Spaghetti Westerns

by Hughes, Howard

  Gemma’s character is always a good man, forced through circumstance to become responsible for other people’s lives. In two of the films he must clear his own blackened name; in the other he embarks on a mission that will save hundreds of lives. Gemma is an appealing hero, and the excellent villains (Cressoy, ex-muscleman Dan Vadis or Serge Marquand) and imaginative music (by Gianni Ferrio, sometimes in collaboration with Morricone or Alessandroni) ensured that the series was more interesting than run-of-the-mill Spaghettis. One Silver Dollar is so called because the scriptwriters used the cliché of the hero’s life being saved by a lucky coin in his breast pocket. The one aspect Ferroni did borrow from Leone, however, was the fact that the hero got tortured at some point in the movie (in Yuma he’s even temporarily blinded), making his vengeance all the more sweet.

  The Verdict

  One Silver Dollar was overly praised in Italy for its realistic depiction of the post-Civil War South – which is as cliché-ridden in this movie as in any Hollywood attempt, complete with Southern belle. But it set Gemma up nicely for the first ‘Ringo’ film, A Pistol for Ringo, which appeared the following year.

  Seven Guns for the MacGregors (1965)

  Directed by: Franco Giraldi

  Music by: Ennio Morricone

  Cast: Robert Woods (Gregor MacGregor), Leo Anchoriz (Santillana), Fernando Sancho (Miguel), Agatha Flory (Rosita)

  92 minutes

  Story

  A family of Scottish horse ranchers live with their seven sons on their secluded homestead. When the sons take their horses to market, they have them stolen by a gang of Mexican bandits in league with a local sheriff. The sons set off to try to recover the herd and Gregor (the cleverest of the brothers) infiltrates a Mexican gang, led by Santillana. Gregor dupes the bandits out of some gold, but they capture him and his girl Rosita. She tells Santillana where the brothers and the gold are hiding, but Gregor manages to save his siblings just as they are about to be executed. The bandits surround them and all seems lost until Rosita arrives with a rescue party, who save the day and rout the bandits, leaving the MacGregors rich.

  Background

  This is the first successful comedy Spaghetti and the best Italian Western directed by Franco Giraldi (who also used the pseudonym Frank Grafield). Giraldi was Leone’s assistant director on A Fistful of Dollars, while one of the scriptwriters on Seven Guns for the MacGregors was the talented Duccio Tessari.

  The violence of Giraldi’s film recalls some of the more brutal moments of A Fistful of Dollars, but the humorous narrative, parodic performances and slapstick fistfights lighten the mood. At one point, a gringo is dragged alive through a fire, but the moment of horror is offset by the Mexican torturer moaning that gringos are ‘much too soft’. A more interesting plot twist is when Gregor joins Santillana’s band (like Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More), but instead of gunning down the gang, he tips his brothers off about the bandits’ forthcoming robberies (a bank, a gold convoy, a train shipment). When the bandits (led by Santillana’s incompetent lieutenant Miguel) arrive, the MacGregors have got there first and relieved the safes of their contents. These and other scenes strongly resemble Tessari’s ‘Ringo’ films (in particular A Pistol for Ringo), where stock characters and situations are expertly spoofed. Robert Woods is an excellent, easygoing hero, though he, like the other six badly dubbed brothers, doesn’t bother attempting a Scottish accent. The stunt work is great, Morricone’s Scottish pastiche score excellent (with drums, bagpipes and chants of ‘Whisky and Glory! Hurrah for the MacGregors!’) and Giraldi’s direction keeps the action tripping along. Leo Anchoriz as the intimidating villain ends up dying during an exciting knife fight with Gregor on a waterwheel.

  Following the film’s success, Giraldi made a sequel called Seven Women for the MacGregors (1966) – retitled Up the MacGregors for American distribution – with the same cast, except that American TV actor David Bailey took over the role of Gregor. The plot has the cache of gold from the first film stolen by another bunch of bandits, again led by Anchoriz (this time called Maldonado). More interestingly, the sons team up with a gang of Irish girls in an echo of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), with the Michael Kidd-choreographed dance numbers replaced by fisticuffs and gunplay. The film was again a cross between broad comedy (with plenty of rumbustious punch-ups between the Scots and Irish over who has the best whisky) and less-than-humorous violence, and had the dubious distinction of being released in America before Seven Guns for the MacGregors – quite possibly the only instance when a sequel has beaten its predecessor to the cinema.

  The Verdict

  In common with the ‘Ringo’ films and many early Spaghettis, Seven Guns for the MacGregors is nothing like Eastwood’s Italian Westerns, but nevertheless it’s a good laugh – particularly the opening scene, where the brothers’ four elderly relatives foil an attack by a vicious but inept bandit gang.

  A Pistol for Ringo (1965)

  Directed by: Duccio Tessari

  Music by: Ennio Morricone

  Cast: Giuliano Gemma (Ringo), Fernando Sancho (Sancho), Lorella De Luca (Miss Ruby), George Martin (Sheriff Ben)

  92 minutes

  Story

  The day before Christmas Eve in the town of Quemado, a Mexican bandit named Sancho and his gang rob the local bank. The sheriff’s posse give chase and Sancho is wounded, so the bandits hole up in a nearby ranch house, taking the occupants prisoner. Amongst the hostages are the owner Major Clyde and his daughter, Ruby (who is engaged to the sheriff). Sancho will kill two captives a day until they are allowed to leave. The posse lay siege to the ranch and enlist the help of a young adventurer named Ringo, who is currently locked in jail. He agrees to help if he can have a percentage of the stolen money. He infiltrates the ranch, befriends Sancho and convinces the bandits that he’s on their side. As the days pass, Miss Ruby, though initially wary of Ringo’s cockiness, falls for him. Eventually Ringo manages to free the captives and faces the bandits, whom he kills in a shootout at the ranch. By the time the posse and Ruby ride in, Ringo has taken his percentage and ridden into the sunset.

  Background

  After contributing to the scripts for Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and Franco Giraldi’s Seven Guns for the MacGregors, Tessari made a Western of his own in 1965. In place of the more contemporary, modernist style of Leone, Tessari approached A Pistol for Ringo in the classic Hollywood manner. Firstly he took a character name from American history (Johnny Ringo was a real gunfighter) that had already become a familiar name from Hollywood Westerns – John Wayne’s character in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) was named the Ringo Kid. For his Ringo, Tessari cast up-and-coming leading man Giuliano Gemma.

  Ringo is a far cry from Eastwood’s ambivalent stranger. He is referred to throughout the film by the nickname Angel Face and he resembles conventional Hollywood heroes. He has principles, doesn’t drink alcohol (preferring milk), but is still outside the law – he begins the film languishing in jail for gunning down four vengeful brothers (in self-defence, of course).

  A Pistol for Ringo is a melding of the familiar and the groundbreaking. Ringo, the sheriff and Miss Ruby are very much Hollywood characters. The sheriff (uniquely for Spaghettis) is honest and moral; generally, we would find him in league with the bandits or too lethargic to intervene. Miss Ruby, the sheriff’s pretty fiancée (played by Tessari’s wife, Lorella De Luca) is also a stereotype, gradually falling for Ringo. Tessari’s trick is to have these ‘types’ behave in unexpected ways, upsetting the audience’s expectations of traditional Westerns. The Mexican villains are more recognisably Italian in origin. Fernando Sancho’s portrayal of a swaggering, moustachioed bandido is a true archetype for the Spaghettis that followed and guaranteed him work for years to come, though he was constantly typecast. By contrast, Sancho’s señorita Dolores (Nieves Navarro), a rough-and-ready bandida, changes during her stay at the hacienda and is finally civilised by the bourgeois ranch owner. The scruffy bandits dining in luxury make for some great co
mic situations.

  The film is unusual in the Spaghetti-Western canon as it is set within a definite time period (the days leading up to Christmas), with the final escape attempt taking place on Christmas Day. A religious subtext even has Ringo waking up in a stable on Christmas Morning. The film is tightly plotted and surprisingly low on violence (barring the executions of the hostages), though it was still trimmed for foreign release – including a humorous scene where the bandits join in with the family carol singing. Ennio Morricone’s score is inventive (even incorporating themes based on ‘Silent Night’), whilst still owing something to its Hollywood model. This is further echoed in the opening ballad ‘Angel Face’ sung by Maurizio Graf – ‘Ringo had an angel face, but whenever Ringo loved, Ringo fought.’

  The film was unexpectedly successful in America in 1966 (where its release predated the arrival of the ‘Dollars’ films in 1967), probably because audiences appreciated Tessari’s knowing exploitation of the genre’s conventions. Plus it also looked like one of the more imaginative American B-Westerns of the fifties, because of a youthful, appealing cast – Italian Gemma hid behind the hip pseudonym Montgomery Wood.

  The Verdict

  An excellent, well-thought-out film that spawned several in-name-only sequels. Search out the only official follow-up – Tessari’s own aptly titled The Return of Ringo (1965).

  For a Few Dollars More (1965)

  Directed by: Sergio Leone

  Music by: Ennio Morricone

  Cast: Clint Eastwood (Manco), Lee Van Cleef (Colonel Douglas Mortimer), Gian Maria Volonte (El Indio), Klaus Kinski (Wild the Hunchback)

  125 minutes

  Story

  In the American South-west, El Indio, a notorious Mexican bandit, is sprung from the Territorial Prison by his gang. With Indio on the loose, the reward for his capture – dead or alive – reaches $10,000, and two gringo bounty hunters decide to track him down. One is an ex-Confederate colonel named Douglas Mortimer, while the other is Manco, a poncho-clad loner. Individually, the pair figure out that Indio will try to rob the most impregnable vault in the territory at El Paso, and arrive there to stake out the bank. Realising that they’re after the same prey, the two finally team up and, as part of their plan, Manco infiltrates the bandit gang. But their scheme backfires and, during the robbery, Indio and his men get away with the safe and hide out in a Mexican village. Manco double-crosses Mortimer and rejoins the gang, but the Colonel shows up and offers to help Indio open the safe without damaging the contents. By night, the gringos manage to hide the loot, but they’re caught and beaten. Indio releases them so he can escape with the loot. The bandits are wiped out in a gun battle and, in the final showdown, Mortimer kills Indio, settling an old vendetta with the bandit over the rape of Mortimer’s sister. Manco is ready to split the rewards, but Mortimer allows his partner to keep it all – all he wanted was revenge.

  Background

  Eastwood and Leone’s second film together established Eastwood’s bankability and Leone’s reputation as Italy’s foremost action director. Even today, For a Few Dollars More has lost none of its edge and hasn’t dated at all. Eastwood, still in his poncho and chewing on a cigar, is this time a bounty hunter, giving a more interesting slant to the character from A Fistful of Dollars (where he was a drifting hired gun). And even as Leone is exalting the importance of dollars over life itself, Eastwood’s partner, Van Cleef’s Colonel Mortimer, is introducing the idea of conscience, absolution and revenge.

  But it was the villain, again played by Volonte, who really pushed the genre to pastures new. With Eastwood and Van Cleef as grim-faced, passionless killers, Volonte, as a drug-addicted, religion-fixated rapist, was the most excessive character to appear in a Western up to 1965. In fact, few since have equalled his over-the-top sadism and egotistical obsessiveness. Drugs had never featured in mainstream Westerns before and sexual assault was something that happened off screen (and even then only hinted at) – certainly not the red-tinted reverie it is here. Such explicitness, together with the paper-thin female characterisations (if mere walk-ons can be termed as such) and the macho emphasis on violence (especially a scene where Indio’s whole gang interminably beat up the two gringos) led to the film being written off as savage, misogynistic trash – acceptable in Italy, but definitely not in America, the historical heartland of the Western. Ironic, then, that For a Few Dollars More made a fortune when finally released there in July 1967.

  To many, this is Leone’s finest Western and it certainly epitomises everything Spaghettis were best at: greed and revenge, violence and betrayal, gringos versus Mexican bandidos, bank robberies, evocative music and protracted duels. When Mortimer faces Indio in the finale, in a makeshift, circular Roman arena, Leone stretches the moment before the draw to breaking point. Ennio Morricone’s triumphant trumpet theme spirals skywards and then cuts to silence as the tight-lipped protagonists let their guns do the talking.

  Having made Eastwood a star, Leone added a second hero, who effectively became the lead. For the Colonel, Leone again looked to America. After being snubbed by Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, he cast hawk-nosed Van Cleef (a Hollywood villain from High Noon [1952], Gunfight at the OK Corral [1957] and Ride Lonesome [1959]). Volonte was again cast as the villain-in-chief and German actor Klaus Kinski appeared as a snarling, twitching hunchback, who in one scene has a match lit on his hump by Van Cleef.

  The film was a fair improvement on A Fistful of Dollars. The action sequences were punchier, the gringos were almost silent, their opponents (and the rest of the supporting cast) garrulous and operatic. Morricone’s music was a considerable step forward, incorporating a twanging Jew’s harp, eerie whistling, electric guitar and what sounds like someone levering a Winchester – and that was just the title tune. A plot device (a musical pocket watch) was also effortlessly woven in, making this one of Morricone’s most intricate scores. After this movie, virtually every Spaghetti Western featured an extended, musical, montage-driven duel at the climax. And as if that wasn’t innovative enough, Van Cleef had a pistol with a 12-inch barrel, a Derringer hidden up his sleeve and an arsenal of pistols and rifles hidden in his horse’s blanket roll, which later influenced the gadget-led ‘Sabata’ movies.

  The Verdict

  The untrustworthy partnership between the bounty-hunter heroes has never been bettered, the arid Almerian landscapes never looked more beautiful and the Italian Western was never the same again.

  The Return of Ringo (1965)

  Directed by: Duccio Tessari

  Music by: Ennio Morricone

  Cast: Giuliano Gemma (Ringo), George Martin (Paco Fuentes), Fernando Sancho (Esteban Fuentes), Lorella De Luca (Hally Brown)

  94 minutes

  Story

  Following the Civil War, a young Union captain called Montgomery Brown (known as ‘Ringo’ to his friends) returns to his home town of Mimbres. He finds that a group of Mexican bandits – led by brothers Paco and Esteban Fuentes – have taken over the town and the sheriff is powerless to stop the injustice. Ringo finds out that Paco has designs on his wife, Hally, and that the Mexicans are also responsible for his father’s death. The Mexicans are living in Ringo’s house and are holding his wife and daughter prisoner. Paco plans to marry Hally and pretends that Ringo has been killed in battle. Ringo disguises himself as a Mexican peasant, goes into town and shelters in the house of a florist named Morning Glory. Eventually Ringo contacts his wife, but is captured and has his gun hand crippled by Paco. Plotting revenge, he gathers a small group of allies, including the florist, an Indian medicine man and the cowardly, drunken sheriff. Threatening Hally that her daughter will be harmed, Paco convinces her to marry him. But during the ceremony Ringo returns – not in his beggar’s rags, but in his true guise, his cavalry uniform. While a dust storm rages, Ringo and his accomplices rout Paco and the Mexicans, and save his wife and daughter.

  Background

  Notoriously economical when it came to deploying its resources, the I
talian film industry flourished by re-using sets, costumes and actors (not to mention plots) throughout any given ‘genre explosion’. The Return of Ringo epitomises this. It was made by the same director and production team responsible for the first ‘Ringo’ film (A Pistol for Ringo) with the same cast and locations. But to give the impression that the sequel is far removed from Pistol, they all play different characters (for example, George Martin plays the villainous Paco rather than the sheriff). All except Giuliano Gemma, who reprises his role as the young hero, Ringo. Even then, his characterisation is only vaguely related to the original Ringo – instead of a young outlaw, he’s a cavalry captain returning from the Civil War.