First of all, “Spaghetti” is in quotes up there because Sergio Leone reportedly never liked the term “Spaghetti Westerns.”  I may have to use the term because that’s how the genre is commonly known, but if Sergio didn’t dig the nomenclature then I don’t either.  Respect.

 

Anyway.

 

Last week, The Onion’s A.V. Club posted a primer for “Spaghetti” Westerns, the genre of films that encompasses the Western films that were made in Europe (primarily in and around Italy by Italian filmmakers) in the 1960s and 1970s.  The writer of the article, Keith Phipps, does a thorough and admirable job of spotlighting most of the genre’s highlights and explaining why they’re so good.  I really recommend that you read the article, which includes YouTube links so that you can watch the trailers.

 

But really all it did was remind me that I’ve been meaning to do this myself for you all, for nearly as long as I’ve been posting these columns.  Besides the A.V. Club article, I’m getting signs all over the place:  This week on the main page Devin covered a couple of the movies that I’m going to cover on the list below, and due to the birthday of the patron saint of the genre on Memorial Day, Turner Classic Movies aired the original “Dollars” trilogy. 

 

So there’s clearly no better time for me to talk about one of my very favorite genres of film.  Let’s start near the beginning:

 

 

 

A Fistful of Dollars (Per un Pugno di Dollari) (1964)

Director: Sergio Leone

 

A Fistful Of Dollars wasn’t the very first entry in the genre they call “Spaghetti Western,” but it sure as hell was the spark that lit the firing pin.  Sergio Leone is arguably the greatest and certainly the best known and most influential of the “Spaghetti” directors.  He started out working on historical epics, and was somewhat hilariously credited as “Bob Robertson” on the American release of this, his first Western, but the name Sergio Leone is now synonymous with the genre.

 

Leone’s inspired approach was right there in Fistful – his absolute mastery of the widescreen frame, his deliberate and confident pacing, and his enlisting of his most important collaborator, composer Ennio Morricone, whose name will recur on just about every movie on the list you’re about to read.  Morricone is the most innovative and experimental of the great film composers – there is literally nothing in movies like a Morricone score.  Leone reportedly played selections from Morricone’s scores on the set – a brilliant inspiration that was unprecedented then, and completely unheard of today.

 

The plot of Fistful is an appropriation of the story from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo – a taciturn stranger strolls into a town that is ruled by a feud between two warring families, and plays them against each other for his own gain.  In this movie the families are recast as the Baxters and the Rojos, which adds a dash of racial tension to the mix, but not really.  Leone wasn’t really concerned with social implications, and besides, the Rojos are mostly played by Italians – including popular “Spaghetti” fixture Gian Maria Volonte.

 

Of course, the main legacy of A Fistful Of Dollars, beyond its world-changing score and the fact that it remains entertainment of the highest order, is that it brought us Clint Eastwood.  Leone took a guy who was wrapping up eight years on a TV show that is now largely forgotten but for its theme song (Rawhide) and cast him perfectly as the mysterious lead, who despite the famous “Man With No Name” ad campaign, does have a name here.  It’s “Joe.”  Of course there isn’t a last name, or anything resembling a backstory.  Whether Joe’s sparse dialogue was a function of character or a response to the international nature of the production, he sure doesn’t talk too much, and when he does, it either means a mountain, or it reflects a sense of the blackest humor.  This introduced the main Eastwood persona that has proven a durable basis for five unprecedented decades of the greatest career in movies.

 

If you’re looking for an entry point, this movie is the best possible choice.

 

 

 

For A Few Dollars More (Per Qualche Dollaro in Più) (1965)

D: Leone

 

The title indicates a sequel to A Fistful Of Dollars, but it’s not in any way a continuation of the previous movie.  Again, Clint’s character does have a name – “Monco” – but unless you want to imagine that he’s a drifter who changes his name from town to town and movie to movie, there’s no indication that he’s the same character. 

 

He definitely has a cooler sidekick this time around – not that the bartender from Fistful isn’t a lot of fun, but More’s Lee Van Cleef is one of the baddest badasses ever to step in front of a camera.  Leone cast the journeyman supporting player because he thought he looked like a hawk, and goddamn if Sergio wasn’t right on.  Here Van Cleef plays Colonel Mortimer, who actually turns out to be a good guy, and the true protagonist of the movie.  Clint’s character is more of a friendly rival, a bounty hunter, mostly in it for the money, whereas Van Cleef’s motive turns out to be more personal.

 

The two of them are pursuing El Indio, a well-known criminal and a wanted man.  He’s played by Gian Maria Volonte (him again), who plays Indio in what will become a Leone fixture – the thoroughly despicable villain who has his moments of poetry.  Indio is a vicious killer, an animal really, but as played by Volonte and directed by Leone (and scored by Morricone), he still somehow manages to resonate with a melancholy, even tragic air. 

 

Leone’s Westerns do not have an absolutist morality, the way that so many American Westerns were known to have.  Look at how Clint is portrayed in these movies:  We read him as a hero, but less because he’s written that way and more because he’s Clint and we love him.  In the unusual moral universe of For A Few Dollars More, Clint’s character isn’t all that great a guy, a career villain like Lee Van Cleef can play the hero, and even the worst villains provide the movies with their most romantic moments.

 

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo.) (1966)

D: Leone

 

What can you say about your favorite movie?  This one is mine.

 

There’s literally nothing I can write about The Good The Bad & The Ugly that hasn’t already been written.  It’s not exactly an underrated movie.  It’s certainly the most straight-ahead entertaining great movie that regularly makes the greatest-ever lists. 

 

Watching it again last Monday, I was struck by the fact that it doesn’t have much of an agenda beyond storytelling.  It’s not a grand statement on humanity or history.  It’s a story.  As the poster’s tagline (one of the best ever written), “For three men, the Civil War wasn’t hell.  It was PRACTICE!”  Sure, for some characters in this demented picaresque, war is hell, but for the three leads, the archetypes in the title, war is just an appropriately chaotic backdrop for their self-involved quest.  The whole thing is about three guys looking for buried treasure!  Good, Bad, Ugly:  Does it really matter? They all have the same damn goal.

 

The Good The Bad & The Ugly is a callback to the previous Leone classic in that it stars the blond/brunet tandem of Clint Eastwood (The Good) and Lee Van Cleef (The Bad), although it escalates the setting and the scale (and the running time) to an operatic degree.  What’s really fascinating to me about this movie the more I watch it is that Eli Wallach (The Ugly) is truly the star of the movie.  The movie begins and ends with him, and he seems to have the most screen time by a wide margin.  After the first introductory scenes of The Good and The Bad, I don’t think either of them have a scene that doesn’t also include The Ugly.  He not only has a first and last name, but a ton of middle names (Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) AND an alias (a.k.a. The Rat), and he is the only one with the backstory (a life of crime begun to aid sick parents, which has now alienated him from his brother the priest).  Meanwhile, Clint’s character has a name but probably one that Tuco gave him – “Blondie” – and Van Cleef is referred to as “Angel-Eyes” – which is hilarious if it was also given him by Tuco, but either way is still an alias.  The Good The Bad & The Ugly is really Tuco’s movie.

 

Again, the underrated scriptwriting of Leone and his staff and the accurately-praised career-highlight score of Morricone, along with the cinematography of Tonino Delli Colli, have everything to do with the perfection of The Good The Bad & The Ugly, but the importance of the casting of Eli Wallach to the tone of the movie should not be underestimated.  He brings a wealth of serious training to the role, but also a go-for-broke sense of humor.  There’s a real mischievous sparkle in Tuco’s eye – he’s a quintessential survivor and a classic rogue.  Wallach really commits to this role – you couldn’t call him handsome in this movie, and his accent is as solid as any gringo has ever pulled off.  And he’s funny.  Holy shit.  This movie is so damn funny, without ever losing its mythic grandeur.

 

It’s weird though – for a movie that defines its three main characters in such rigid terms, “good,” “bad,” and “ugly,” the morality (or faltering degree of such) isn’t remotely as rigid.  Clint’s character doesn’t do much good for anyone outside of offering and lighting a couple of cigars, and even Angel-Eyes, as unrelentingly violent as he can be, clearly operates under a certain code of behavior.  Tuco doesn’t seem to have any rules or boundaries or philosophy – just greed, gluttony, and self-preservation – but at least we have a faint suggestion of how he became that way, so even he isn’t strictly “Ugly.”  So it’s not a morality play.  It’s just a story.  It’s just a story, but it’s the one I’d watch all the way through, any time of night or day, right now if I could.

 

 

 

Once Upon a Time in the West (C’era una volta il West) (1968)

D: Leone

 

Okay, well this one also makes the personal top ten.  Some days it’s my second favorite movie of all time, and most writings on the movie call it Leone’s masterpiece.  You have four main characters this time around, each time with their own personal musical cues courtesy of Morricone, and each one of them is among the most eternally memorable incarnations of the archetypes they are meant to represent:

 

The movie’s lonesome stranger, in a role originally offered to Clint Eastwood, is played by cinema’s other great stoneface, Charles Bronson.  His character is known only as Harmonica, and the reason why is a brilliant reveal which I wouldn’t dream of ruining. 

 

The charismatic rogue, who may or may not be on the side of the angels, is called Cheyenne and played by Jason Robards.  This is arguably the coolest character of all goddamned time, in my opinion.  The tragic romantic figure that the younger Robards was so good at playing is imbued with a terrific (and tremendously quotable) sense of humor in Leone’s hands.

 

The whore with the heart of gold, Jill, is played by Claudia Cardinale.  For my money, Claudia Cardinale in this movie is as beautiful as a human woman can look.  She’s great for a lot of other reasons, some of them I listed here when I named her my number one of all time, but you can’t argue with that face.

 

Frank, the bad man in the black hat, is played by all-American good guy Henry Fonda, and seriously speaking, he is one of the greatest villains ever.  I’m sorry to keep using generic platitudes, but that’s the kind of blindly expansive adoration that this movie elicits from me.  Frank has a cruelly and coldly sadistic introduction, and he maintains that level of villainy throughout the movie.

 

As you can tell from the title, Leone thought of Once Upon A Time In The West as “a fairy tale for adults,” and the fact that each one of these classic Western movie archetypes are simultaneously so broad and so memorable is proof that Leone succeeded.  This is a definitive Western, and a legitimately perfect movie.  It probably helps to go in on it with a working knowledge of Westerns, just so that you can see how Leone so definitively aced it, but I figure it’d be just as good even if you can’t tell a Colt from a Derringer from a Remington.

 

 

A Fistful of Dynamite (Duck, You Sucker) (Giu la testa) (1971)

D: Leone

 

Just so you don’t think that I’m some crazy fool with a Leone monomania, I will admit that Duck, You Sucker is not a favorite of mine.  I’ve only seen it twice, and I’m not dying to see it again the way I am with the other four movies I’ve mentioned so far.  It’s good, and it’s fun, but it’s nowhere near as much of either as the better-known Leone movies are.  This is a Rod Steiger/ James Coburn buddy picture, which is pretty great in my world, but not remotely as great as a Clint Eastwood/ Lee Van Cleef buddy picture.

 

To make matters weirder, Rod Steiger is playing a Mexican here.  He’s playing the Eli Wallach role, but he’s not remotely as perfect as I believe Wallach to be.  Rod Steiger is a great actor, and he can do a great Southern accent (see In The Heat Of The Night), but he probably shouldn’t have headed any further south.  However, that’s not as weird to me as James Coburn’s Irish accent is.  Coburn is a great, underrated badass of cinema, but for some reason the accent doesn’t play well with me.  He’s way more convincing as an Irishman than Steiger is as a Mexican, but I think it might be one too many accents for one three-hour movie.

 

Also, this movie has one of the most bizarre and eventually cloying scores that Morricone ever wrote – and I’ve gone deep in the catalogue, so I know the extents of bizarreness of which the man is capable.  You won’t forget it, but you probably won’t want to hear it again either.

 

On the plus side, a whole lot of things blow up in this movie.  We Americans love our cinematic explosions, and for that reason maybe this movie deserves to be better remembered.  Coburn’s character is an artisan with dynamite, and that’s how his character and Steiger’s bond.  That gives me a good chuckle, by the way; two dudes bonding over a love of dynamite.  But the movie never really gets better than its title (either of ‘em) – again, it’s good, but that title promises a lot more insanity than the movie ultimately wants to provide.

 

Don’t let me steer you away – any Leone is worth seeing, and you’ll want to get around to it if you’re half as much a Leone fan as I am.  But this is definitely not the place to start.  It could be off-putting to newcomers.  Not for nothing, but Leone never made another Western after Duck, You Sucker.  He only even made one more movie after this one (Once Upon A Time In America), but of course there were different reasons for that, and that’s a story for another time.

 

 

My Name Is Nobody (Il mio nome è Nessuno) (1973)

D: Tonino Valerii

 

Tonino Valerii was Leone’s assistant director.  While My Name Is Nobody enlisted Valerii as director, it was produced by Leone, and, reportedly, Leone directed some scenes in it too.  That’s surprising, because it doesn’t feel too much like a Leone film.  It’s way more broadly comic than anything in the Leone canon, and the humor isn’t nearly as sharp in my opinion.  Part of that is due to the fact that the movie’s star, Terence Hill, is no Clint Eastwood.  Hill was an Italian actor who went on to star in a few more movies like this one, including the comedic “Trinity” Spaghetti Westerns – he’s fine, but compared to a roster that includes Eastwood, Bronson, Wallach, Robards, and Coburn, he just doesn’t hold the weight.

 

The best reason to see this movie is Henry Fonda, who plays a much less villainous role.  Here he’s Jack Beauregard, a famous gunslinger who wants to retire in peace but is continually being challenged.  From what I understand, Fonda enjoyed working with Leone and was interested in doing it again.  He’s always worth watching, but with images of Frank still fresh in mind, the character pales in comparison. 

 

My Name Is Nobody has a great title and an interesting (if purposefully goofy) score by Morricone, but to my eyes it’s more of a curiosity.  It’s interesting because of Leone’s involvement and because parts of it were shot in the United States – previously Spaghetti Westerns were shot largely in Spain – but it’s not a hallmark of the genre by any stretch.

 

Interestingly, there is a supporting role for Geoffrey Lewis (Juliette’s dad), who went on to be a stock player in Clint’s movies.  I wonder if Sergio recommended him to Clint.  I bet Geoffrey Lewis is a guy with some amazing stories to tell.  (You’d recognize him if you saw him, if not by name.)

 

 

Navajo Joe (A Dollar A Head) (Savage Run) (1966)

D: Sergio Corbucci

 

Corbucci!  Okay, cool:  Now we’re getting to some stuff you may have heard less about.  Navajo Joe is a thoroughly underrated Italian Western, even among cinephiliacs who know about ‘em.  It begins with a legitimately brutal opening scene, and continues through, at a slightly less violent pace, with some memorably cool cinematography by Silvano Ippoliti.  It features the third-hottest lady I’ve seen in a spaghetti Western (the first was Claudia Cardinale, the second is coming up soon) – her name is Nicoletta Machiavelli, really!  Other things to keep an eye and ear out for in Navajo Joe:  A villain who looks very much like Jimmy Kimmel; the biggest nose ever formed on a comedy sidekick’s face; a familiar Morricone score if you’ve seen Kill Bill or Election (Tarantino and Payne know their film history), and BURT REYNOLDS.  Yes, this is an early starring role for Clint’s buddy Burt Reynolds, and, I believe, his only Western.  Burt’s pretty serious here, which isn’t what he’s best known to be, but as an action lead, he’s pretty good.  As a Navajo Indian, no less!  Also, he gets to utter what has become one of my favorite movie quotes ever:  “Some jobs a man can’t do.  But the big blond can do it… maybe.” 

 

Check this one out; it’s pretty fun.

 

Django (1966)

D: Corbucci

 

First of all, Corbucci’s productivity was pretty amazing during this period.  This is the second of three Corbucci movies released in 1966 alone!  Once you’ve seen the movies though, it’s fascinating to consider that Corbucci made Navajo Joe and Django in the same year.  As I noted, Navajo Joe is extremely violent, but compared to Django, it’s like a Diane Keaton comedy.  Django is ridiculously violent (that infamous ear scene from Reservoir Dogs was a lift from Django.)  Also, at least Navajo Joe cracks a smile – Django is unremittingly grim.  That may be due to the difference between the films’ two stars:  Whatever else he may be, Franco Nero is no Burt Reynolds. 

 

Franco Nero is a name that is going to come up a few more times on this list of movies.  He’s had a long career in Italian films – in terms of box office, he actually was their Burt Reynolds, in a way, just not as funny.  Nero appeared in a prodigious amount of Westerns and crime movies in this period – he was the go-to guy.  It makes sense, I guess; he’s a striking guy who looks convincing in period costumes and can truly rock a mustache – he just isn’t a very expressive actor.  He sure was game, though – Django is notoriously violent.  Its most famous image is that of the lead character dragging a coffin around with him everywhere he goes.  I won’t tell you what’s in it, but let’s just say that it’s not good news for anybody who crosses Django.

 

Since it’s another spin on Yojimbo and I’m a huge Fistful Of Dollars guy, I’m not as big a fan of Django as I am of some other Corbuccis, but I’m in the minority there – Django was and still is immensely popular, and it incited several official and unofficial sequels, which seem to still be happening occasionally!

 

 

I Crudeli (The Cruel Ones) (The Hellbenders) (1967)

D: Corbucci

 

“Spaghetti” Westerns occasionally launched stars, the way it happened for Clint, and more frequently reinvigorated the careers of established stars, as we saw with Henry Fonda, but sometimes they were just a paycheck for stars whose shine was fading.  Joseph Cotten seems to be that kind of a case.  An immensely likable actor who was a confederate of Orson Welles (you’ll recognize Cotten from Citizen Kane and The Third Man) and had his fair share of leading roles, Cotton didn’t exactly find his career highlight with The Hellbenders.  Here he plays a patriarch of a family of twisted morality who is trying to restart the Confederacy by obtaining a coffin full of money.  Things don’t go as planned.

 

It’s strange that I adore several Corbucci films but recoil so much at this one – maybe it’s that Corbucci was working so much that he was bound to turn out a clunker, or maybe it’s just my personal taste.  I have a lot of trouble watching violence done to women, and this movie has a surplus of that.  Violence against women is an unfortunate commonality in Italian Westerns, but it can usually be explained away as having a story-based reason for being, and besides, the men get it way worse.  But this time around, the violence seemed particularly unpleasant to me.  If you’re working off my recommendations, I’d say that The Hellbenders is low priority, but of course, every movie has its champions and there are many who would disagree with me.

 

 

The Great Silence (Il Grande silenzio) (1968)

D: Sergio Corbucci

 

Remember when I said I had a list of the three hottest women ever to be in Spaghetti Westerns?  Well here’s where you can find the second one, and when you’re talking about the runner-up to Claudia Cardinale, you know you’re doing well.  Her name is Vonetta McGee and she’s pretty lovely.  Unfortunately, the sight of her is the happiest thing about The Great Silence.  While filmmaker Alex Cox insists that The Great Silence is the best of the Spaghetti Westerns and it’s a point with a fair amount of ammunition behind it, it’s also true that The Great Silence is one of the most depressing movies ever.

 

Here’s when I said when I named it #2 on my list of The Top Ten Winter Movies Of All Time:

 

Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence is among the best-regarded of Italian Westerns – it’s about a mute gunslinger that tries to help a small community who have been besieged by vicious criminals led by the ever-disturbing Klaus Kinski. And it all takes place on a wooded frontier blanketed with snow – even the horses have a hell of a time getting anywhere. The Great Silence has probably THE down ending of all time, and the score by Ennio Morricone is one of the most haunting I’ve ever heard. If you think you can handle it, then I couldn’t recommend this movie any more highly.

 

The Great Silence is even crushingly sad offscreen – its most likable character, played by Once Upon A Time In The West’s Frank Wolff, took his own life not long after the film’s release.

 

 

Compañeros  (Vamos a matar, compañeros) (1970)

D: Sergio Corbucci

 

Oh, I love Compañeros.  This is a really fun one.  It stars Franco Nero, who for some reason really resembles Viggo Mortensen in this movie only, and Tomas Milian, who you’re about to meet two entries down from this one.  The two leads have a funky, international rhythm together (one is from Italy, the other is from Cuba, and they are playing Swedish and Mexican, respectively), and in all the movies I’ve seen him in, Nero has never been more lively and funny.  Milian always is lively and funny.

 

The villain is Jack Palance, and there’s where this movie goes over the top.  Palance’s character has a wooden arm and a pet hawk and the two items are related.  He’s got this weird rapport with this bird that you will absolutely love, especially if you enjoyed Mickey Rourke’s routine in Iron Man 2.  Also, if you love seeing people buried up to their necks in sand (a strange pleasure of movies to be found in films as diverse as Creepshow, The Scorpion King and One Crazy Summer), then this is your movie.  It probably shouldn’t be your starting point into the weird and wonderful world of “Spaghetti” Westerns, but once you’ve seen a couple of the high-water marks for a main course, you’ll get a kick out of this one for a dessert.  Extra points for the theme song by Morricone, which you won’t want to get unstuck from your head.

 

 

A Bullet for the General (El chuncho, quien sabe?) (1966)

D: Damiano Damiani

 

One strange cultural undercurrent of the “Spaghetti” Western is its evocation of period-specific politics.  American Westerns are known for having within them the subgenre of “Mexico Westerns”, where unaffiliated characters get wrapped up in the revolutionary movements of that country at that time.  (The most famous example of such is probably The Wild Bunch, with other examples including Vera Cruz, The Magnificent Seven, and Major Dundee.)  It’s historically fascinating and maybe even a little bizarre that Italian Westerns picked up on that, but they did.

 

Compañeros was one example of the Mexico Western transplanted to Italy – another example is A Bullet For The General.  This example, however, is not nearly as cinematically memorable.  It was cool to see Gian Maria Volonte take on a lead role as the outlaw who finds meaning in revolution, but that was more for me as a fan of A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More.  Genre regulars Klaus Kinski and Aldo Sambrell also make appearances, but again, that only serves to remind that they were in more fun movies than this one.  My rating for A Bullet For The General:  Academically interesting, but not remotely as rollicking and exciting as this next entry…

 

 

Corri, uomo, corri (Run, Man, Run) (1968)

D: Sergio Sollima

 

Rent this one pronto.  You need more?  Okay…

 

Sergio Sollima is considered the most political of the makers of Italian Westerns.  I can’t speak to that in depth, since I’ve only seen three of his films, two of them crime flicks – The Family (a.k.a. Violent City), starring Charles Bronson and Revolver, starring Oliver Reed – and the other one Run, Man, Run, starring Tomas Milian, who was once a big international star but who you’d only now recognize from a small role in Soderbergh’s Traffic, if at all.  But Milian was a livewire presence in a ton of Westerns, and this is the best of them. 

 

Run, Man, Run is kind of a picaresque, or a man-on-the-run movie, and Milian’s character Cuchillo is a larger-than-life Bugs Bunny kind of character.  The name Cuchillo alone sounds more than a little naughty to gringo ears, and I think it’s of a piece with the movie’s anarchic spirit.  Run, Man, Run is firstly very, very funny, and an energetic blast.  It’s the easiest to find of Sollima’s Westerns – thanks to the amazing DVD label Blue Underground – and I really hope that I get to track down more.  Check out the trailer – that’s Tomas Milian himself caterwauling over the hellaciously catchy theme song (by Morricone, naturally.)

 

 

I Quattro dell’apocalisse (Four of the Apocalypse) (1975)

D: Lucio Fulci

 

I was expecting a lot more from this movie.  A) Cool title.  B) Eclectic cast, including the aforementioned Tomas Milian and Michael J. Pollard from Bonnie & Clyde and Scrooged.  C) Director best known for zombie horror (Lucio Fulci.)  It doesn’t meet those expectations.  The four in the title are a gambler, a whore, a drunk, and a guy who sees dead people.  Tomas Milian plays the villain, but he’s shackled with a character who’s all despicable, without a single chance at humor.  When a movie is this bleak, it should be for an appropriate genre – “Spaghetti” Western connoisseurs are looking for more fireworks and one-liners with their maimings, victimized women, and down endings.  I’m being arch, but the real problem is that Four Of The Apocalypse is not an attractively photographed movie – it just plain looks unpleasant.  As harrowing as it is, at least The Great Silence has moments of great cinematic beauty and inspiration.  If someone out there disagrees, please let me know, but otherwise, I say look for apocalypses elsewhere.

 

 

Keoma (Django’s Great Return) (The Violent Breed) (1976)

D: Enzo G. Castellari

 

Enzo G. Castellari – that’s my man!  This guy directed just about every genre of movie under the sun (and many that don’t belong in daylight) – he may be the ultimate midnight-movie director.  He’s a mentor of Tarantino’s, having directed the original Inglorious Bastards (which I’d choose over the newer movie any day of the week – no offense, Quentin!).  That said, Keoma is a hard watch. 

 

It’s not really the movie’s fault.  Franco Nero is reliably solid as a part-Indian gunman on a revenge quest, and there’s a good supporting cast, including the legendary Woody Strode and genre stalwart Donald O’Brien.  There are a couple interestingly filmed gun battles too.  The problem is the movie’s score.  We are a very long way from Morricone territory here.  The movie’s theme song is sung by a wailing woman who’s operating in a pitch only dogs can hear.  I think my neighbor’s window shattered while I was watching Keoma.  And that song plays over and over again. 


If you can figure out a way to isolate the Keoma theme song out of Keoma, I say it’s worth a look.  Otherwise, you have plenty of other neat Castellari features out there to choose from.

 

P.S.  No actual connection to Django. 

 

 

Mannaja (A Man Called Blade) (1977)

D: Sergio Martino

 

Some genres don’t have the good sense to know when to end.  So it is with the “Spaghetti” Western, which continued until the early 1980s (!).  That’s not entirely fair to Mannaja, which isn’t awful.  It just feels like an afterthought, or at best, a late-period work that lacks the stylistic innovation and cultural value of the movies that beat it to the punch.  Mannaja has its moments, most of which relating to the title character’s facility with throwing an axe, and maybe not coincidentally, there are a couple of spooky atmospheric visuals that have more in common with horror movies.  But that atmosphere is frequently undone by the constantly repeating theme song, which sounds like a duet between David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, if both singers had suffered a diving accident.

 

 

100 Rifles (1979)

D: Tom Gries

 

Okay, okay – 100 Rifles doesn’t really belong on this list.  It’s an American production, with an American director and American movie stars.  I’m only including it because if you enjoyed some of the other movies I mentioned, you might enjoy this one too.  It’s an enjoyable cinematic footnote, as one of the first movies to feature an interracial sex scene (between stars Jim Brown and Raquel Welch), and one of the surprisingly common movies that feature Burt Reynolds as a Native American.  (Wikipedia says that Burt is actually part Cherokee, so it’s not as strange as you think.)  Of course, it’s probably most famous in the world of the internet for the scene where Raquel Welch causes a distraction by taking an open-air shower in a white shirt, but that’s not such a bad reward for all of you who were nice enough to read this far.  Here’s the YouTube link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeE6MO1mlrg&feature=related

 

 

 

And here ends this guided tour of “Spaghetti” Westerns.  I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I really hope that something you read here inspires you to watch or rewatch some of the movies I recommended.  This list was hardly comprehensive, so if you go out and find something I may not have seen, let me know about it!

 

 

 

 

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