Can anybody recomend any good spagetti westerns?
I've seen some of the well known Sergio Leone ones
The Good the Bad and the Ugly - It's insane how good this movie is
A Fistfull of Dollars - ultimate tough guy movie
For a Few Dollars More - Lee Van Cleef is indeed a badass
Once Upon a Time in the West - baddest ass opening sequence in any movie ever.
Open Range - definately. Just watch it for the shootout.It is f**king wild, man...
Though they aren't consider "spaghetti westerns" I would recommend The Outlaw Josey Wales and High Plains Drifter, both being Clint movies. I don't know if this is what you're looking for. I'm not a real fan of westerns but I really like the one's that Clint is in (with the exception of 2 Mules For Sister Sara and Paint Your Wagon), they are quite entertaining.
I own Hight Plains Drifter. That's a good one. I read somewhere its a remake of a low budget spaghetti western called Django the Bastard.
I spelled both spaghetti and western wrong in my subject line. Boy I look smart.
Get on over here and help this here gentleman.
Scott will be around shortly, Master Blaster, and he is definitely the man to answer this one. In fact, if you search for some of his old posts, you will find a gold mine.
My Name is Trinity
Trinity is Still My Name
El Topo
Seven Guns for The MacGregors (Gang of bad guys -- very bad guys -- ride around doing their bad-guy thing in kilts. Yes, that's what I said: Kilts. See it to believe it.)
There's an American actor named Robert Woods -- visible briefly as Henry Fonda's pilot in The Battle of The Bulge -- who moved to Italy in the '60's and did over a dozen in Italy & Spain, with Van Cleef & John Ireland. These are all pretty good, and he even has a small cult-following/fan club in New York.
peter johnson/denny crane
Oh my, sorry about the wait. I've been busy for a few days. About the the Westerns I've seen about 35 Spaghetti Westerns (Italian Westerns) now and they are always unusual. Most notable are the films with the great Morricone music that accompany the wild shooting and strange drama. The films usually center around "gold" and the body counts are very high in these type films.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Fistful of Dynamite
Django
My Name is Nobody
The Great Silence
Companeros
Keoma
Fistul of Dollars
A Few Dollars More
Death Rides A Horse
Django Kill
The Big Gundown
Fistful of Lead (Sartana Film)
Viva Maria
Baquaro
A Bullit for a General
Hannie Caulder
The Longest Hunt (Shoot Gringo Shoot)
They Still Call Me Trinity
Sabata (all three films)
You can also find that most American Westerns from the 60's and 70's are usually very good borrowing from the Italians. The Italians changed Westerns. One of the DVD extras that I have said something about the American Western being a Myth, but the Italians created a Myth within a Myth. Sergio Leone of course with Morricone are the tops and there are a couple other composers and directors of Italian Westerns that are worth looking for. The ones above are very good for a start. As Jason Robards says towards the end in the film ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST "It has something to do with death".
Even though EL TOPO isn't a Italian film I'm still trying to find a copy of it since I have yet to view it. It's been on my list for a long time.
DJANGO IL BASTARDO (1969) is basically the same story as HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973) with the Clint Eastwood American version being the better of the two.
Even though most of the Italian Westerns are shot in Spain, the main star of the Western genre is the Western landscape. The backdrop to all the action, stories, and characters.
Even though EL TOPO can be purhased from some eBay sellers on DVD, if you want a direct online source where it can be ordered, it is available on VHS in Amazon.com's zShops section for $9.99. This is the same VHS copy which I have and the quality looks more like an EP tape even though it is an SP tape. Don't hold your breath for it to be distributed in the U.S. as the copyright holder does not want it distributed (I don't know why).
Here is the link to Amazon.com:
El Topo VHS at Amazon (http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y01Y0565538Y8381747/002-6804595-8330429)
Post Edited (02-09-05 15:11)
Haven't purchased anything on Ebay yet. Noticed the copy of VHS that had a few years back, but just haven't looked into purchasing with Ebay. Also don't wish to pay even $10, but I might under the right circumstances for EL TOPO.
By the way Master Blaster HANNIE CAULDER is an English Western with Christopher Lee in that one. You'll like it ! There are some other good Euro-Westerns also. French and German.
My favorites are 'Shanghai Joe'('The Fighting Fists Of Shanghai Joe') a violent kung fu/spaghetti western with a good cast & great Bruno Nicolai score, the already mentioned 'Fistful Of Dynamite' ...in my opinion Leone/Morricone's finest work,& the gruesome Spanish western 'Cutthroats Nine' a flick that should appeal to fans of gory Eurohorror as well as western fans. To a lesser extent, 'God's Gun' with Lee Van Cleef is alot of fun and can be picked up on budget dvd for a couple of bucks.
Thanks for the recomendations. I need some good weekend time killers. I'll keep my eyes open for this stuff. And Christopher Lee in a western? This I gotta see.
Just a note: Of the westerns listed, EL TOPO is unlike any of them and unlike most anything you have seen before, unless, of course, you have seen HOLY MOUNTAIN.
Yep, HOLY MOUNTAIN is also on my list. Would love to see both. I have seen SANTA SANGRE.
I have not seen SANTA SANGRE yet.
The book about EL TOPO, written by Jodorowsky, is available to be read online here:
El Topo: A Book of the Film (http://www.subcin.com/bookfilm00.html)
This is handy since the book is out of print and rare.
If you can get EL TOPO, even a EP copy, for $10, then do it, say I! Not only is it worth every penny, ie., it's not only worth repeated viewings,[you HAVE to see it at least 3 times to start to get the nuances,]but you can also flog it again for what you paid for it for no trouble, if you don't like it. Hell, if they don't know what you paid for it, you could even turn a profit!
I got my copy from a guy named "Kenneth", who worked for Jodoworsky in the 80's.
Jodoworsky has copyright interest in all his films, not wholly owned, like Russ Meyer, but enough. He's also bipolar & quite disturbed. He is, in the words of Firesign's Phil Ausitn, "Crazy as a hoot-loon!", so don't expect the copyright to be relaxed any time soon.
Fun Fact: EL TOPO was the very first "midnight movie". The Museum of Modern Art, in NYC, started having midnight showings of it in 1971, because they didn't think anyone would want to see something like that during the day. It predates"Rocky Horror" as a Midnight Flick by a good 7 years.
Now, I may be guilty now of what I accused my friends of doing by "overselling" or overy-hyping something, but really all I've tried to do here is give some factual info. It is a genuinely interesting, genuinely unique, genuinely crazy f-ing film.
It is nothing more than a plain, blank fact, for example, to state that parts of the film are lifted verbatim from classic Zen Buddhist fables and koans. It no doubt had some influence on David Carradine and the folks who gave us "Kung Fu", yet is more of a classic Western than "Kung Fu" was.
This is not to say it isn't heavily flawed. Some scenes don't work at all. Others are left in even after obvious technical glitches have reared their heads. But, taken as a whole, this is one serious David Lynchian mindflik.
peter johnson/denny crane
I guess that I should also point out that people who nitpick westerns for historical inaccuracy could have a time with EL TOPO. The movie does have elements that either do not appear to belong in a western or are out of time for a western. In EL TOPO this, however, comes off okay, if not a bonus, since, at least to me, it is rather like allegorical journey, or dream sequence, in which the out of place elements fit as a presense of archetypes that bring the viewer into the story much like they do in our dreams.
Fair warning: there are images in EL TOPO you will never forget.
Like I've mentioned that I have yet to see EL TOPO. I'm wondering if EL TOPO is anything like DEAD MAN starring Johnny Depp. DEAD MAN has some really strange images and I was wondering if it may have elements of EL TOPO.
Saw Dead Man. Own El Topo. No similarities.
Or, I should say, no similarities beyond them both being unexpected and weird.
El Topo is far more stylized & bizarre than Dead Man.
Dead Man, for all its oddity, does, indeed, tell a linear story in a classic Heroic Journey fashion. In parts, it is a genuine depiction of what life in the Old West could have been like. Plus, it's in black and white.
El Topo is in screeching lurid color. El Topo is a Zen exercise on the contents of a -- literal -- madman's (Jodorworsky's) brain.
Dead Man is Protestant Existentialism.
El Topo is Zen Insanity by way of Terrance McKenna.
peter johnson/denny crane
I say that so far it is Open Range. f**king Awesome!
What about yours?
Thanks Peter for the information.