Spaghetti Westerns

ricero

just saw the good,the bad and the ugly for the first time the other day and it blew me away such a cool, slick and gritty action movie with some great performances and its turned me interested in westerns again.

so my question is whats your view on spaghetti westerns and could you recommend me some good western movies ?

mike65

The Spagetti Western (its better described as the Pasta Western as they were nearly all shot in Spain) saved the whole genres ass. You try telling that Rich Hall fella though. With the Dollars films the likes of The Wild Bunch or A Man Called Horse would never have been made I suspect as the genre would have been dried up with one too many low grade Wayne oaters and the slew of anemic TV westerns sapping interest.

As for good ones, any of the Leone films, the first couple of Trinity flicks for lighter fare. The first few of the Django movie franchise. There are so many I can only assume almost all of them are total crap check this
database out

http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Films

johndoe99

Some of my favourite Westerns that might interest you:

A Fistful of Dynamite (1972)
Breakheart Pass (1975)
The Missouri Breaks (1976)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The Professionals (1966)
Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

mikhail

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is the third of Leone's five westerns, all of them scored by Morricone. Absolutely check the others out. The first two, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More are usually treated as a trilogy as Eastwood plays pretty much the same character in all of them. Once Upon a Time in the West is Leone's "love letter to the western", and it's epic; if you loved TGTB&TU, you should definitely check it out. Finally, A Fistful of Dynamite (which has a few other names) is a little more political but still very good.

Eastwood made a number of Westerns after that, most notably Unforgiven, in which he might almost be playing his old Man With No Name character as an old man, full of regrets.

Antar Bolaeisk

Definitely check out "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More" if you liked "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". Only recently watched them recently in a quest to broaden my film experience by working my way through the imdb top 250 and they blew me away. Absolutely great films.

indough

check out Sergio Corbuccis movies as well of course as leones, i thought '...dynamite' was pure cack though, those stupidly annoying flshback sequences with the worst morricone music ive ever heard in particular

mikhail

indough wrote: »

check out Sergio Corbuccis movies as well of course as leones, i thought '...dynamite' was pure cack though, those stupidly annoying flshback sequences with the worst morricone music ive ever heard in particular

Leone's wife suggested adding the rather stupid lyrics ("Sean Sean Sean"), but I rather like the music.

LittleBook

mike65 wrote: »

its better described as the Pasta Western as they were nearly all shot in Spain

... by Italians Yeah, I know you know.

mike65 wrote: »

With[out] the Dollars films the likes of The Wild Bunch or A Man Called Horse would never have been made I suspect as the genre would have been dried up with one too many low grade Wayne oaters and the slew of anemic TV westerns sapping interest.

+ 1

mike65 wrote: »

You try telling that Rich Hall fella though.

What's Rich's problem?

"Spaghetti" or not, Once Upon A Time In The West is a brilliant Western.

mike65

Rich Hall hates them, he reckons they are unAmerican and therefore not the real deal! Which is of course the whole point, the European sensibility mixing style and cynicism was vital to rescuing the whole genre as I mentioned above.

The music for Fistful of Dynamite was mentioned - I love it, its one of Morricones best to my ears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxTTF_8Pyso

LittleBook

mike65 wrote: »

Rich Hall hates them, he reckons they are unAmerican and therefore not the real deal! Which is of course the whole point, the European sensibility mixing style and cynicism was vital to rescuing the whole genre as I mentioned above.

The music for Fistful of Dynamite was mentioned - I love it, its one of Morricones best to my ears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxTTF_8Pyso

That's a shame because I love Rich Hall and I couldn't disagree more.

As for Morricone, his contribution was as important as the cinematography.

(Can't access the link here, but thanks)

Paddy Samurai

johndoe99 wrote: »

Some of my favourite Westerns that might interest you:

A Fistful of Dynamite (1972)
Breakheart Pass (1975)
The Missouri Breaks (1976)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The Professionals (1966)
Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

+1 .....except for The Missouri Breaks,its the only one i don't like.

Spaghetti westerns...........A Bullet for the General and Django are two that i have on my shelf and are well worth a look.

As for other westerns Pat Garrett and billy the kid,The Wild Bunch, Tombstone , Jermiah Johnson ,Uzanas raid are among my favourites.

Valdez is Coming was one of the best westerns i seen years back ,but unfortunately it is no longer available in it's full length,and is not worth watching in its cut down version.

Dudess

Once Upon A Time In The West is an utterly astonishing film, and the soundtrack is no small part of that. The perfect package.

mikemac

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Definitely check out "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More" if you liked "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". Only recently watched them recently in a quest to broaden my film experience by working my way through the imdb top 250 and they blew me away. Absolutely great films.

Amazon sell these as a trilogy.
But is it necessary to watch the three in order? Would you be lost if you didn't?

Black Heart

It's not necessary. The Third is a prequel.

Kess73

Dudess wrote: »

Once Upon A Time In The West is an utterly astonishing film, and the soundtrack is no small part of that. The perfect package.

Even better is the talk of it coming out on blu ray early next year. Going by how great the Dollars trilogy and the likes of the Searchers, How The West Was Won etc look and sound on blu ray, Once Upon.. should be quite the treat to savour in that format.

Kess73

feelingstressed wrote: »

Amazon sell these as a trilogy.
But is it necessary to watch the three in order? Would you be lost if you didn't?

It is a very loose trilogy, more because all three have a protagonist who may or may not be the same character rather than an actual continuing storyline, so you can watch them as stand alone films or in whatever order you like.


The first two films, A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More are both set in the late 1870's/early 1880's.

The third film, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is set sometime during the first half of the 1860's.

indough

yeah they arent a definite trilogy at all, i think the only thing connecting them (bar of course the same lead and director) is the fact that he wears that poncho in all three movies, but on the other hand a good argument against continuity between them is that van cleef plays two different characters within the three films

anyway regardless of this they definitely work excellently as standalone movies