Covering every Italian Spaghetti Western--mainly the good but also the bad and the ugly--this is an authoritative, entertaining and comprehensive companion to the implausible international fusion of producers, directors, actors and composers who created the mythical Spaghetti West under the most improbable circumstances. Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy led the field but many more major Spaghetti Westerns were made by important directors, including Sergio Corbucci's Navajo Joe, Carlo Lizzani's The Hills Run Red, Duccio Tessari's A Pistol for Ringo. Combining analysis, information and lively anecdotes, this popular guide explores all of these films through the biographies and filmographies of key personnel, stories of the films' making, their locations and sets, sources, musical scores, detailed cast information and many illustrations, including original posters and stills.
[...]... City’) and a ‘western village’ at Hojo De Manzanares (built in 1962 for the ‘Zorro’ movies) in the Hojo de Manzanares Mountains Many location scenes were filmed in the surrounding area, including the rock formations at La Pedriza (in the Guadarrama Mountains), the reservoir at Santillana and the landscape of Manzanares El Real xvii xviii ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE ITALIAN WEST The Andalusian province of Almeria... There were several sites in Lazio and Abruzzo, which were used for location scenes; many of the low-budget westerns were shot entirely in this Roman ‘west’ Familiar locations include a gorge at Tolfa, the quarries at Magliana, the landscape of Manziana around Bracciano Lake, the Abruzzo National Park and the Nature Reserve at Tor Caldara The most distinctive spaghetti western locations were in Spain... films’ main selling points was their multinational casts – a fact that was mentioned constantly in their trailers If there was one thing the European (and in particular Italian) cinema-going public liked, it was movies packed with big American stars; even better, when the stars started to come to Europe to make movies Italian, Spanish, German and French directors suddenly had casts normally beyond their... Tunstall/Murphy range war was a ferocious, messy inter-gang feud And so it happened that the Italians and Spanish began making westerns, however inaccurately based on frontier history Initially European audiences approached these nascent spaghetti westerns gingerly, but in 1964 another archangel was about to drift into town, who would change forever the way westerns were made SPAGHETTI WESTERN TOP... difficult to dislike a film that so shamelessly rewrote history Two drifters, Blondy and Tuco, arrive in a Confederate ambulance at the San Antonio Mission in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and Donald S Bruce arrives at Cortijo de los Frailes 30 years later xix xx ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE ITALIAN WEST In the final battle (a last stand in Custer), factual accuracy is thrown to the wind, as Hickok... Shatterhand is chased by the Apaches in a canoe down the Pecos River The best scene in the film is when Santer and his men are trapped in a saloon in Roswell As they try to tunnel out, railroad workers lay tracks through the night leading to the saloon, and at daybreak they drive a locomotive into the building, completely demolishing it As if driving a train through a saloon wasn’t exciting enough, the. .. this.’ The stranger plays both ends against the middle, intensifying the rivalry, until in the finale the Rojos massacre the Baxters A problem with a ‘westernised’ version of Yojimbo was that the original final showdown pitted the hero, armed with a sword and a throwing knife, against the villain Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) with his pistol – the only firearm in town Leone’s adaptation pits the stranger,... Half Breed (1966) and Winnetou and Shatterhand in the Valley of Death (1968), a belated attempt by Reinl to revive the series With the success of the ‘Winnetou’ movies, Spanish and Italian production companies decided to capitalise on their popularity by having a stake in the films (with the investment of co-production money) and by casting native stars to give ‘international appeal’ Another one of the. .. screenplay: The San Siado Killings’ by Peter R Newman This was one of the first protospaghettis filmed in Almeria, southern Spain ‘It started the whole trend of making westerns in Spain,’ reckoned Carreras Savage Guns was a UK/Spanish coproduction (released by MGM) and featured American leads (Don Taylor, Richard Baseheart and Alex Nicol), with a Spanish supporting cast (including Jose Manuel Martin, Fernando... expatriate American actors who found themselves sweating in temperatures that topped 110 degrees in the summer, Almeria was affectionately known as the ‘Armpit of Europe’ This sandblasted landscape had a reputation as a place where washed-up ‘stars’ went to die in the cheapest international adventure co-productions But no one in Spain could have foreseen the impact Leone was about to have on their film industry . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" Once Upon a Time in the Italian West For Clara ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE ITALIAN WEST The Filmgoers’ Guide to Spaghetti Westerns HOWARD. element in the story, Reinl wasn’t sparing with the action. Lucas and his gang raze a Ponca Indian village to the ground, Forrester massacres a wagon train