American with a wooden arm and a pet hawk.

Did I mention the soundtrack is great?

Overall, I’d say The Mercenary and Companeros are a pair,

and, to get the full Corbucci Zapata experience, I’d recommend viewing both.

This film, released in 1966, is Sergio Sollima’s first spaghetti western.

It features Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian in the leading roles.

This is the first appearance of Milian’s Cuchillo character.

And the plot centers around nearly-retired bounty hunter John Corbett as he takes on one last

job to hunt down notorious bandit Cuchillo, who reportedly raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl.

Even though Corbett is hellbent on taking down Cuchillo, he ultimately comes to

question if Cuchillo is guilty of the crime at all and, therefore, who really did it.

Not gonna lie, I only watched the dub version that

cut a few scenes out so that might be why I prefer Face to Face to this one.

But it’s still a good watch. However, like Companeros, it is comedic at times,

and there’s a decent chunk of filler even in the cut version.

My main gripe with this film is, while the theme is about the perils

of blindly following authority and “justice,” I was hoping they’d go

more for the mystery angle of who committed the crime. But I digress.

Like, well, literally every film in this tier so far, the score is by Morricone,

and the main theme, in particular, is fantastic.

This film is a direct sequel to The Big Gundown.

Made about two years later, it features Tomas Milian as Cuchillo again, but no Lee Van Cleef.

While The Big Gundown was a spaghetti played straight with some social commentary, Run,

Man, Run is a Zapata where Cuchillo gets directly involved in the Mexican Revolution.

Starring alongside Milian is Chelo Alonso (who had an uncredited role in The Good,

the Bad, and the Ugly) as Cuchillo’s fiancee Dolores.

This spaghetti was the last one Sollima directed,

and it is his most polarizing of the three as far as I can tell.

It was successful when it came out, but it isn’t as beloved as Sollima’s other spaghettis.

A large part of that is probably due to the fact that, as stated earlier,

Cuchillo is not the typical strong silent type spaghetti western protagonist.

If you want to see a spaghetti western with

a unique character and a mix of comedy and politics, I'd say to give it a go.

Also, as a final cool fact, though the score is credited to Bruno Nicolai,

Sollima said the score was actually done by Ennio Morricone.

Morricone had another contract to fulfill at the time,

but the music was his work, according to Sollima.

The last of Leone’s westerns and his first and only Zapata,

this film came out in 1971, and it features James Coburn and Rod Stieger.

Though the Dollars trilogy, especially The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, have some identifiable

political/social commentary, Duck, You Sucker! is the only Leone film that is outwardly political.

I mean, it opens with a quote from Mao Zedong.

Plot-wise, the film centers around lowlife bandit Juan Miranda, played by Stieger,

who encounters IRA agent Sean Mallory.

Through some mishaps, the two become involved in the Revolution,

and their relationship deepens through their misadventures.

The film is critical of fascism and capitalism but

also critical of the idealization of revolutions and left-wing movements.

Unlike most Zapatas, which fully embrace left-wing ideals, Leone, though much more

sympathetic toward these ideas than the right-wing ones, is not afraid to show their ugly side.

That revolutions aren’t all sunshine and rainbows and seizes of the means of production.

When it comes to the production of this film, its history is quite interesting.

Though Leone enjoyed working on the script, story, and characters, he had no intention of directing.

Originally, director Peter Bogdanovich was set to direct, but he left the project or was fired.

Then, supposedly, Sam Peckinpah agreed to direct, but the studio rejected him.

So, Leone passed the torch to his friend and assistant director Giancarlo Santi

buuut United Artists said, “Screw you, Leone. You gotta do it.”

So, he begrudgingly obliged.

In addition to all this chaos, Leone wanted Eli Wallach to play Juan Miranda in this film but,

yet again, the studio forced Leone into a corner.

So Rod Steiger played the part with an accent even worse than Eli Wallach’s when he played Tuco.

"Silver? You know something- I don't understand you. I don't understand

how you waste your time and your holy water looking for silver."

Say what you will about Tuco’s accent, but I doubt anyone who has seen The Good,

the Bad, and the Ugly will argue it ruins the film,

especially because Tuco is by far the best and most developed character.

Steiger, though, ehhh not so much.

Don't feel too bad though, Rod! Coburn has a crummy accent as well.

I LITERALLY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HE IS SAYING

Despite all the setbacks, this film has a lot of great elements seen in only the

best spaghetti westerns: great visuals, action, and a score by Ennio Morricone.

This score is also particularly moody and ethereal, especially

the main theme which features Edda Dell’Orso.

Though it didn’t do so hot in America,

the film was a moderate success in Italy and a huge hit in France.

While it is my least favorite of Leone’s westerns, I can still respect it for what it is.

The ending hits surprisingly hard on an emotional level, so it might be worth a watch just for that.

To finish this segment, I’m just going to leave you with this

clip from our favorite Bri’ish Leone historian, Sir Christopher Frayling.

"But Steiger never liked the title 'Duck, You Sucker.'"

"Nobody did actually amongst the Americans."

"For some reason, Leone was convinced this was a well-known phrase in American vernacular."

"Everyone went around saying, 'Duck, you sucker!'"

"I don't know where he got that from."

"It is an Italian phrase: Giu la testa coglione."

"Which means, literally, put your head down comma balls."

"Which is a very odd phrase."

"Put your head down, balls."

When Sergio Corbucci conceptualized Django, he wanted to set his western in the snow.

Instead of snow, the setting for Django used mud.

However, Corbucci would finally get his spaghetti in the snow with The Great Silence.

Fans rank The Great Silence as one of Sergio Corbucci’s best films and

one of the best spaghetti westerns of all time.

One of the reasons I like it is because it is a subversion of an

already subversive genre. I love that meta stuff.

Contrasting the scorching deserts, this film takes place in Utah during the great blizzard of 1899.

The movie follows a mute gunslinger, played by French actor Jean Louis Trintignant,

(I really hope I said that right) traveling across the

frontier as bounty hunters run amuck killing petty outlaws for easy money.

When one outlaw is killed by the sadistic bounty hunter leader Loco,

played by *siggggh* Klaus Kinski, the outlaw’s widow hires the gunslinger to take him down.

After its 1968 debut, many called it controversial for its dark tone and ending.

It went unreleased in the UK and US until 1990 and 2001, respectively.

If you couldn’t tell, I adore this movie in particular for its subversive tone and mood.

It isn’t a film that’s subversive for the sake of being subversive.

It's developed and feels earned.

The snowy setting and haunting score by Ennio Morricone add to this bleakness.

Something that I’ve always noted about The Great Silence is its score.

In most spaghetti westerns, there’s this triumphant aura in the music.

Even in films where the main characters don’t necessarily win,

there’s a sense of assuredness and victory.

While most spaghetti westerns are cynical,

the characters are still the heroes we follow, root for, and celebrate.

In contrast, The Great Silence’s score is foreboding and sorrowful.

It’s kind of like that “somber inevitably” that

John Carpenter talks about in The Thing documentary.

That’s ultimately what makes the subversion work.

You can see the ending coming from a mile

away and it rips your heart out and stomps all over it (and I love it).

One last thing I want to point out (because I have raved way too much now), is that,

though it is not a Zapata, the film is, as confirmed by Corbucci, a political allegory.

It is a criticism of capitalism and was inspired

by the deaths of figures like Malcolm X and Che Guevarra.

Unlike Zapatas, this allegory is entirely under

the surface so you can enjoy it with or without that view.

All right, I’ve said enough. If there’s one film you should see on this list,

aside from the Dollars trilogy, it’s this one.

It’s still B-movieish, but, in my opinion, it’s a masterpiece.

It turns out The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has two cuts:

the “classic” version that most saw when it debuted outside of Italy and

the extended director’s cut that adds 14-16 minutes to the film.

I say 14-16 because reports vary on how much the extended version adds.

My copy of the film has the extended version as a special feature, and it's at 14 minutes.

So maybe other versions add more time. I don't know for sure.

But, anyway, I added this to the iceberg because I had no

idea that there were two different cuts of the film until recently.

The extended cut came as a special feature on DVDs of the film in 2003, and the English cast,

including Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach, re-dubbed these scenes.

Not gonna lie, I haven't watched these extra

scenes in full because they are just transition scenes.

And, to my surprise, most fans of the film argue that the original,

International cut is better than the extended version.

I find this surprising because, on just about every other spaghetti western I’ve seen and

researched, the extended version is almost always recommended over the shorter version.

This is just a small thing but I found it interesting.

For those of you who know Tarantino’s films, it will be no surprise to you

that the master of deriving reused music from many spaghetti westerns.

No, this isn’t a bad thing as it exposes people to the music,

and he does do it in a very respectful manner.

Of all the spaghetti western music he used,

none is more recognizable than the theme from Django that he used in Django Unchained.

As I mentioned beforehand, he also used “L’ arena” from The Mercenary in Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Additional reused tracks include music from The Grand Duel, Death Rides a Horse,

They Call Me Trinity, His Name was King, and The Big Gundown.

I’m sure there are others but these were the easiest ones for me to track down.

Even if people aren’t aware of where these tracks come from,

at least they are being introduced to them. So, props to Tarantino for that.

This section will mainly consist of films and figures not counting

the Sergios that are known by average spaghetti western fans.

As an additional note, up to this point, I have seen every film in the iceberg.

This is where films that I haven’t seen start to pop up.

So, I won’t be able to make an honest recommendation for some of these movies.

I will do my best to keep each point as interesting and informative though.

I mentioned earlier that there are two main spaghetti western subgenres.

The first is, of course, the Zapata.

The second subgenre is the comedy spaghettis.

These films gained traction in the early 70s after the spaghetti western’s golden age.

A lot of filmmakers blame the death of the spaghetti westerns on these films.

They say this because the comedies were exaggerated parodies of the genre,

full of slapstick and self-deprecating jokes.

In my opinion, the death of the spaghetti happened because literally hundreds of

westerns supersaturated the Italian film market in a period of less than 10 years. In Italy that is.

The comedy/parody westerns were just a result of the serious westerns being worn out.

In this way, the comedies could be called the last gasp of the spaghetti westerns,

and they dragged themselves out from there into the mid-70s.

It's rather unfortunate that these films get such a bad rap, even among spaghetti

western devotees simply because they're not as artistic as their more admired brethren.

Ironically, a lot of spaghetti westerns have comedic moments in them,

so what's wrong with going all out with the comedy?

It doesn't always hit, but I can't gripe these directors for trying something new.

“Wait a minute, Made,” I hear you say.

“What the frick is a Fagioli western?”

Fagioli means “bean” in Italian and is a somewhat obscure term for the comedic

subgenre of spaghetti westerns that the film They Call Me Trinity inspired.

It specifically comes from a famous scene where

the character Trinity eats a big ol’ plate of beans.

Since I only saw this term used on the Spaghetti Western Database,

I refer to it as obscure, as most will just refer to these films as comedies.

The first comedy spaghetti was a little picture named They Call Me Trinity,

which was a huge success in Italy when it was released in 1970.

It spawned an entire series (and ripoffs) thanks

in no small part to its leads Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.

Directed by Enzo Barboni,–who would go on to direct several more films with Spencer and

Hill–the film is about brothers Trinity and Bambino who decide to settle their

differences to help a group of Mormons keep their land out of the hands of a greedy major.

Trinity loves beans.

And Bambino loves false impersonation.

Together, they love massive brawls.

While this film is not as popular as it was in 1970, many spaghetti western fans are fond of it.

Though, as I mentioned in the previous section,

a lot of spaghetti western directors hated it and essentially blamed Trinity for killing the genre.

I know this film plays up the comedy but it’s still played pretty straight for a spaghetti.

Yeah, the gun fights are ridiculous but Trinity has typical spaghetti

protagonist traits like being the fastest gunslinger in the area,

defending his pride, and not taking anyone else's garbage.

But yeah it’s still a comedy.

I like this movie, it’s fun. :)

The other cool thing is that Hill and Spencer do all of their stunts. It’s awesome.

Just, look at the way this man gets on a horse.

It’s so satisfying, I-I can’t stop watching it.

As for the other official films in the series, they include Trinity is Still

My Name, which remains one of the most financially successful films in Italy,

and Sons of Trinity, which is technically a neo-spaghetti since it came out in 1995.

A lot of spaghetti western creators may have disliked the Trinity films,

but there is no denying that they were hugely successful back in the day.

Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, born Mario Girotti and Carlo Pedersoli,

were the comedic duo behind the Trinity films.

Hill began acting at the age of 12 while Spencer,

10 years his senior, made his film debut at the age of 21.

Before they began acting, however, they were in the same swimming club.

According to Hill, he greatly admired Spencer due

to his record-breaking swims in Italy and participation in the Olympics.

Though the first film that featured both of them was

the action-adventure film Hannibal in 1959, they did not meet and become an

established duo until they starred in God Forgives… I Don’t! in 1967.

As far as film producers could tell, audiences enjoyed Hill

and Spencer’s chemistry and cast them in more spaghetti westerns together.

Hill says that there was, “an instant positive vibe” between them, and they became fast friends.

Then came their huge breakthrough: the Trinity films.

After they catapulted to stardom (everywhere except the U.S.),

Hill and Spencer made 18 more movies together.

The last film they starred in as a duo was a 1994 neo-spaghetti written by Hill’s son Jess and

Spencer’s son Giuseppe called Troublemakers, which is a spiritual successor to the Trinity films.

Hill directed it too!

Hill continues to act and produce;

he currently stars as the lead in the long-running Italian show Don Matteo.

But, sadly, Spencer passed away in 2016… and he has a museum in Berlin.

WHAT.

Yeah, this museum just opened in 2021 and even

features interviews with his son Giuseppe and grandson Alessandro.

I can’t understand it though because there are no English subtitles. RIP.

And WAIT WAIT, there’s a Terence Hill one too??

Man, why does Germany get all the cool museums?

I guess at least they had Klaus Kinski to balance this out.

What I find crazy about these two is how they were

so popular all across the globe except for America.

Maybe it’s because their brand of comedy was very wholesome and nonviolent.

Also, Imma just say it: their friendship is adorable.

If you want to learn more about these two, they both have official websites

that are highly informative and fascinating to read (and,

if you’re in Germany, I guess you can visit their museums).

The bios on each site are written by the actors

themselves so you’re reading their history straight from the source.

Hats Off Entertainment also has a pretty good vid summarizing their careers,

and you can tell that he genuinely enjoys their films.

As of writing this script, this part was the most fun to research because it was

like uncovering a hidden treasure trove of two great friends and the art they made together.

As mentioned previously, God Forgives… I Don’t! is the first film in which Terence

Hill and Bud Spencer starred side by side; it also features spaghetti regular Frank Wolff.

Debuting in 1967, it was directed by Giuseppe

Colizzi, who made three additional westerns starring Hill and Spencer.

The plot focuses on Cat Stevens and Hutch Bessy, a gunman and an insurance investigator who set

out to find a crook and his fortune after he robs a train and kills nearly everyone on it.

According to Hill, actor Peter Martell was cast to play Cat, but,

after getting into a violent argument with his girlfriend, he broke his foot.

Filming was about to begin, so Colizzi rushed to find another actor.

While Hill worked on another film,

that film’s producer recommended Hill to Colizzi. And that’s how he got the part.

This film in particular seems to have a lot of different translations between countries.

Some versions refer to Hill’s character as “Pretty Face, “Doc Will,” “Wil Doc,” and even “Django.”

While Spencer’s character is sometimes called Earp or Dan.

Also of note is the fact that the film’s working title was The Cat,

the Dog, and the Fox, an obvious riff on The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

While the film is mainly remembered as the first film where Hill and Spencer performed as a duo,

it was the highest-grossing film in Italy when it released.

It even managed to get two sequels: Ace High (featuring Eli Wallach) and Boot

Hill (featuring Woody Strode and George Eastman (yes, the guy who ate the baby

in Anthropophagus. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Whang! has a great video on it)).

Finally, the score is by Carlo Rustichelli, an Italian composer with quite a prolific career,

mainly in Italian productions, including some lesser known spaghetti westerns.

Sad Hill Unearthed is a 2017 Spanish documentary film on Netflix.

It tells the story of a group of volunteers who

restore the massive graveyard from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

After filming ended in 1966, the crew abandoned Sad Hill and let vegetation take it over.

In 2015, dedicated The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly fans in Almeria located the site

and began to excavate the stones used for the cemetery’s circle.

The volunteers, dubbing themselves the Sad Hill Cultural Association,

gained support and returned Sad Hill to its former glory.

Not only does the film detail the experiences of the volunteers who fixed the site,

but it also features interviews with Clint Eastwood, Ennio Morricone,

and others who worked on the original film.

Oh and James Hetfield’s there too.

There’s a lot of archival footage

and behind-the-scenes discussion too which was very informative.

My favorite part is where they show footage of Leone

giving an interview while eating a plate of pasta.

It’s just the most Italian thing I’ve ever seen.

If you have a chance to watch this documentary, I recommend it because it has lots of cool factoids,

and you feel for the volunteers as they put Sad Hill back together.

Watching them struggle and then succeed with flying colors feels amazing.

The Cultural Association is still active as far as I can tell, and I wish them well.

Enzo G. Castellari is an Italian director who is probably best known

these days for his cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

In fact, the title of that film was taken from Castellari’s film The Inglorious Bastards,

which was a rip-off of Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen.

Like many directors who got their start with spaghetti westerns,

Castellari’s films are noted for their violence.

Of all the Italian directors who influenced Tarantino,

it seems that Castellari was by far the biggest one.

"Whenever I got a Variety when I was a little kid, I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT."

"I READ IT FROM COVER TO COVER AND I WOULD HAVE ONE THAT WOULD LAST ME FOR A YEAR,

TWO YEARS. AND READING ALL THESE COOL FOREIGN THINGS-"

"You're crazy."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Get out of my house."

Castellari found mild success in Italy.

He made his unofficial debut as the uncredited director for the

unofficial Django film A Few Dollars for Django.

A year later, he made his official debut with Renegade Riders AKA Payment in Blood.

In an interesting twist of fate, Castellari would frequently work

and become friends with Franco Nero a few years after he made the Django film.

The two made seven films together.

In total, Castellari made ten spaghetti westerns including

his uncredited and neo-spaghetti westerns.

He made his last film in 2010 but still seems to be active in the industry.

In 2016, he released an autobiography.

I haven’t read any of it but the cover looks like this.

“I LIED. THERE IS NO NETFLIX. NOW SIT DOWN AND WATCH MY MOVIES.”

Also known as Quien Sabe?, this Zapata stars spaghetti favorite Gian Maria Volonte.

And Klaus Kinski, but he’s in the film for like… 5 minutes, probably.

Also, they’re supposed to be brothers but… they don’t look alike at all.

Directed by Damiano Damiani, who collaborated

with stars like Franco Nero and Claudia Cardinale, the film centers on Chuncho,

a Mexican bandit who partners up with an American mercenary named Bill Tate.

Chuncho’s group is selling weapons to one of the Mexican Revolution’s generals.

As Chuncho and Tate work together, it’s clear that Tate has his own motivations for joining Chuncho,

and the bandit begins to question his involvement in the revolution.

Since this film was released in 1966, most spaghetti scholars consider it the first Zapata.

Most interpret the film as an allegory for

U.S. involvement in South American politics and even the Vietnam War.

It is certainly a left-wing film and highly critical of

the fascistic governments the U.S. put in power.

My favorite part of this film, by far, is Chuncho.

He’s very fleshed out, and his arc is even

better than the arcs Beauregard and Fletcher go through in Face to Face.

The only problem is that Chuncho is so fleshed out that it leaves

every other character without any development.

Still, it’s a pretty enjoyable film not including the political allegory,

like many other films in the iceberg.

Keoma is often regarded as the last great spaghetti western.

It released in 1976 when the genre was in its death throes and stars Franco Nero,

Woody Strode, and William Berger (who starred as the Pinkerton agent Charley Siringo in Face to

Face and, supposedly, dubbed Bill Tate in the English version of A Bullet for the General).

A lot of people consider this film Enzo Castellari’s greatest, but not without its flaws.

Castellari essentially views this film as his

magnum opus, and it’s got some great cinematography and action sequences.

As for the plot, it is about the half-Indian half-white soldier named Keoma.

When the Civil War ends, Keoma returns to his hometown,

finding it ridden with plague and under the iron fist of a gang leader.

Keoma’s half-brothers have sided with the gang.

While Keoma tries to save the town and the people he loves,

he finds himself conflicted over who he is and where he belongs.

Nero’s performance as the titular character is excellent.

And I wish I had more nice things to say about the film.

The plot tends to become unfocused, but that isn’t the worst thing.

Of all the things wrong with this film, nothing is hated as much as its score.

If you take a quick skim at the reviews on Letterboxd,

you’d see that almost every review talks about how bad the music is.

It's awful. And it's especially awful because this is a spaghetti western,

where 99% of the time, even if the film is crummy, at least the soundtrack is awesome.

But in Keoma, it’s so grating.

I’ve been playing the female vocals, but the male ones manage to be even worse.

I also hate how the lyrics explain what is going on in the scene.

"yEAAh."

"I'm heeeere."

"In front of"

"these"

"mEn"

Yes, thank you. I have eyes.

This is a film, it’s a visual medium.

You don’t need to explain to me what’s going on in the lyrics because I can see it on the screen.

This film is like a 3 out of 5-star film as it is,

but it could easily be four stars if the score was any better.

And it just goes to show how important music is in these films.

They add a lot more to the mood and atmosphere to the point where

it’s like you’re looking at a piece of art more than a story on the screen.

Oh, and there are quite a few gamer words dropped in this film.

Mostly by the bad guys, but even our boy Franco Nero couldn’t resist.

"WHERE'D THEY TAKE HER N-"

Sometime after Leone finished Duck, You Sucker! he had an idea for a new film, one that would

act as a sendoff for the classic American Westerns and the Italian spaghetti westerns.

What he produced was My Name is Nobody with Terence Hill and Henry Fonda.

Leone did not want to direct the film, so he made Tonino Valerii,

his assistant director on the first two Dollars films, the director.

While Valerii is solely credited as the film’s

director, it's believed that Leone helped direct a few of the scenes.

There are varying accounts of which scenes he directed,

but Valerii stated that Leone took the reigns several times.

My Name is Nobody has a bit of a twist on the typical spaghetti western archetype.

The film is about Terence Hill’s character Nobody as he attempts to convince an about-to-retire

gunslinger (played by Fonda) to go out in a blaze of glory rather than peacefully.

Honestly, I like this film’s concept, rather, I like the film’s intention.

Leone was bitter about what spaghetti westerns had become since he released the Dollars films.

What he wanted to depict with this film was how the spaghetti

westerns had killed the old western for good.

And how spaghetti westerns had become so overdone to the point of ridiculous self-parody.

Fonda’s character depicts the traditional, heroic gunslinger that was out of fashion.

Hill’s character depicts the young,

cheeky Fagioli hero who wanted to be the Somebody that Fonda’s character is.

When you learn about this allegory and that it was fully intended by Leone,

it becomes depressing to watch.

And I wish I could say that the film was any good but… like a lot of the westerns

on this iceberg and westerns in general, it hasn’t aged well.

Unlike the Trinity films which are genuine in their humor,

you get the feeling that My Name is Nobody's filmmakers are belittling the comedy.

The joke isn’t the slapstick, the joke is supposed to be about the slapstick.

It actively mocks fans of the Fagiolis and lacks

the substance and atmosphere of serious spaghetti westerns.

This mockery turned out to be super ironic because it was the

highest-grossing film in Italy when it came out.

Even Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is exaggerated and grating sometimes.

Though there are songs I like. “Good Luck, Jack” is very pretty.

I also enjoy “My Fault?” which reuses some of the music from Once Upon a Time in the West.

And that kind of makes it sound like an epic battle remix of the former song.

Many fans have called this film “half-great.”

It has some great ideas, and I can sympathize with Leone’s disillusionment with the genre.

If ever there was a film to mark the end of the westerns as a whole, it’s this one.

In 1968, director Gianfranco Parolini released the first

in a series of five official films (and ripoffs) starring the character Sartana.

The film If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death saw success in Italy

and featured actor Gianni Garko (often billed as John Garko) as

the titular character alongside William Berger and Klaus Kinski.

Garko would reprise his role in three of the next four films.

These films are I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death (1969), Have a Good Funeral, My Friend… Sartana

Will Pay (1970), and Light the Fuse… Sartana is Coming (1970). The final film in the series

Sartana's Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin came out in 1970 as well, but instead of Garko,

George Hilton–who starred in several lesser-known spaghetti westerns–took the role of Sartana.

Parolini also had no part in any of the sequels;

Giuliano Carnimeo took over and directed the last four movies.

You can see from watching the trailer of the first film that this series (at

least the first) was a massive rip-off, more than usual, of Sergio Leone’s Dollars films.

There’s a strong-silent type gunslinger who carries a musical pocket watch,

and everyone is after $200,000 in gold.

But uhm, he does card tricks! Yeah.

One of the things I will note about the first film is that

Sartana is given this supernatural aura to him.

People can’t tell if he’s just some bloke out for money or some sort of ghost. And I like that.

While I’m pretty sure Sartana’s dress was inspired by Colonel Mortimer’s in

For a Few Dollars More, I like it quite a bit compared to the usual

low-brow/dirtied clothes most spaghetti protagonists wear.

In 2018, after what seems to have been a delay of roughly five years,

all five Sartana films were released in a box set on DVD,

fully restored and featuring interviews from several cast members, crew, and historians.

I haven’t watched any of the Sartana films yet, but I think you’ll get a good impression

as I did from the trailers alone. I do plan on checking them out sometime.

Remember how I mentioned Gianfranco Parolini didn’t

work on any of the Sartana films after the first one?

That’s because he went on to create another spaghetti western series: Sabata.

The first Sabata film debuted in 1969 and featured Lee Van Cleef as the eponymous protagonist.

After this first film, Parolini directed two sequels: Adios, Sabata, and Return of Sabata.

Though Lee Van Cleef played the character once more in the Return of Sabata, Yul Brynner took

on the role in Adios, Sabata for his first and only foray into the spaghetti western genre,

though he acted in a couple of Euro-westerns (which westerns not exclusively made by Italians).

Those who are unfamiliar with Brynner may know him best as the original King Mongkut in The

King and I musical. He also starred in The Magnificent Seven and The Ten Commandments.

The first film is about Sabata’s chance encounter with a group of bank robbers who he defeats.

After returning the stolen goods, Sabata is targeted by the orchestrators of the robbery,

three of the most powerful people in the town.

This film is a bit of a hidden gem. It has a very unique cast

of characters compared to most spaghettis.

This one dude (played by William Berger yet again)

has his gun hidden inside his banjo. It’s pretty sick.

It’s by no means better than the films in the first two tiers, but this one is fun.

The second film depicts Sabata as a gun-for-hire whose pay is stolen by a man who hired him.

Naturally, Sabata hunts him down.

I haven’t seen this one, but the reviews seem a tad mixed.

Some say it’s Parolini’s best film, others say it’s the weakest entry in the trilogy.

A reason for this polarization is probably because this film was not a Sabata movie, originally.

Brynner’s character was called Indio Black, and the film was dubbed and titled as such in Italy.

Given the success of the first Sabata film, however,

they ultimately decided to market it as a sequel for international release.

However, some theorize that the film became a Sabata movie during filming

because it looks like some of the actors are

mouthing “Sabata” when referring to the main character and not “Indio Black.”

The last film sees the return of Van Cleef and, when people aren’t fighting over the second film,

this one is generally considered the worst due to its poor pacing and repetitive nature.

By repetitive, I mean that it just copied the first two films. Lee Van

Cleef’s money gets stolen so he has to kill a bunch of guys to get it back.

I found out from reading Letterboxd that there was a book from 1978 called

The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, and Return of Sabata is one of the films.

Also, off-topic, but the original The Omen is in it, for some reason?

I mean, that’s a great film. I don't get it.

I still haven’t watched this Sabata film but it doesn’t look that bad.

From watching the first film and some footage of the other films,

this series was pretty creative in terms of its characters and gadgets.

It never takes itself too seriously like a lot of other spaghetti westerns (not

counting the comedies) so it makes for a more light-hearted experience.

During my research, as I was trying to find out about the early spaghetti

westerns, I felt a bit confused about what was/wasn’t considered a spaghetti western.

According to the spaghetti western database,

Eurowestern is “a catch-all term referring to all westerns made in Europe.”

This includes spaghetti westerns, as they are westerns made in Europe.

However, most of the time Eurowestern is used to

define a European western that has little to no involvement with Italy.

You can pretty much think of it like this: all Spaghetti Westerns are Eurowesterns,

but not all Eurowesterns are Spaghetti Westerns.

Some of the terms used for these other European

westerns include Sauerkraut Westerns (for German films),

Paella-Westerns (for Spanish films),

Baguetti Westerns (for French films),

Easterns (for Polish Westerns),

and Osterns–which also means Easterns–(for USSR/Russian films).

As I mentioned, this distinction only becomes a problem when you try to figure

out what the early spaghettis were (pre-A Fistful of Dollars).

It can get pretty confusing.

Most consider A Fistful of Dollars the first

true spaghetti western since it defined the genre alongside the other two Dollars films.

I agree for the most part but there are a couple of pre-Dollars films that

were Italian produced which I would consider spaghetti westerns. We’ll get to those later.

I’m also going to use this category to talk a little about the terminology of

Italian/Italo Western vs Spaghetti Western.

A lot of spaghetti western filmmakers hate the term Spaghetti Western.

While no one knows quite where the phrase came from,

most believe that it was coined as a derogatory term for these Italian films.

A lot of these directors like to refer to their films as Italian Westerns

rather than spaghetti westerns, or will use the term spaghetti

western only for Italian westerns that are considered cheap or bad.

People also use Italian-Western to label westerns

that were primarily made in Italy and not in the common filming location of Spain.

I use spaghetti western because I don’t care, and, in my opinion,

the label is something a filmmaker should aspire to. Being compared to a genre known for

great music, cinematography, and action sounds pretty good to me.

In Italy, however, the term they tend to use is western

all’italiana (meaning Italian-style western).

While most people know Ennio Morricone as the grand master of spaghetti western soundtracks,

several other composers worked within the genre.

The most prominent one after Morricone is perhaps Luis Bacalov.

Bacalov, a man of Bulgarian-Jewish descent,

was born in Argentina and began composing film scores in the 1960s.

Among his many accomplishments, Bacalov also won the Academy

Award for Best Original Score in 1994 for the film Il Postino: The Postman.

There’s not a whole lot of information about him out there, or, if there is,

it’s not easily accessed by a filthy gringo like me.

While Bacalov didn’t have nearly as many spaghetti western scores as Morricone,

he made a hefty fifteen.

His most famous score is by far Django’s.

But he also composed A Bullet for the General and The Grand Duel.

Though Bacalov’s scores aren’t as experimental or soaring as Morricone’s,

they have a simple yet atmospheric sound.

I think his score for The Grand Duel is his best, and Quentin Tarantino thinks so too.

Though Bacalov is pretty well-known among spaghetti western devotees,

there are other composers in the genre that I would like to highlight briefly as well.

These other composers include Franceso de Masi, who composed the scores for 36

Spaghetti Westerns and Eurowesterns, as well as The Inglorious Bastards.

Bruno Nicolai, who the Spaghetti Western Database

lists as the second most popular spaghetti composer.

As I mentioned earlier, he receives credit for

some films where the filmmakers later said Ennio Morricone made the score.

However, he often co-scored with Morricone, and his credits include films such as The Mercenary,

Run, Man, Run!, two Sartana films, and Adios, Sabata.

He also made the score for the film Caligula. Yes, that Caligula, with Malcom McDowell.

Guido and Maurizio De Angelis were the two brothers behind the infamous Keoma soundtrack,

but they also composed the score for Trinity is Still My Name and other spaghettis.

Alessandro Alessandroni did some of the guitar work and amazing whistling

on all three Dollars Trilogy films and Once Upon a Time in the West.

He also collaborated with Franceso De Masi on some of his scores.

Riz Ortolani composed the scores for 14 Euro/Spaghetti Westerns and wrote the song

that would later become “More,” covered by artists like Frank Sinatra and Roy Orbison.

There are many more composers who contributed to the genre,

but I wanted to take the time to highlight just a few, especially Bacalov.

I mentioned earlier that there was a final

spaghetti western category that some identify certain films as.

This last category is the Twilight spaghetti,

named so because these films were made when the genre was said to be dying or, more often, dead.

When the spaghetti western died depends on who you ask.

Some say it died around 1969 when there weren’t as many films being made, others when the Trinity

series debuted in 1970, and some when the films stopped being made annually (around the late 70s).

The most well-known Twilight spaghetti is probably Keoma.

Films of this subgenre are tonally bleak.

Though most spaghettis feature moral shades of grey and cynicism,

these films lack that particular sense of triumph I mentioned earlier.

Not quite as brilliantly as The Great Silence,

but in a sort of minimalist way with lots of dark colors and music.

They also tend to be much more surrealist and trippy, with Keoma, again, being a great example.

I haven’t seen as many of these films,

and I wasn’t raving about Keoma so, there’s not as much else I can say.

While there are better-known actors within the spaghetti western genre

like Franco Nero and Tomas Milian, another fairly popular actor was Giuliano Gemma.

Gemma started his career in film as a stuntman which helped him gain leading roles.

Around 1964, he met and befriended Duccio Tessari, one of the co-writers of A Fistful of Dollars.

After the success of A Fistful of Dollars,

Tessari decided to direct his own spaghetti western with Gemma as the star.

This film was A Pistol for Ringo: the first in a series and a more light-hearted spaghetti western

that wound up being successful enough to garner a more respected sequel The Return of Ringo.

Gemma went on to star in several more spaghetti westerns, including Blood

for a Silver Dollar (which was the second highest grossing film in Italy the year it

came out and launched Gemma into stardom), Day of Anger, Arizona Colt, and California.

Like many of his cohort, Gemma used an English pseudonym (Montgomery Wood) for a little while.

Ultimately, Gemma decided to drop the pseudonym because he wanted to use his real name.

Like Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, and even Tomas Milian, Gemma was a popular

actor overall but didn’t seem to get much attention in the United States.

Unlike Hill, Spencer, and Milian however, most of his fame was centralized in Italy,

though he was extremely popular in Japan too.

Suzuki Motor Corporation manufactured a motorbike and named it after him.

He also supposedly had a Japanese clothing line named after him but I

haven’t been able to find any information on that.

It is interesting that an actor like Gemma became so huge in the

genre considering the norm was for the actors to be rough-looking and manly.

Gemma had very boyish features, even as he entered his 30s.

I’m sure a large part of people’s interest in him was the fact that he did do his own stunts.

I hate to keep comparing him to Terence Hill, but much like Hill,

it’s very entertaining to watch him for the stunts alone.

I wish I had more to say about Gemma.

And there are a lot of interviews with him up on YouTube, but they are all in Italian so

I'm out of luck.

First of all, the score (by Riz Ortolani). That was what caught my attention for this film.

It’s super jazzy and unique compared to the folksy or orchestral soundtracks of

other spaghetti westerns. And I love it.

Anyhoo, Day of Anger is a 1967 spaghetti western directed by Tonino Valerii.

This film is Valerii’s second spaghetti western and second film overall.

It stars Lee Van Cleef and Giuliano Gemma as the lead characters.

The film is about Scott, a young, orphaned man living in the town of Clifton.

Since his mother was a prostitute and his father was never known, Scott becomes the town janitor.

Everyone treats him like garbage.

But one day, he meets Frank Talby,

an aged gunslinger who has a bone to pick with some of Clifton’s residents.

Scott wants to find a way to stand up for himself,

so he convinces Talby to take him under his wing, and it all goes downhill from there.

One of the things I like about Day of Anger is that morality is truly gray in it. Most

spaghetti westerns may be “gray” but it's pretty clear that you’re going to root for the main guy:

your Man with No Name, your Django, your mercenary, that’s who you’re supposed to like.

In Day of Anger, however, you find yourself conflicted on who you’re meant to side with

as you learn more and more about Talby and watch Scott change. It’s a good film for that reason.

Like a lot of spaghetti westerns, there is an original cut and an international cut.

The international version cuts out a whopping 28 minutes so try not to watch that one.

One last cool fact about the film is that it reuses two of the sets from the Dollars films:

The town Agua Caliente from For a Few Dollars More and Ramon’s safehouse from A Fistful of Dollars.

If you look hard enough, a lot of spaghetti westerns reused sets.

As I mentioned in Giuliano Gemma’s section, the spaghetti western that

kicked off his career was A Pistol for Ringo. Duccio Tessari directed this film,

and it released a year after A Fistful of Dollars.

The story is about Ringo, the fastest gun in the west (there are a lot of those guys),

who is imprisoned for shooting some men.

However, the town’s sheriff has no choice but to call on Ringo for help

when a group of bandits takes a ranch and its occupants hostage.

While A Pistol for Ringo has its share of violence and tension,

it tends to be more comedic than anything.

Unlike the grizzled and dirty Joe from A Fistful of Dollars, Ringo is much more clean and cheeky.

Though he uses his skills to get out of jail and make some money,

he is not as indifferent or professional.

Ennio Morricone scores this film, and the theme is sung

by the incredible Maurizio Graf whose voice is as angelic as Gemma’s face.

With the success of the film,

it is only natural that it would have a sequel (and a lot of ripoffs).

But the second Ringo film isn’t even a real sequel.

The only connection the second film has to the first aside from the same

cast and crew is that the main character’s nickname is Ringo.

Not counting that, it’s pretty much a standalone film and wasn’t going to

be a Ringo film until the first one turned out to be a massive success.

Though A Pistol for Ringo is pretty well-liked,

The Return of Ringo is on the Spaghetti Western Database’s Top 20 list.

It wasn’t as financially successful as its

predecessor but is highly regarded today for its harsh dramatics.

In this film, Ringo is an American Civil War vet who returns to his home,

only to find that his wife is about to marry a bandit to save herself and

her daughter (her and Ringo’s daughter, that is).

To save his family, Ringo disguises himself as a bandit to infiltrate the gang.

Yes, the film is loosely based on the last parts of The Odyssey where

Odysseus rescues his wife and son from all of the nasty suitors.

Anyway, this film is much darker than A Pistol for Ringo.

The film has been cited for its commentary about post-WWII Italian life,

that it was difficult for soldiers returning from the war to reintegrate into society.

This sort of allegory in films would become more

popular after Vietnam not only in Italy but across the world.

You could almost call this film a proto-Zapata in the sense that it is

a social-political commentary, but it isn’t a Mexican Revolution film.

The soundtrack is once again by Ennio Morricone and features Maurizio Graf singing the theme.

I haven’t watched either film,

but I liked Gemma in Day of Anger so I hope these films are worth a watch too.

People compare this film to Day of Anger due to its similar main characters.

It is about Bill, a young man whose family is murdered at the start of the film.

Years later, when he is finally old enough to take his revenge, he encounters Ryan,

a recently released prisoner, who seeks the same men that murdered Bill’s family.

The two ultimately partner up and hunt down the gang together.

Unlike Day of Anger, this film is about Bill and

Ryan’s developing relationship rather than Talby and Scott’s declining one.

The film’s revenge plot and score served as great inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s

Kill Bill (when I say inspired he used the main theme as I mentioned earlier).

Also, Law’s character is dressed exactly like Joe/Manco/Blondie from the Dollars films like,

c’mon. You knew what you were doing…

The score is, of course, by Ennio Morricone.

And Bill is played by John Philip Law whose only other role I know

of is as Sinbad in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (a childhood favorite of mine).

And Lee Van Cleef plays Ryan.

It is directed by Giulio Petroni who would go on to write and direct a few more spaghetti westerns.

Of all the spaghetti western fan faves, this one is the weirdest.

This 1967 movie was the only spaghetti western by director Giulio Questi,

whose other well-known filmography inclues Death Laid an Egg (uhhh go off I guess!).

And it features Tomas Milian in the starring role.

The story begins with “Django” (who is actually just called the Stranger in the film since this

wasn’t actually a Django film but renamed as such to capitalize on Django’s popularity),

who is double-crossed and left for dead after stealing a shipment of gold.

Luckily, Not Django is rescued by some Native Americans.

And they take him to a town where his betrayers just so happen to be.

Except the townsfolk have murdered them all and are currently fighting over the gold.

What makes this spaghetti western stand out is its surrealism and bizarre cast of characters.

These characters include a mentally ill woman locked in a room by her husband,

a gang of evil gay cowboys, and basically all the townsfolk who rip the bullets out

of a dying man’s body with their hands because the bullets are made of gold.

It’s one of the most memorable and unsettling moments in the film.

"Poncho, you idiot! You didn't have to kill him, did ya?"

"I'm sorry, sir. But all my life I've searched for gold, and this man is full of it."

The film is quite violent even compared to Sergio Corbucci’s films.

Questi claims that this is due to his military experience.

If you’re looking for a spaghetti that flies on the wild side,

this is probably right up your alley.

All right, now we’re getting weird with it. We’re at the point that I like to call “the

fringes.” These are films and facts that are just on the outer reaches of popularity and

notability. But they might not be might considered mandatory viewing among fans.

In the last three tiers, I’ve done my best to highlight significant actors within the genre.

While there are internationally acclaimed actors and actors whose popularity surged in Italy alone,

there are a lot of lesser known actors who make multiple appearances in spaghetti westerns.

The reason I am taking a section to highlight some of them here is that

1. They appear a lot in these films but aren’t popular enough to warrant their

own segment and 2. There’s not a lot of information about them on the internet.

First is Mario Brega.

He was an Italian actor and is probably one of

the better-known supporting cast members of the Dollars Trilogy.

He appears in all three films as Chico, Nino, and Corporal Wallace, respectively.

As he does in the Dollars films, he tends to play the villain’s big muscle or top henchman.

Brega also starred in The Great Silence, Death Rides a Horse,

My Name is Nobody, and even Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America.

Frank Wolff was an American actor who began his career with director Roger Corman.

Wolff’s most notable spaghetti western role

is probably as Mr. McBain in Once Upon a Time in the West.

He also starred in The Great Silence, God Forgives… I Don’t!,

Kill Them All and Come Back Alone, and I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death.

He also narrated a 1968 documentary about spaghetti westerns called Western, Italian Style.

Tragically, Wolff died at the age of 43 when he, according to news reports, committed suicide.

Donal/Donald O’Brien was an Irish actor best

known for starring as Cassidy in Sergio Sollima’s Run, Man, Run!.

His real name was Donald, but he changed his stage name to Donal, purportedly,

because contracts constantly misspelled his name, so he just rolled with it.

In addition to Run, Man, Run!, he was in Keoma,

A Man Called Blade, Four of The Apocalypse, and Silver Saddle.

William Berger was an Austrian actor who starred in several spaghetti westerns,

beginning with Ringo’s Big Night in 1966.

When he was a child, his family moved to the United States after World War II broke out.

As a result, Berger became a fluent English speaker and,

once he made a career out of acting in spaghetti westerns, he would often dub himself in English.

His notable western roles are Charlie Siringo in Face to Face, Keoma’s father in Keoma,

Banjo in Sabata, Lasky in If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death, and Mr. Preston in California.

Luigi Pistilli was an Italian actor who is most recognized for his role as Father

Pablo Ramirez, Tuco’s brother, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

He was a theatre-trained actor, and his other spaghetti westerns roles

include For a Few Dollars More, Death Rides a Horse, and The Great Silence.

Pistilli tragically died in 1996 after reportedly committing suicide.

Horst Frank was a prolific German actor who appeared in what some might consider one of

the early or proto-spaghetti westerns: The Pirates of the Mississippi in 1963.

It was filmed in Croatia but the production teams hailed from West Germany, France, and Italy.

Frank’s other spaghetti western endeavors include Django,

Prepare a Coffin/Viva Django, Johnny Hamlet, and The Grand Duel.

Aldo Sambrell was a Spanish actor who, like Mario Brega,

appeared in all three Dollars films and tended to play bad guys.

He starred in over 150 films, including Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck,

You Sucker!, A Bullet for the General, three proto-spaghetti westerns, and Silver Saddle.

Eduardo Martinez Fajardo was a Spanish actor who starred in many plays, television shows,

and films throughout his 55 years as an actor.

His most famous role is Major Jackson, the main villain from Django.

Fajardo also starred in Seven Pistols for a Massacre, The Mercenary, and Companeros.

John Ireland was a Canadian actor who starred in several American westerns,

such as My Darling Clementine, Red River, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

In the late 1960s, Ireland traveled to Europe and made a few spaghetti

westerns. These spaghettis included Run, Man, Run!, Pistol for a Hundred Coffins,

Taste of Death/Cost of Dying, and Challenge of the McKenna’s/Badlands Drifter/Amen.

Fernando Sancho Les was a Spanish actor who starred in over 200 films.

In spaghetti westerns, he often played bandits, which are his most famous roles today.

He starred in The Big Gundown, both Ringo films,

Arizona Colt, If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death, and $10,000 Blood Money.

Jose Calvo (sometimes billed as Pepe Calvo) was a Spanish actor

who starred in over 100 films in a 28-year period.

He starred in the proto-spaghetti western Gunfight at Red Sands in 1963, but is most

famous internationally for his role as Silvanito, the broest of bros, in A Fistful of Dollars.

He also starred as another bro character Blind Bill in Day of Anger.

He starred in a lot of lesser known, mediocre spaghettis.

Lorenzo Robledo was a Spanish actor who starred in several spaghetti westerns.

In many of these films, he was uncredited.

Like Mario Brega, he starred in all three Dollars films.

He played an uncredited Baxter gunman in A Fistful of Dollars, Indio’s former partner

in For a Few Dollars More, and one of Angel Eyes’s men in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

He also starred in Navajo Joe, The Big Gundown, Face to Face,

The Mercenary, Once Upon a Time in the West, Companeros, Four of the Apocalypse,

the early/proto spaghetti western Implacable Three, and more.

In the spaghetti western community,

99% of fans would say that the first spaghetti western is A Fistful of Dollars.

It defined the whole genre and just about every film

that followed it tried to mimic it in some way.

However, due to the nature of Eurowesterns and Italo-Spanish productions before A Fistful of

Dollars, there is some debate about what the first real spaghetti western is.

While there are Italian westerns that released in 1964 before A Fistful of Dollars, there are

three films that fans occasionally identify as the first spaghettis.

These films are Implacable Three, Gunfight at Red Sands,

and Gunfight at High Noon/Three Ruthless Ones/Sons of Vengeance.

The first two films debuted in 1963 while the latter film debuted in early 1964.

I also included Heroes of the West as an early spaghetti because, though it is a

comedy, it was an Italian/Spanish production and released in 1963.

Implacable Three (which, going off of the trailer,

seems to have been advertised at one point as Three Black Horsemen) is about a man who

teams up with two other men to hunt down a group of outlaws that murdered his wife.

Despite being made before the genre-defining A Fistful of Dollars,

it has a rather dark tone and features the wife being strangled to death on screen.

One review of the film by the Son of Django blog says the western has

a very Spanish-style, rather than an Italian one.

The characters are not anti-heroes seeking

fortune; they are just seeking to defend their honor and justice.

At one point, the whole film was on YouTube, but now only trailers remain,

and based on those, it seems to have been a very cheap film.

But it does feature spaghetti regulars Fernando Sancho and Lorenzo Robledo.

Gunfight at Red Sands (AKA Duello nel Texas and Gringo) tells the story of Ricardo.

A Mexican family adopted him after he lost his parents.

After fighting in the Mexican Civil War,

Ricardo returns home to find his adoptive family murdered and their gold stolen.

Of course, he sets out to avenge his family and find his gold.

Though it’s almost entirely played like an American western,

the film has the common spaghetti western theme of revenge and seeking money.

The film also features Ennio Morricone’s first score in a western.

While it seems pretty basic, the film actually sounds a bit interesting-

Gunfight at High Noon/Three Ruthless Ones/Sons of

Vengeance/The Pitiless Three has a very similar set up to Implacable Three.

Three young boys are left fatherless after three robbers attack their home.

They grow up, and the three seek different paths to deal with their father’s death.

Jeff wants to become a marshall and deal with the killers through the law,

while Chris wants to kill them with his own hands (er… gun…), and Brad is just kinda there.

The film features Richard Harrison, who previously played Ricardo in Gunfight at Red Sands, as Jeff.

And Fernando Sancho makes an appearance.

And it also features a score by Riz Ortolani.

Of these three films, this one seems to be

the most highly regarded when it comes to early spaghetti westerns.

The last film in this section is Heroes of the West.

It’s a comedy and by far the most obscure of these films which is probably why it

doesn’t get brought up a lot when the early spaghetti westerns are discussed.

I mean, when you look it up on the spaghetti western database page,

the only link on the page aside from some of the cast and crew and IMDB is the soundtrack.

Usually there’s a little something like a short review or possible DVDs, but this has nothing.

From the information I scrounged up,

the film is about two outlaws who pose as the heirs to a gold mine.

Hijinks ensue, and the two imposters ultimately work together to take down

the town’s evil mayor and save the day.

As far as I can tell, the film never released outside of Italy,

and anything that might be considered subversive of the western genre was only for comedy.

Therefore, I can see why people would hesitate to call this a

spaghetti western. But created by Italians and Spainards it was.

As I said earlier, while there were Italian westerns that came a bit before and after

these movies, these films give a pretty good taste of what the western genre would become.

A lot of reviews of these films say they have a

more Spanish flair to them than the later spaghetti westerns.

The films look cleaner and brighter. The protagonists also still have to be lawful.

For example, the most righteous character in Gunfight at High Noon is Jeff,

the brother who wants to become a marshall.

Still, some of these films have pretty dark moments,

showing that there was something new lurking beneath the surface of the western genre.

West and Soda is a 1965 animated film by legendary Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto.

The film tells the story, like many spaghetti westerns,

of a small western town beset by an evil land owner and his cronies.

The only one who won't sell her land to the evildoer is the lovely Darling Clementine.

To save her land, Darling hires a skilled gunman who just so happened to wander into town.

This film is relevant in the iceberg because Bruno Bozzetto

claims West and Soda is the first true and honest spaghetti western

since he started working on it before A Fistful of Dollars began production.

While Wikipedia might have you believe Bozzetto was bitter about this, he’s actually pretty

cheeky about it and said in an interview that he and Sergio Leone joked about the coincidence.

Honestly, this film is a light-hearted parody of classic westerns from the 1950s

rather than the gritty westerns this iceberg is dedicated too.

However, it is interesting to see an example of the emergence of Italian westerns.

Another interesting thing about this film is that most of the English dub cast is largely

unknown except for the character Slim, who is purportedly voiced by actor Daws Butler,

the voice of the original Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.

As far as I know (wink wink), the full film is up on YouTube.

And it's worth a watch. It's a cute film, and it has some funny moments.

"Well, Slim, look who's come back to town."

"Our handsome cowboy all done up in basic black like a crow."

"Caw. Caw."

*RAUCOUS APPLAUSE*

My favorite character is definitely Slim.

"I like that laugh."

"hA hA hA"

Most spaghetti westerns, aside from the Leone films, are already on tier with B movies.

So you can only imagine what the plethora of even cheaper rip-offs were like.

For every big spaghetti western there was, Italian directors did everything

in their power to capitalize on that success by using similar titles and character archetypes.

"In fact, Clint starred in the sequel For

a Few Dollars More with Lee Van Cleef; an even bigger success."

"Well, that set the trend. 'Dollar,' it seemed, was the magic word."

"So, all the films had 'dollar' in their titles."

"Then, somebody discovered Ringo, changed Giuliano Gemma's name to Montgomery Wood,

and made a bundle on a yarn called A Pistol for Ringo."

"Now, Ringo was the magic word."

In addition to the “Dollars” and “Ringo” films mentioned, some other rip-offs included those

in the vein of Django (especially Django), Sartana, Sabata, and the Trinity films.

While some films are direct rip-offs, I admit that the term “rip-off” may be a bit misleading.

Most of these films and their characters were not rip-offs,

but rather renamed to capitalize on the success of what was popular at the time.

Some of these aren’t even spaghetti westerns,

they just feature actors like Franco Nero and Terrence Hill and are renamed as a result.

A good example of this phenomenon is Keoma being

renamed to Django Rides Again in France and Django’s Great Return in Germany.

There were also a lot of Django and Sartana crossovers for some reason.

Some fun titles are Django’s Cut Price Corpses,

Django Kills Softly,

Don’t Wait Django, Shoot!,

Django Forgives… I Don’t! (which is actually God Forgives… I Don’t!),

Sartana Does Not Forgive,

Sartana Kills Them All,

Trinity and Sartana Are Coming,

There’s a Noose Waiting for You… Trinity!,

Trinity Sees Red,

Ringo, Pray to Your God and Die,

$100,000 for Ringo,

and Django and Sartana Are Coming... It's the End.

That was just one small sampling of some of these titles,

and I tried to pick some of the funnier ones.

If you’d like to see just how many of these renames/rip-offs exist,

the Spaghetti Western Database has a great page for it.

As the page itself says, it is incredibly confusing to count

just how many rip-offs and retitles there were, especially since it varies by country.

Lastly, if you’re particularly interested in the Django film names,

YouTuber and absolute madlad Eric Zaldivar made a video where he ranks all 85 Django-named films.

It’s a good video, and I have huge respect for him

because I personally don’t have the time or patience to watch all of these films.

I could barely get through some of these movies as it is.

Unlike the rip-offs I just listed off, Django Strikes

Again is the only official Django sequel in existence.

It’s… not very good.

Directed by Nello Rossati under the pseudonym Ted Archer, the film released in 1987 and

is the only Django film in which Franco Nero reprises the role of the character.

The story focuses on Django coming out of retirement to

rescue his long lost daughter from a slave trader.

Also starring is spaghetti regular William Berger and…

Donald Pleasance???

It seems that the producers/filmmakers hoped this film would spark a spaghetti western revival.

While I can’t find any information about it’s box

office, it seems that the film was a critical and commercial failure.

From what I can find, Sergio Corbucci originally planned to direct the film,

but dropped out after another spaghetti western revival film Tex and the Lord of the Deep flopped.

Franco Nero himself said in an interview that he

was not happy with the film because he found it “flat.”

Modern reviews of this film are mostly negative,

but some say that it keeps the same heart of classic spaghetti westerns.

Others say it isn’t worth a watch.

My opinion, just from looking at the trailer,

is that is looks more like a bland action movie rather than a spaghetti western.

Pretty disappointing…

In December 2013, Franco Nero announced that he

would star as Django for a third and final installment in the official Django series.

Since that time, the film has been stuck in development hell.

According to a 2014 Guardian article, the film’s plot centered around Django,

now an aged western-film consultant, fighting against racketeers.

Joe D'Augustine, an editor who worked on Quentin

Tarantino’s Kill Bill films and Death Proof, was supposed to direct.

A Facebook dedicated to Django Lives! hinted that filming started in late 2015.

For some reason, the film was delayed. But in 2016,

director John Sayles was now writing and directing the film.

According to one article, the plot now changed so that Django was an extra on

the set of the infamous silent film The Birth of a Nation and fought against white supremacists.

By 2017, Christian Alvart was now in the director’s chair,

but John Sayles was still the head writer.

Again, things were quiet until about 2020.

In an interview, Franco Nero said that the film crew was ready to start filming

when the Covid-19 pandemic halted production.

Now, from what Nero said, Django was no longer a consultant for western films.

But he was still going to fight Klansmen, however.

The last update on the film, unfortunately, appears to have been in August 2021,

when the Django Lives Facebook page posted, “Django Lives! is COMING SOON!”

Additionally, there is an IMDb page for the film, with a short description that reads, “The renowned

gunslinger fends off racism in 1914 America. He's up in years but still as deadly as ever.”

Will Django Lives! ever see the light of day?

For now, I can’t say.

Upon hearing this title, you might think this is just another Django rip-off.

But this is technically a “semi-official” Django film.

This movie came out in 1968 and features none other than Terence Hill as Django.

The plot revolves around Django saving men from the gallows and

assembling a team to go after the men who framed them and killed his wife.

Horst Frank and George Eastman also star in this film.

It’s nothing to write home about. But some of the comedic timing is great.

“Garcia, I got something real important to tell ya."

"Well?"

"Forgot what it was."

"Garcia, I remembered what it was now!"

"Tomorrow, they’re gonna hang your wife.”

The story behind this film’s production is quite interesting.

When Franco Nero signed on to Django, he agreed to make three films with the production company.

The first was Django, the second was another spaghetti western called Texas Addio,

and the last was Django, Prepare a Coffin.

However, in 1967, Nero took the role of Lancelot in Camelot,

so he dipped out before he could fulfill his contractual obligation.

As a quick note, Sergio Corbucci did not direct this film,

but rather Ferdinando Baldi, who also directed Texas Addio.

And it features the cinematography of Enzo Barboni, director of the Trinity films.

Whether you want to consider this film an official Django sequel or not is up to you.

I definitely wouldn’t consider it a rip-off,

but it seems that Sergio Corbucci didn’t have anything to do with it.

Also, I like how the trailer calls him the “real” Django, like,

they knew what they were doing, they were playing with people.

I was just gonna tack this on to the prior segment,

but I figured this topic deserved its own explanation.

This fact is relatively well-known now thanks to a video that JarredJermaine posted on TikTok

(at least, I think it was originally on TikTok) where Jermaine demonstrates the use of the sample.

The sample comes from the song “Last Man Standing” which plays during the film’s final scene.

Danger Mouse stated in an interview that “Crazy” “is a straight spaghetti western”

and cited Ennio Morricone as one of his biggest influences.

CeeLo Green also explained how Django, Prepare a Coffin influenced him in a recent interview.

"Movies and cinema always play a big part because to me I have to be able to see the song."

"The track itself has to give me some type of cinematic quality

more than I write radio songs, I feel like I'm scoring if anything."

Just goes to show that what’s old is new (and spaghetti).

Navajo Joe is another Sergio Corbucci film.

Released after Django in 1966, the film is notable

for featuring a yet-to-breakout Burt Reynolds in the leading role.

And starring as the main antagonist is none other than spaghetti regular Aldo Sambrell.

The film is about a group of outlaws who slaughter Native Americans for money.

Now, they’re plotting to steal a train containing $500,000.

But there’s one man standing in their way,

and it’s Navajo Joe (AKA Burt Reynolds with a very bad fake tan).

He’s not going to let them get away with it.

But is he fighting just for the sake of morality, or something more?

From the information I can find about this film, it appears that Burt Reynolds and

Sergio Corbucci hoped that the film would break out into international

stardom the same way A Fistful of Dollars had for Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone.

There’s a lot of talk about how Burt Reynolds absolutely hated working on this film,

which I believe, but I can’t find any direct sources about this hatred,

at least not in Reynolds' available interviews.

Apparently, Clint Eastwood, a good friend of Reynolds,

recommended he get on the spaghetti western craze after his success.

So, when a “Sergio” offered Reynolds a role in an Italian western, he jumped right on it.

I can’t find any box office data for the film, but it sounds like it wasn’t a big hit.

At least, it certainly wasn’t the big hit the studio and Reynolds hoped for.

However, the film has garnered quite a cult following over the years.

And it is considered one of the best “alternative” spaghetti westerns. And

it's one of Quentin Tarantino’s personal favorite spaghettis.

Of course, the score is by Ennio Morricone and reused by Tarantino

in Kill Bill Vol. 2 because why wouldn’t it be?

"Burt, you're very..."

"Yes, I am."

If you couldn’t tell based on the title,

this spaghetti is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a post-American Civil War setting.

The main character’s name isn’t Johnny Hamlet,

but rather Johnny Hamilton, a Confederate veteran who returns to his hometown after

the war only to find his father dead and his uncle married to his mother.

Conspiracy and intrigue ensue as Johnny tries to

unravel the mystery of who really killed his father.

Released in Italy in 1968, Sergio Corbucci initially came up with the story.

Ultimately, the reins fell to Enzo G. Castellari, who was very taken with the story.

According to Castellari, he wanted to release it under the name Johnny Hamlet.

However, at the last minute, the studio changed the name to That Dirty Story

in the West because they felt it would do better if it had an obviously western title.

As far as my research tells me, it did not perform well upon release, much to Castellari’s upset.

This one I’ve seen, and it’s one of my personal favorite spaghetti westerns.

When people aren't talking about Keoma,

many consider this film to be Enzo G. Castellari’s best.

It has some highly artistic and creative cinematography as well as musical direction.

It’s still on a B-movie level, but there is a lot of effort put into this film.

There are also some spaghetti regulars and newcomers to the film.

Johnny is played by Andrea Giordana, who starred in two spaghetti westerns prior to Johnny Hamlet.

Horst Frank plays the evil Uncle Claude.

And then you have Gilbert Roland, a bonafide American actor with a long list of credits

to his name and a place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as Horace, Johnny’s mentor,

best friend, and the one of the bro-est of bros in spaghetti western history.

Tell me who the best character is, and tell me why it’s Horace.

So aside from the films in the first two tiers, I would highly recommend this one.

I’m probably overhyping it,

but I genuinely enjoyed this film and it has some great direction and style.

And I cannot, of course, forget Franceso De Masi’s soundtrack.

The opening theme “Find a Man” features the

great Maurizio Graf and is one of the best spaghetti western themes ever.

Fulci

is best known for giallo, or stylized Italian thriller/horror, films.

The most famous of these is perhaps The Beyond from 1981; he also directed

City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery, The Black Cat, and 1979’s Zombie.

Like pretty much every director on this list,

his critics and fans consider his work to be excessively violent, gorey, and perverse.

In addition to his giallos, Fulci also made three spaghetti westerns (technically three,

but we’ll get into that in a bit).

The first of these is Massacre Time with Franco Nero and George Hilton.

Then came the infamous Four of the Apocalypse with Tomas Milian.

And finally, we have one of the last hurrahs of the spaghetti western,

Silver Saddle with Giuliano Gemma.

These three are assuredly spaghetti westerns,

but Fulci made two other films in Italy with none other than Franco Nero.

These two films are White Fang, based on Jack London’s novel,

and its sequel Challenge to White Fang.

Both of these films are listed on the Spaghetti Western Database,

but they’re more action-adventure films and not necessarily western.

I can’t even say these were marketed as Django films because from what I can find,

surprisingly, the studios never retitled them as such.

I guess it wasn’t in style by the time they came out.

Though Fulci was mainly a master of horror, his spaghetti westerns

are quite notable since he tackled the genre in its early and twilight stages.

He had an incredibly prolific and successful career as a filmmaker,

working right up until his death in 1996.

And it cannot be understated that he created some truly intriguing and controversial films.

Speaking of…

This film is like a mix between a giallo and a spaghetti western.

And, much like when it debuted in 1975, it remains controversial among spaghetti western fans.

Earlier in this video, I discussed the fact that films like Django and The Great

Silence went unreleased or censored in other countries due to their violence.

So when Four of the Apocalypse came out, I can’t imagine what the censors thought of it.

After the outcasts of a town are massacred, four residents manage to survive and escape.

These four are Stubby, Bunny, Clem, and Bud.

Together, they travel across the desert to try and find a new home.

Along the way, however, they are stalked by a mad bandit named Chaco.

Aside from Tomas Milian as Chaco and Donal O’Brien in a brief role as the

sheriff, most of the cast are not typical spaghetti western actors.

Fabio Testi plays Stubby; funnily enough, before this film, he started his career

as a stuntman for what else but The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Lynne Frederick, who famously married Peter Sellers shortly before he died, is Bunny.

Michael J. Pollard, who is most notable for his

supporting role in the film Bonnie and Clyde, plays Clem, the drunkard.

And Harry Baird is Bud, the man who see ghosts.

Baird is a particularly interesting figure because

his career was just starting to pick up before he did this film.

But he tragically suffered from glaucoma and went blind,

so Four of the Apocalypse was his final film.

As for the movie itself, it is, in a word, disgusting.

It’s gorier than the average spaghetti western,

features a graphic rape scene, and has stuff like… well… this…

"It's in the movie."

"He is a magnificent actor."

"He is a magnificent actor."

"The best there. Better than me."

"Nah, I don't think he's better than me. I was trying to be nice."

Still, many spaghetti western fans are divided on this one.

Some people love it, and others don’t.

Whatever you might think, it is certainly not for the faint of heart.

One review from the Spaghetti Western Database marks Four of the Apocalypse as the first of the

Twilight Spaghettis, or at least the first sign of the bleak and dreary films to come.

It is also as trippy and bizarre as it is violent and depressing.

Music wise, the score is by music group Bixio, Frizzi, and Tempera.

It’s definitely atypical for most Spaghetti westerns,

but typical for the Twilight spaghetti with it’s trippy vibe.

Not my favorite, but much more pleasant than Keoma’s soundtrack.

Red Sun is a 1971 film that some might not consider a true spaghetti western.

Terence Young, known for directing three James Bond films, wound up directing this film.

However, it was an Italian production.

The starring cast includes Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, and, in an

interesting twist of fate, Toshiro Mifune in his first and only spaghetti western.

With this very international cast and crew, one review from the New York Times called it,

“the first Spanish British‐American French‐Japanese‐Swiss Western.”

The plot revolves around Mifune’s character Kuroda,

who serves as a Japanese diplomat’s bodyguard.

While accompanying the diplomat in the United States, a prized sword,

intended to be a gift to the U.S. President from the Japanese emperor,

is stolen from the diplomat by Link (Charles Bronson) and his partner Gauche.

Gauche backstabs Link, so Link and Kuroda team up to get the sword back.

The film was, as the Spaghetti Western Database puts it,

“predictably” successful in Europe and Japan.

Of course, it didn’t have much impact in the U.S.

Modern critics in particular are pretty harsh on this film.

However, spaghetti western fans fondly remember it for its light-hearted nature.

Mifune and Bronson actually have some pretty good chemistry as leading men.

Also, random side note, but people like to point out the irony of how one of the

Seven Samurai stars alongside one of the Magnificent Seven.

As I write and record this video, I have yet to see this film,

but a good friend of mine who saw it dubbed it, “Republican comfort food.”

It may have some stereotyping (but basically every film on this list does so what’s the

point of even talking about it?) but, overall, it seems like a fun picture with an unusual cast.

Another film with an unusual cast.

This one is a 1969 Zapata directed by Giulio Petroni, the man behind Death Rides a Horse.

In the lead roles are Tomas Milian and, wait for it,

Orson Welles.

The film is about Mexican Revolutionary leader Tepepa.

After he is captured by the evil Colonel Cascorro and sentenced to death,

Tepepa is ultimately rescued by Dr. Henry Price.

But this doctor isn’t here to continue the revolution; he’s seeking revenge

against Tepepa because the revolutionary supposedly killed the woman he loved.

But Price won’t kill him until the Colonel stops pursuing them,

so, until they stop the Colonel, the doctor’s revenge will have to wait.

This film is largely forgotten save the fact that it featured Orson Welles,

but those who have seen it consider it one of the best Zapatas.

Giulio Petroni himself called it his best film,

and it features an excellent soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

If Petroni had his way, this film would be far more beloved than it is and was.

Part of the problem with this film, according to reviews,

is that it is lengthy (over two hours) and particularly pessimistic.

There was also conflict on set between Milian and Welles.

Welles and Petroni got along well, but, according to Petroni,

Welles referred to Milian as, “that little Cuban.”

Wikipedia says, however, that Orson supposedly called him a “dirty Cuban.”

If there’s one good thing I can assuredly say about Tepepa, it is ambitious.

One of the most common “factoids” you’ll hear about For a Few Dollars More is that actor Gian

Maria Volonte dubbed his own lines for the film’s English release due to a contractual obligation.

He did not know any English, so a translator helped him say his lines phonetically.

This piece of trivia is one you can find on IMdB, and, as late as December 2020, TV Tropes.

However, this is not true, or at least, not entirely true.

The voice you hear in the English version of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few

Dollars More is not Volonte’s, but rather actor Bernard Grant’s.

From what I can find, this legend about Volonte doing his own dub

started in Sir Christopher Frayling’s book on Sergio Leone Something to do with Death.

The trivia has since been corrected on TV Tropes,

but remains one of the top pieces of trivia on IMdB.

It’s possible that Volonte may have recorded some lines for the English version,

but it’s pretty clear once you listen that Grant is largely responsible for Indio’s English voice.

If you’re not convinced and think that Volonte did his voice for A Fistful as well, you can

clearly hear Grant’s voice work as Captain Clifton in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

"When you hear the music finish, begin. Or do you think you can?"

"Headquarters has declared we must take that ridiculous flyspeck."

"Even if all of us are killed."

"Otherwise the key'll get rusty and just be a spot on the wall."

The reason I bring up this myth and will address a few others is just to show how

little information there is about some of these spaghetti westerns.

Not only is it difficult because I am not a native Italian or Italian speaker,

but there’s a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation of things.

That’s why you’ve heard me express some doubt and

uncertainty in some of the facts I’ve said in the iceberg so far.

Anyway, with that little spiel out of the way, I’d like to address a

couple more spaghetti western myths and legends that I have been able to debunk.

Another common legend you’ll hear about is that Franco Nero worked

at a gas station when he was first hired to play the lead role in Django.

Sergio Corbucci got gas, saw Nero, and thought he was perfect for the role.

In reality, Nero was already an actor and took

on the Django role under the advice of director Elio Petri.

My theory is that this rumor started because Nero’s first ever film role

was a small part in a movie called I Knew Her Well where he plays a garage attendant.

A final myth that user Extranjero brought up on the Spaghetti Western Database Forums is that A

Fistful of Dollars broke the Hays Code by showing a shooter killing a victim in the same frame.

But this wasn’t true, as films like The Magnificent Seven showed such violence.

The Hays Code enforced certain moral protections, and when it comes to gun violence the only thing

the Code says is that the usage of the firearm should not be shown in detail.

So, the myth that A Fistful of Dollars violated the Hays Code because of the framing is not true.

Did it violate the Code in other ways? Probably, but not in the way the rumor suggests.

There are definitely more spaghetti western myths out there,

but these are the ones I could debunk beyond a reasonable doubt.

If anyone has any other myths they could clear up, feel free to post your knowledge in the comments.

This tier marks the point where you’ve gone past the fringes of regular spaghetti western

fan knowledge and gone into the deeper content. The stuff that is not as popular,

and the facts that aren't as well discussed or researched.

Originally, I attached this to the Recurring Actors segment,

but I found that these female actresses tend to be more unknown compared to the male ones.

One of the unfortunate things about spaghetti westerns is that most of

the films fall flat when it comes to female characters.

Let’s be real, these films are sausage fests,

and most of the notable actresses within the genre only have one or two appearances.

Not that it’s a huge problem for me, but I hate to say that the Western,

Italian Style documentary is right when it comes to women in these movies.

"As for the girl, well, she's not very important."

"She's often Mexican, young, and well-constructed."

"Usually being raped in front of the camera."

That being said, I’m gonna do my best to highlight a few actresses.

Vonetta McGee was an American actress whose film debut was actually in The

Great Silence as Pauline, the widow who hires Silence to avenge her husband.

After The Great Silence, she starred in several Blaxploitation films and the 1984 film Repo Man.

Mariannce Koch is probably one of the best-known spaghetti western

actresses due to her role in A Fistful of Dollars as Marisol.

She hails from Germany and was a successful German actress until she retired in the early 70s.

Then she became a television host, and finally, a doctor of internal medicine.

She is no longer in the medical practice but continues to write books about healthy living.

Lorella De Luca (often billed as Hally Hammond) was an Italian actress who starred as the

sheriff’s fiancee and Ringo’s wife in the first and second Ringo films, respectively.

One cool fact about De Luca is that she actually

married the director of the Ringo movies Duccio Tessari.

As far as I can tell, they met on the set of the first film and married in 1971.

Martine Beswick is an English-Jamaican actress who

is best known for starring in the James Bond films From Russia with Love and Thunderball.

However, one of her other big roles was Adelita in A Bullet for the General.

Linda Veras is a former Italian actress who starred in films like Face to Face,

Run, Man, Run, and the first Sabata film.

In Run, Man, Run, she plays the Salvation Army sergeant

and gets into a catfight with Chelo Alonso which was great for the plot.

Anyway, the Spaghetti Western Database claims

that she dated Sergio Sollima as they made Run, Man, Run and Face to Face.

I have no idea if this is true because the Database is the only

place I can find this but I thought it was interesting enough to share.

Nieves Navarro (sometimes billed as Susan Scott)

is an Italian actress who was born in, of all places, Almeria, Spain.

She tended to be cast as the bad girl, girl boss in these films.

She starred in the Ringo films, The Big Gundown, Adios, Sabata,

and Light the Fuse, Sartana is Coming.

She also married the producer of the Ringo films Luciano Ercoli.

Nicoletta Machiavelli was an Italian actress,

and one of the craziest people I have researched so far.

She was a descendant of the Niccolo Machiavelli and ultimately disliked

her association with him, at least for a while.

Nicoletta Machiavelli began acting in the mid 60s and starred in spaghetti westerns,

most notably as Estella in Navajo Joe.

One of her other notable spaghetti westerns was Garter Colt, a spaghetti western where she stars

as the main protagonist, making it one of the only films in the genre with a woman in the lead role.

She retired from film in 1977, save one final film in 1983. All of this isn’t the crazy part.

The crazy part is that, in 1984, she became a follower of Rajneesh/Osho.

I cannot find when she left, and one source implies that

she remained in the group until her death.

But this aside, she moved to Seattle, Washington around 1986.

Starting in 2005, she taught Italian language at Bellevue University.

She passed away in 2015, and, man, did she have a history.

I felt the need to elaborate on her because she just had a super fascinating life.

Remember how I brought this film up 10 or 20 seconds ago as one of the

only spaghetti westerns with a female lead? Yeah?

Well, the Spaghetti Western Database describes

this film as “...a kind of feminist Zapata Western.”

As I mentioned previously, this film features Nicoletta Machiavelli in the

lead role, if you can even call it that, of Lulu,

a gambler who drifts into a town beset by Mexican Revolutionaries and the French Army.

Also featured is Claudio Camaso, the brother of Gian Maria Volonte,

as Red, the main antagonist of the film.

He’s just as wacky as his big bro.

I would describe more of the plot here, but, truth be told, there really isn’t any.

If you look on IMdB, the synopsis reads, “A young gambling woman defends herself

from the attack of a fearsome bandit. Falling in love with a young Frenchman,

he asks her to give up gambling and start a quiet and normal life,

but when the young man is killed by the bandit, she is determined to seek revenge.”

But this is a lie, a clever tactic to trick you into thinking this film has a story.

It doesn’t.

All this film is is a mishmash of disconnected side stories,

exploitation of the actresses, and a few okay scenes here and there.

There’s cuts between scenes of another French soldier as he falls in love with

the town beauty Rosie while Lulu romances Carlos, her Frenchman.

And then you have the scene that drags on for about 10 to 15 minutes where the

evil bandit Red tries to rape Rosie while her love interest flails around uselessly.

To deboonk the IMdB synopsis, Machiavelli’s character doesn’t

fall in love with Carlos until about halfway through the film.

And I don’t think any of you will care about spoilers here, but Lulu does not get her revenge.

Carlos is killed by the Revolutionary leader at the very end of the film.

And when Lulu finds out Carlos is dead she just… leaves.

There is one decent scene: the gambling scene where Lulu uses a midget disguised as her baby

to get the upper hand, only for the two of them to get called out by a talking parrot.

Yeah.

You see, I know all this because I went out of my way to buy this film because it’s kind of rare,

and the synopsis intrigued me enough to want to see it.

And you also have this poster which makes you go, “Y’know,

this probably has a lot of fanservice but it looks like it could be cool enough to watch.”

Again, this is another trick.

It seems an English-subbed version of the

movie may have been on YouTube at one point, but no longer exists.

The film was never dubbed in English and somehow, managed to evade German dubbing as well.

Germany, where they were obsessed with westerns.

I feel like there are times where this film is self-aware, like one scene where this dude is

just going back and forth kissing between two girls while the town is being raided.

But this film doesn’t work as a comedy either.

It’s too disjointed, and it's obvious most

of it is just to show off Nicoletta Michavelli and her female co-stars.

But yes, the director who made this film, Gian Andrea Rocco,

only has three film credits to his name, and it appears this is his only directorial credit.

"You. You vile, disgusting, foul human being."

Not long after this film, Machiavelli broke the

studio contract she was under because she hated the films she was making.

And after seeing Garter Colt, I don’t blame her.

As one final note for all you lost media people out there,

according to some sources, it sounds like 15 minutes of this film is missing.

Could these lost 15 minutes improve Garter Colt’s story?

I highly doubt it.

Santi is most notable for being Sergio Leone’s assistant director on The Good,

the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Apparently, he served as the assistant director on Death Rides a Hose as well.

You might also remember that I brought up Santi earlier in the iceberg when I mentioned that Leone

chose him to direct Duck, You Sucker! before Leone was forced to direct the film himself.

Funny thing about that too.

I didn’t go into detail about Santi’s involvement with the film, but the common legend is that

Santi shot the film for the first few days before he was ultimately replaced by Leone.

Well, Santi didn’t shoot any scenes for the film, and that’s according to the man himself.

From what he says, Leone made an announcement before filming began

that Santi would be the director of the film… without Santi’s knowledge.

So the agents of James Coburn and Rod Steiger plus the producers said, “Uh,

no no no, you gotta do this, this is what we paid for.”

And Leone began filming before Santi had any idea what had happened.

Now, it could be that this wasn’t what happened but considering this is what

Santi himself said in an interview, I’m more inclined to believe his side of the story.

I bring this up because other than this legend, Santi is a fairly mysterious figure.

There aren’t a lot of interviews with him.

Apparently, there is at least one on some DVD versions of

his film The Grand Duel, but I don’t have that.

At any rate, I find his obscurity and history with Leone interesting.

Especially because Santi would go on to direct, by himself, only one spaghetti western.

This is the one spaghetti western directed by Giancarlo Santi.

Released in 1972, it features our boy Lee Van Cleef as the protagonist.

The plot focuses ex-sheriff Clayton (played by Van Cleef) as he pursues Philip Wermeer,

a man who has been accused of killing the head of the rich and powerful Saxon family.

But Clayton doesn’t think Wermeer is guilty;

he believes he’s innocent, and wants to prove it to the Saxons and the townsfolk.

But the Saxons are convinced that Wermeer is guilty and want to hang him.

This mystery must be solved, and it’s clear that someone knows more than he is letting on.

I probably could have brought this film up earlier in the iceberg,

but I feel that the story behind it and Santi’s background are more obscure than the film itself.

So it made sense to me to put the film lower in the tiers.

According to Santi, he did not write this film himself,

but producers approached him with a script already prepared and Lee Van Cleef guaranteed.

When he accepted the project, producers pressured

him to emulate Sergio Leone’s style, so he didn’t enjoy it too much.

As it stands, this film is okay.

Some of the mystery elements are well-incorporated:

almost in a way that I wish The Big Gundown had done.

Plus, it has Lee Van Cleef.

And it also features Horst Frank in yet another villainous role as the eldest Saxon brother.

The last thing of note is the immaculate soundtrack by Luis Bacalov.

If you’re a Tarantino fan,

you may recognize it because he reused it in Kill Bill, which I did mention earlier.

It is by far the best thing about this film.

Other than the music, the film is pretty standard spaghetti western fare.

This 1972 film is James Coburn’s second and final spaghetti western.

This one is directed by Tonino Valerii, the director of Day of Anger and My Name is Nobody.

It features a typical action set-up where

a rag-tag team of troubled men have to work together.

In this film, the men are Union prisoners led James Coburn, who plays a Union colonel

that surrendered Fort Holman to the Confederacy.

Now, it’s up to the Colonel to take back the fort,

and the Union prisoners are going to help him in exchange for their freedom and payment.

From the reviews I’ve read, this film isn’t very good.

Still, it managed to make almost 2 billion lire at the Italian box office,

but it didn’t seem to make a splash elsewhere.

It is also cool for featuring not only James Coburn, but also Bud Spencer and

American actor Telly Savalas, best known for his roles as Kojak and Maggott from The Dirty Dozen.

I also bring up this film because it has some intriguing trivia behind it.

There are several different cuts of this film with varying lengths.

Some versions are 90 minutes to 92 minutes long, and others are 112 minutes to 118 minutes long.

I don’t know why this is.

I do know, however, that there were two English-language cuts of the film at least.

The 92-minute version features James Coburn dubbing his own voice, but, according to the

Spaghetti Western Database, longer versions of the film feature another actor dubbing Coburn.

Shorter versions of the film appear to be more accessible,

while the longer version is not lost but rare.

Lastly, the film features a score by Riz Ortolani.

From what I listened to, it sounds like an average spaghetti soundtrack.

A book about Tonino Valerii’s films says that

the music in this movie actually reuses scores from Day of Anger.

I poked around both soundtracks, and I couldn’t find any songs that sounded that similar. So,

I don't know, but I could be wrong.

This film is notable as a spaghetti western because it was created around the same time

as A Fistful of Dollars and even shared some production time with the more famous film.

Two companies produced both films: Constantin Films of Germany and Jolly Film of Italy.

Not only did they share the same companies, they also filmed on at least part of the same set.

Within the first five minutes of Bullets Don’t Argue,

you’ll clearly see the village of San Miguel from A Fistful.

To top it all off, Ennio Morricone made the score for this film too.

The only thing I’m slightly skeptical of is the claim that producers cared more about

Bullets Don’t Argue, thinking that it would be more successful than A Fistful of Dollars,

and subsequently gave it a higher budget.

I’m inclined to believe it, but I don’t have a direct source to back up that claim.

Anyway, Bullets Don’t Argue, was, of course, not as successful as A Fistful of Dollars.

Storywise, it is a more traditional western than a spaghetti western.

It is about a sheriff named Pat Garrett played by Canadian actor Rod Cameron,

who was notable for his western roles in television.

On Garrett’s wedding day, he has no choice but to ride off and catch

two bandits who robbed the bank while everyone in town was at his wedding.

Funnily enough, one of the bandits is played by our boy Horst Frank.

As a film, most reviews say it’s nothing special,

and the only notable thing about it is the fact that it was made alongside A Fistful of Dollars.

I do really like this one Letterboxd review where

it calls the film the spaghetti western equivalent of Applebee’s.

All right, I think it’s finally time for me to talk about White Comanche.

Technically, this film is a Eurowestern:

specifically, a paella western because the production was primarily Spanish.

HOWEVER, I first came across it on a box set of 20 spaghetti western films and, as we have

established at this point, Spain served as the filming location for several spaghetti westerns.

So, it counts.

This film is rather infamous, not only because it gets featured in spaghetti

western DVD collections even though it’s technically not a spaghetti western,

but because it features the legendary William Shatner in two main roles.

He plays two brothers Johnny

and Notah.

I’m sure you can already tell where this is going.

The brothers are half-white and half-Comanche.

Johnny embraces his white ancestry, while Notah embraces his Native American ancestry.

People keep trying to kill Johnny because they think he is Notah.

Notah is a serial murderer and rapist.

Johnny has had enough of these attempted lynchings,

so he challenges Notah to a showdown to settle things once and for all.

Also, Notah regularly consumes cacti with psychoactive properties.

The consumption of this cacti makes Notah think he is the Comanche’s messiah.

Yeah, yeah problematic

but also

hilarious.

So hilarious, in fact, that it made its way into The Official Razzie Movie Guide.

This film is badly shot.

The soundtrack goes from being passable to not matching the tone at all.

Shatner, who is personally one of my favorite actors, is awful.

In my opinion, this is so offensively bad it’s funny.

However, I can understand someone being genuinely offended by it.

But how could I not talk about this film? When

else are you ever going to get to hear about this film?

Oh, and Joseph Cotten was in it too.

In 2015, Sky Studios, a primarily European company,

announced production of a Django TV series.

It seems that the series was untouched until about 2021 when filming finally began.

Apparently, filming took place in Romania because it was easiest to

film there when some countries were still shut down by COVID protocols.

Anyway, Francesca Comencini directed the show,

and the first two episodes were screened at the International Rome Film Fest in October 2022.

Yep, not that long ago, and the show is set to release on February 17th of this year.

So what’s the plot?

Well, the show is interesting in that, supposedly, it combines elements of the

original Django, the 1987 sequel, and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

It takes place after the Civil War (like the original),

Django is seeking his long-lost daughter (like the official sequel), and commentary

on slavery and modern-day diversity will feature (like in Tarantino's film).

To give more detail, Django’s daughter went missing after bandits seemingly killed his family.

Eight years later, he travels to the town of New Babylon–a place open to

people of all backgrounds–, where he finds his daughter.

She is now set to marry the town’s founder and wants nothing to do with her father.

However, when the town is beset by a ruthless gang,

Django agrees to protect the town alongside the mayor.

On the surface, it sounds like a typical spaghetti western.

Now, this is just my opinion, but, I think the show looks pretty generic.

And I don’t fully understand how you can make a western

set in the 1860s “contemporary.” But I digress.

The show drops on Sky Atlantic, a UK channel, on February 17th,

like I mentioned. So, my European viewers will have to tell me how it is.

In the US, this 1973 film is also known as My Name is Shanghai Joe.

I know you see that title, and you’re probably worried about another round of White Comanche.

But fear not!

Our titular character is played by an actual Asian.

Buuuut the actor was supposedly Japanese

and not Chinese (I’ll get into that whole debacle in a bit).

As a white wahman, I don’t think I can speak about whether or not this is super offensive.

But I feel confident saying that this is at least more appropriate casting than White Comanche.

Anyway, this is another interesting little spaghetti with an Asian protagonist.

I’d say it’s certainly more obscure than Red Sun,

and the casting is not as recognizable as the former film.

Except for Klaus Kinski in a villainous role.

This is yet another Mario Caiano film, and the role of Joe is played by Chen Lee,

who unfortunately, I couldn’t find a lot of information on.

To go off on a bit of the whole Japanese-Chinese casting tangent,

as a matter of fact, no one actually seems to know who Chen Lee was.

It’s highly speculated by spaghetti western fans

that he was really a Japanese guy, but no one knows for sure.

The name that gets brought up on the spaghetti western

database as his real name is Myoshin Hayakawa, but that is not confirmed.

There also is a database forum post that says this same actor was in two

other spaghetti westerns, but I can’t confirm that either.

He is credited for some other films besides this one, but,

again, I’m kind of speculative on how accurate these credits are.

Maybe one of you Internet sleuths could figure it out.

Anyhoo, the story is about Joe, a Chinese immigrant who is seeking a fresh start in TEXAS.

From the get-go, he faces racism and discrimination.

His martial arts skills help him beat his harassers, of course.

After displaying his skills, he is hired to work on a ranch,

but he quickly discovers that the owners are not dealing in cattle, but rather enslaved Mexicans.

Joe vows to free the slaves,

but not before his employer hires four bounty hunters to try and stop him.

This one is just pure action nonsense.

Joe can cut people’s hands off with just a karate chop.

Which is pretty sick. This film is one of the goriest spaghetti westerns I’ve ever seen,

and that’s just going off the trailer.

I also wanna mention that Klaus Kinski plays a dude named “Scalper

Jack,” and that’s… that’s just a really cool name.

Yeah, of the last few films I’ve mentioned, this might be the one I’d be willing to watch the most.

There actually seems to be some pretty mixed feelings on this film in particular.

Some people love how over-the-top it is while others find it really dull.

As a last note, the score is by Bruno Nicolai, and it’s actually quite pretty.

This is a sub-par Twilight spaghetti that, like many films on this tier,

is more interesting for its production and figures than actual film content.

Shooting for this film took place in Israel, but its status

as an Israeli and Italian co-production technically makes it a spaghetti western.

At least, the internet keeps telling me that it

was an Italian co-production but I can’t find any sure proof that it was Italian.

Meh, Lee Van Cleef is in it, so it counts.

Golan-Globus Productions primarily produced this film.

If you know your film companies,

you’d know then, that that makes Kid Vengeance part of Cannon Films.

For those who don’t know, Cannon Films is the same

company that produced the certified hood classic Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

They also made the infamous Masters of the Universe movie, Superman IV, and The Delta Force.

This guarantees Kid Vengeance is cursed.

Also, Kid Vengeance is the second of two spaghetti western films made by Cannon/Golan-Globus.

The first one is God’s Gun.

Production for both took place within the same time frame and around the same locations.

I thought about giving God’s Gun its own section on this iceberg,

but I didn’t find it as interesting as Kid Vengeance.

Plot-wise, this film is about Tom, a young boy who

watches helplessly as bandits murder his parents and kidnap his sister.

Tom teams up with a prospector named Isaac to hunt down the bandits and save the day.

The plot sounds decent enough, but the lack of a Wikipedia page for this film as well as numerous

negative reviews show that this film may be the next worst thing since White Comanche.

One review poignantly notes that the film is

too violent for children but also too juvenile for adults.

Tom pulls a Home Alone where he mainly defeats the bad guys by setting traps.

It’s a shame this film doesn’t sound very good since it features Lee Van

Cleef as the main villain and Jim Brown as the prospector.

One of the last notable aspects about this film is that, supposedly,

Gianfranco Parolini of Sartana and Sabata fame, was set to direct.

He even directed the first Cannon spaghetti film God’s Gun.

For whatever reason, Joseph Manduke replaced him as a director.

As a final note, those of you who know your 70s

teen heartthrobs may have recognized Leif Garrett as the main character.

If you don’t know Leif Garrett, he was a teen actor and singer throughout the 1970s.

Tragically, his career went off the rails when he began abusing drugs.

But, in the last decade or so, he’s reportedly sobered up and seems to be doing a lot better.

When I talked about Django 2, I mentioned that it was part of an

attempted spaghetti western revival in the 1980s.

The first film in this series was Tex and the Lord of the Deep,

released in 1985 and directed by Duccio Tessari.

The “revival” wasn’t, as far as I can tell, an organized project.

Attempts to make a film adaptation of Tex went

as far back as the golden age of spaghetti westerns in the 1960s.

Now you might be wondering who Tex is.

He is a Texas Ranger from a series of Italian comics called…

Tex.

These comics were very popular in Italy, so it only made sense to adapt them to film.

By the time production finally happened,

producers hoped they could make a TV show out of the film if it was successful enough.

Unfortunately, what came to be was a tad worse than people were expecting.

Just by looking at the poster, it’s obvious that Indiana Jones had a large influence on the film.

The mix of Indiana Jones, the fantastical elements and various stories of the comic itself,

and the development hell the film was already in made for a lackluster movie.

From everything I can find, it did not do well at the Italian box office.

According to one review on the Spaghetti Western Database,

people bought tickets for the film just so they could go in and boo at it.

At least it features some cool stunts by Gemma.

And he was almost 50! He looked darn good!

Nowadays, the film is looked at a lot less harshly by spaghetti western fans.

However, it is nowhere near a fan favorite.

In the end, what makes this film quite tragic is

that it was the last western Gemma and Tessari ever made.

This film is a 1981 comedy with Bud Spencer that I

think could be considered the last true spaghetti western.

Obviously, it came out well after the genre died, but it was the last “big”

Italian western that came out before the attempted revival in the mid-late ‘80s.

Other than being what I call the last spaghetti western,

there’s nothing particularly interesting about this film.

Bud Spencer stars in the leading role as Buddy,

a crook who is mistaken for a doctor by the residents of the town he is visiting.

There seems to be a lot of mistaken identity with Spencer’s characters!

As a result of this mistake, Buddy is dragged

into conflict with the local gang who is terrorizing the nice folk.

The film features many instances of Spencer’s famous open-hand punch and

the usual slapstick comedy of Fagioli westerns.

It was directed by Michele Lupo–who directed Arizona Colt–,

the soundtrack is by Ennio Morricone in what would be his last spaghetti western,

and Spencer’s sidekick is a Moroccan-Frenchman playing a Native American so… as always,

nothing will ever be as bad as William Shatner in White Comanche.

In a way, I think it’s sort of pleasant for the original era of

spaghetti westerns to end with a comedy, if that makes sense.

Some might see it as insulting to the genre,

but I think it’s full circle because its alternate title is A Fist Goes West.

Apparently. I can’t actually verify that it was called this at some point.

The Italian title is Occhio alla penna,

which roughly translates to “Eye on the Pen." Make of that what you will.

This tier is dedicated to the darkest stories I discovered while researching the iceberg.

These stories are largely unknown and also very tragic. Unlike the other parts of this video,

there will be no jokes or light-heartedness in this segment. I will make mention of

the following topics: murder, suicide, drug abuse, and sexual themes. You’ve been warned.

Sean Flynn was the son of famed actor Errol Flynn and his first wife Lili Damita.

Flynn was an actor himself, starring in two Italo-Spanish productions:

Seven Guns for Timothy and Sharp-Shooting Twin Sisters.

It could be argued these are just Eurowesterns and not spaghetti

westerns but they were at least partly Italian productions and

the Italian name for the latter film was A Woman for Ringo. So they count.

Anyway, Flynn’s acting career was quite brief, and he is far

more famous as a photojournalist, one who covered the Vietnam War.

In 1970, Flynn traveled to Cambodia to cover the War for Time magazine.

On April 6th of that year, Flynn and fellow photojournalist Dana Stone

heard about a checkpoint that was being manned by Viet Cong.

Eager to interview these men, the two set off to the checkpoint.

As they approached, according to a set of French journalists who were on the scene,

Viet Cong soldiers began to surround the area.

Flynn and Stone were captured (in some reports, willingly).

The two were led off by the troops and were never seen again.

No one knows what happened to either man, and, eventually,

their families declared them legally dead.

that punk band The Clash wrote a song about him with his name as the title.

In 2010, a group searching for Flynn discovered remains that they hoped could be his.

Testing of the remains, however, showed that it was not him.

Karin Schubert is a German former actress who began acting around 1969.

She was making films in Italy by 1970 and had roles in spaghetti

westerns like Companeros and The Three Musketeers of the West.

As her career went on, she began to star in more exploitative and sexual films.

Around the mid-1980s, Schubert was getting fewer and fewer acting gigs.

To make matters worse, her marriage was falling apart and her son had become addicted to drugs.

Feeling like she had no other options, Schubert began starring in pornography;

eventually, hardcore pornography.

Schubert was incredibly unhappy with her life and left the industry in 1994.

That same year, she attempted suicide.

She survived, and said in an interview not long after, “I did it because I have no family,

no friends, no money, no future… I make the news:

ladies and gentlemen, look how star Karin Schubert has fallen.”

After a second suicide attempt in 1996,

Schubert disappeared from the news and is reportedly living a life of solitude.

No one seems to fully know what’s become of her, but we can only hope that she is at peace.

Alfred Mulock was a Canadian character actor who had roles in The Good, the Bad,

and the Ugly, Day of Anger, and Sergio Corbucci’s The Hellbenders.

The final film he starred in was Once Upon a Time in the West as one of

the three henchmen who ambushes Harmonica at the train station.

Tragedy struck not long after Mulock filmed his scenes for the movie.

It is unknown what day this happened, but sometime during May 1968,

Mulock committed suicide by jumping out of his hotel window in Guadix, Spain.

He was rushed to the hospital but passed away.

Screenwriter and translator Mickey Knox claims that Mulock fell past his hotel window.

Knox said in an interview that he knew Mulock

was troubled but didn’t exactly know why he committed suicide.

Later on, in his book, though, he claimed that Mulock killed himself

because he was a drug addict and didn’t have access to any substances in Spain.

A last, sad legend, which Mickey Knox has asserted,

claims that Mulock jumped while still wearing his costume for Once Upon a Time in the West.

As the man lay dying, Sergio Leone reportedly demanded that

his costume be taken off because they still needed it for the film.

Claudio Camaso, AKA Claudio Volonte, was the younger brother of Gian Maria Volonte.

As I mentioned earlier, he followed in his older brother’s footsteps and

acted in spaghetti westerns like Garter Colt, Vengeance is Mine (also called One

Hundred Thousand Dollars Per Killing), $10,000 Blood Money, John the Bastard, and Vengeance.

While Gian Maria Volonte was known for his left-wing sympathies, Camaso

grew up with right-leaning, fascist sympathies.

This came to a head in 1965 when Camaso was accused of

planting a bomb that damaged a Vatican City gate.

Camaso denied his involvement, and his older brother even defended him.

Ultimately, he was cleared of the charge and renounced his fascist beliefs.

His acting career took off shortly after, though he never reached

the same popularity as his brother.

Instead of fading into obscurity, Camaso’s legacy would end in tragic infamy.

In 1977, Camaso got into an argument with his

estranged wife as he visited her and their 6-year-old daughter.

Vincenzo Mazza, a friend of the couple, attempted to intervene.

As he did so, Camaso fatally stabbed him.

Some sources claim that Camaso’s daughter witnessed the incident.

After stabbing Mazza, Camaso went on the run for 10 days until he was captured by police.

Camaso seemed guilt-ridden over the incident, writing,

“I’ve spent days in hell;” he claimed that he did not mean to kill his friend.

Not long after his capture, on September 16th,

1977, Camaso committed suicide in his cell, allegedly by hanging.

Originally, I planned to make Tier 6 my last tier. However,

my test readers informed me that was incredibly depressing. So, instead of doing that, I have

this last tier for the weirdest facts that I could scrounge up. The things on Tier 5 are

simple enough to find if you put in the effort. But, these topics are even more obscure and,

like I said, weird. Trust me, it’s a much more positive tier to end on.

The original Italian title for this 1968 film is Il Mio corpo per un poker,

which literally translates to My Body for a Poker.

If you know your cowboy history, you’ll know that

Belle Starr was a real-life American outlaw whose murder remains unsolved.

This film is not a retelling of her life but just uses her name.

The actual story of the film is about Belle Shirley,

a gung-ho girl boss gang leader gambler played by Elsa Martinelli,

who gets into a rocky relationship with Blackie, played by George Eastman.

After their relationship is established, the film’s plot is pretty inconsistent.

It flashes back to Belle’s tragic past where she was abused by her uncle.

And then it moves back forward to Starr getting involved in a jewel robbery led by Blackie.

Like a lot of the films on the last few tiers, it’s not well-liked.

Again, it’s more a point of interest due to the fact that, like Garter Colt,

it features a female protagonist.

It is also interesting because it is, as far as anyone knows,

the only spaghetti western directed by a woman.

Specifically, by Lina Wertmuller.

She was, believe or not, the first woman to be nominated as a director for an Academy

Award for her film Seven Beauties, which doesn’t seem to have aged particularly well.

The Belle Starr Story is exploitative in some ways, which you might be surprised by considering

a woman directed it, but, from what I gathered, exploitation seemed to be Wertmuller’s thing.

But she uses these seemingly exploitative films to criticize things like Italian

culture and the male gaze, at least, that’s what she said.

However, she was not the original director or writer of The Belle Starr Story and was

put on after the initial director was fired, so sayeth the Internet.

Another piece of trivia about this film is, according to an interview with George Eastman

(which I can’t actually find because it’s on a DVD version of the film apparently,

and I learned my lesson with Garter Colt to not buy these films),

he said that he replaced actor Robert Woods on the film because he kept getting into

arguments with Wertmuller about the number of close-ups she was giving Elsa Martinelli.

The scenes that Wertmuller filmed with Woods were reused for the flashback sequences.

So, The Belle Starr Story might not be worth a watch, but,

like everything else on this iceberg, the history behind it is compelling.

Remember back in the third tier when I talked about Terence Hill

and Bud Spencer’s success as a comedic duo?

Well, like the many Django ripoffs we previously discussed, there was

another comedic duo that attempted to copy the success of Hill and Spencer.

These two actors were Michael Coby (born Antonio Cantafora) and Paul L. Smith.

Coby was an Italian actor who mainly stuck to making films in his native country.

Smith was an American-Israeli actor who starred in movies like Midnight Express,

Popeye, Dune, and Red Sonja.

Coby and Smith made approximately five films as a duo, each one imitating the

Hill and Spencer comedy style that was extremely popular in the 70s.

Two of these films are direct ripoffs of the Trinity series.

Those films are Carambola (1974) and its sequel Carambola's Philosophy:

In the Right Pocket (1975).

Ferdinando Baldi, who directed Django, Prepare a Coffin, directed both films.

The first film reeks of Trinity where Coby’s character is a lazy billiard champion who teams

up with his old, brutish friend to investigate weapon trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico.

Scheming, slapstick, and drawn-out fight scenes ensure.

The second film is more or less the same where Not Terence Hill

and Not Bud Spencer steal a gatling-gun-equipped

motorbike from the Confederates. And everyone starts chasing after them.

If you already dislike Fagioli westerns, you’re really not going to like this one either.

I’ve only watched a few scenes, including the most famous one from the first film

where a sped-up Coby slaps a guy while flinging a cigarette in and out of his mouth.

The actual slapstick doesn’t last long at all, and it's meh.

It’s just a cheap (even by Italian standards) cash-in on the Trinity films.

The main characters are dressed the same as Hill and Spencer’s characters,

and the first film even has a bean-eating scene. Barely anyone has seen the second film.

The last interesting thing I’ll say is that Smith filed a lawsuit against one

of the companies distributing the Coby and Smith films in the 1980s.

He did this because the company sneakily changed the actor’s name for marketing purposes.

What did they change his name to?

Bob Spencer.

Yeah, no subtlety there.

Ultimately, Smith won the case.

It is also rumored that the company changed Michael Coby’s name to Terrance Hall, but I

haven’t found any evidence to back up that story.

Pheeeeew.

And that is the spaghetti western iceberg.

Making this video was fun (despite all the stuff I talked about in tier six).

I hope it helped you, my dear viewer,

come to appreciate this strange little film genre as much as I do.

There are plenty of films and trivia that I didn't cover, so I encourage you to visit places like

the Spaghetti Western Database or Once Upon a Time in a Western if you want to learn more.

I’ve got nothing else. So, thank you all for watching.