Spaghetti Westerns
Italian director Sergio Leone brought many profound changes with his brilliant low-budget "spaghetti" western films made in Europe (Spain and Italy) in the mid-60s.The changes were a new European, larger-than-life visual style, a harsher, more violent depiction of frontier life, haunting music from Ennio Morricone, choreographed gunfights, wide-screen closeups, and TV's Rawhide (Rowdy Yates) star Clint Eastwood as the mysterious, detached, amoral, fearless and cynical gunfighter (dusty, serape-clad, stubbly-faced, and cigar-chewing) and bounty hunter - 'The Man With No Name.'
These films resulted in a revival of the genre in the mid-to-late 1960s.
Right: Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone's magnificent "A Fistful Of Dollars".
A Fistful of Dynamite ( aka Duck You Sucker ) (1972)
Director: Sergio Leone
Starring: Romolo Valli, Rod Steiger, James Coburn
James Coburn is top-billed as an Irish soldier of fortune with a penchant for explosives. Rod Steiger plays another mercenary who wants to utilize Cob... Read more
Captain Apache (1971)
4.8/10
Director: Alexander Singer
Starring: Carroll Baker, Lee Van Cleef, Stuart Whitman
A Native American working for the government must investigate the Indian Commissioner's death. Soon he uncovers the schemes of a wealthy land owner an... Read more
Mannaja: A Man Called Blade (1977)
Director: Sergio Martino
Starring: Maurizio Merli, Donald O'Brien, Rik Battaglia
Despite coming along fairly late in the cycle, this spaghetti western is one of the genre's best. Maurizio Merli stars as Mannaja, a hatchet-wielding... Read more
The Hills Run Red (1966)
5.9/10
Director: Lee W Beaver
Starring: Dan Duryea, Henry Silva, Thomas Hunter
Aka "Un Fiume Di Dollari". As the Civil War draws to a close, two Confederate soldiers, Jerry Brewster (Thomas Hunter) and Ken Seagall (Nando Gazzolo)... Read more
Man of the East (1972)
6.7/10
Director: Enzo Barboni
Starring: Gregory Walcott, Harry Carey Jr, Terence Hill
'He's a fun-of-a-gun!' or so the tagline promises. Terence Hill ("They Call Me Trinity") is back in his classic genre of comedy/western, this time as... Read more
Navajo Joe (1966)
6.4/10
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Fernando Rey, Tanya Lopert, Aldo Sanbrell, Nicoletta Machiavelli
AKA: "A Dollar a Head," "Savage Run." After his family and tribe are unmercifully slaughtered by a wicked outlaw and his underlings, Navajo Indian Bur... Read more
Bad Man's River (1971)
4.6/10
Director: Eugenio Martin
Starring: Lee Van Cleef, James Mason, Gina Lollobrigida
This spaghetti Western has Lee Van Cleef and his cronies offered $1 million to blow up an arsenal by a Mexican revolutionary. The arsenal gets blasted... Read more
The Companeros (1970)
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Starring: Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Fernando Rey, Jack Palance
An interesting Spaghetti Western with political themes in which mercenary Franco Nero joins revolutionary Thomas Milian to help free a pacifist profes... Read more
Take a Hard Ride (1975)
5.9/10
Director: Anthony M Dawson
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Catherine Spaak, Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, Lee Van...
"Take a Hard Ride" is an unusual "blaxploitation western" starring Jim Brown as a grizzled cowboy on a dangerous trek to deliver a large sum of money... Read more
Any Gun Can Play (1967)
6.1/10
Director: Enzo G Castellari
Starring: Gilbert Roland, George Hilton, Edd Byrnes
A nameless, wandering gunslinger sets his sights on a ruthless Mexican bandit and the reward offered for his capture...dead or alive. Spaghetti Wester... Read more