Category > Spaghetti Westerns

"Damiani's lone Western is a movie of considerable brio; it opens with a train ambush and a half-hour of nonstop shooting and never lets up." - J. Hoberman, Film Comment

Boyish gringo Lou Castel joins forces with Gian Marie Volonte, Klaus Kinski and their marauding band of rebels as they embark on a harebrained scheme to pillage the Mexican Army and sell the loot to the revolutionaries.

One of the first and foremost Zapata Westerns, which meshed the ultra-stylised... Read More

"Leone not only reinvented the Italian Western... he reinvented the Western as well, and in the process re-energised a genre." - Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns

Thoroughly inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the first chapter in Sergio Leone's landmark 'Man with No Name' trilogy was the film that launched Clint Eastwood's film career, and introduced America to the concept of the Spaghetti Western.

Leone's rebellion against the overly... Read More

"Replete with baroque torture and acid flashbacks, Death Rides a Horse unfolds in a starkly primitive world." - Village Voice

John Phillip Law plays a man looking to track down the gang that brutally massacred his family when he was a child. His quest finds him joining forces with an aging gunslinger (Lee Van Cleef), a man who seems to know more than he lets on.

An oft-overlooked classic of the Spaghetti Western era, Death Rides a Horse saw director Giulio Petroni... Read More

"More violent and pessimistic than anything before it." - Alex Cox, 10,000 Ways to Die

Horseless, blue-eyed and dressed in black, Django (played by Franco Nero) arrives in a ramshackle settlement, dragging a coffin through the inch-thick mud into the dead-end town - a place at the centre of a deadly feud between red-hooded clansmen and ruthless bandidos.

It's a hallowed name for fans of the genre. A film that spawned over 30 unofficial sequels, Django was considered... Read More

"An insane blood-drenched quest featuring golden bullets, flaming outlaws in matching black outfits, and fancy gals with Edo-period Japanese coiffures." - J. Hoberman, Film Comment

Tomas Milian climbs out of his grave and rides off in pursuit of vengeance in this strange, ultra-violent Western, directed by documentary maker Giulio Questi. A stylish experiment in hyper-surrealism, this film includes such deranged gems as torture by vampire bat, a doctor clawing for golden... Read More

"A gloriously greasy, sweaty, hairy, bloody and violent Western." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Released in the US four months after the runaway success of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More sees the Man with No Name once again carving a bloody swathe across the American-Mexican frontier. Reluctantly teaming up with rival Col. Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) to catch the brutal bandit El Indio (a magnificently deranged Gian Maria Volonté), the Man is... Read More

"Stands out for its narrative economy and visual extravagance. Nearly every shot - from the close-ups teeming with rage to the meticulously composed masters - is eye candy." - Slant Magazine

After a bandido (Aldo Sambrelli) kills and scalps the wife of Navajo Joe, a native Indian played by Burt Reynolds (a role producer Dino De Laurentiis wanted Brando for), the hunter pledges his revenge. Enlisted by the townsfolk of Esperenza to single-handedly take down the outlaw and... Read More

"An opera in which the arias are not sung, they are stared." - Richard Schickel

A sumptuous epic bankrolled by Paramount Pictures, this is Sergio Leone's ultimate distillation of the style made famous by his 'Man with No Name' trilogy. Scripted by Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, Leone's opus sees Charles Bronson tracking down his brother's killer, an unscrupulous gunman played by Henry Ford.

One of the greatest tributes ever to the American Western, Once Upon... Read More

"The best of the circus westerns, a sub-genre which Parolini either invented or enthusiastically made his own." - Alex Cox, 10,000 Ways to Die

When gunslinger Sabata ("the man with the gunsight eyes", played by Lee Van Cleef) foils an acrobatic gang of bank robbers in a small Texan settlement, he finds he has unwittingly upset something bigger than a simple bank heist.

Gags, gimmicks and gymnastics abound in Sabata, a film that cemented Van Cleef's stardom.... Read More

"Arguably the best non-Sergio Leone spaghetti Western." - Leonard Maltin

Bounty hunter Lee Van Cleef is offered a chance at a senate seat in return for tracking down murderer and rapist Cuchillo (one of Tomas Milian's greatest roles). But as he trails the desperate fugitive across the hazardous terrain, he begins to question whether Cuchillo is the criminal he has been made out to be.

The first and most striking of Sergio Sollima's three very successful contributions to the... Read More

"The best-directed film of all time... the greatest achievement in the history of cinema." - Quentin Tarantino

This triumphant, acclaimed conclusion to Leone's 'Man with No Name' trilogy created a benchmark against which all subsequent Westerns have been measured. An unquestioned masterpiece of scripting, composition and directorial ambition, this is the film that forever enshrined Sergio Leone within the pantheon of cinema.

Eastwood's Man with No Name ('The Good', aka... Read More

Be Quick or Be Dead!

Accused of murdering a powerful figure known as The Patriach, Philipp Wermeer (Alberto Dentice) finds himself on the run with a sizable bounty on his head. But a grizzled ex-sheriff (Lee Van Cleef) suspects Wermeer has been framed, and sets his sights on the real killer.

Giancarlo Santi, a former assistant to Sergio Leone, riffs off the maestro's work for The Grand Duel, a highly stylised, almost impressionistic Western featuring such stylistic... Read More

"Corbucci's tightest, most relentless Western; his best and his bleakest." - Alex Cox, 10,000 Ways to Die

The Italian Dolomites stand in for Utah in Sergio Corbucci's snowy masterpiece. During the great blizzard of 1899, a mute bounty hunter named Silence (a magnificent performance by Jean-Louis Trintignant) tracks the ruthless killer Tigrero - Klaus Kinski in one of his most psychotic roles ever.

The recent deaths of Che Guevara and Malcolm X may have been on Corbucci's... Read More

"Anticipates The Wild Bunch in its near-hysterical local color... compounded by a frenzied revolutionary joie de vivre and a suitably excessive Morricone score." - J. Hoberman, Film Comment

An idealistic Mexican revolutionary (Tony Musante) and a cynical Polish gunslinger (Franco Nero) make a stand against Jack Palance's Curly - a sadistic, nefarious dandy who wants for himself the silver shipment intended to finance Mexico's freedom.

One of the genre's... Read More