Background
If the story seems familiar, that’s because it is. This is by far the most blatant rip-off of A Fistful of Dollars, made clearer under its alternate title, For a Dollar in the Teeth. Not only does Vanzi use a simplified version of the same plot, but Anthony plays a nameless stranger dressed exactly like Eastwood’s poncho-wearing stranger and sucks meanly on cigars. But this film had American backing (it’s a US/Spanish co-production) and, like Eastwood’s Hang ’Em High (1968), it represents an American’s idea of a Spaghetti Western – short on plot and characterisation, long on violence. But the whole package (including an appalling performance by Wolff in the Ramon Rojo role) is so poorly executed that its success, especially in America, is difficult to fathom. The finale is memorable, however. In A Fistful of Dollars the stranger uses a square of iron cut from an old mining railcar as a makeshift bullet-proof vest. In A Stranger in Town the hero uses a whole railcar (which runs on tracks down the main street) as he faces Aguila, who is armed with a machinegun.
The film’s success made Anthony a star and resulted in three ‘Stranger’ sequels – The Stranger Returns (1967), The Silent Stranger (1969) and Get Mean (1976) – and several other similar outings, including the surreal Blindman (1971), Anthony’s best film. If The Silent Stranger (wherein the stranger finds himself in Japan) is the weakest of the ‘Stranger’ films and Get Mean is the oddest (the Stranger battles Moors and Vikings in Spain), then The Stranger Returns is the most accomplished. Also called A Man, a Horse, a Gun and Shoot First, Laugh Last, this is more imaginative and better plotted than its predecessor, set in a truly wild West. Anthony’s stranger (again in a poncho) tracks down a renegade (played by Italian strongman Dan Vadis) and his gang, known as the ‘Treasure of the Border’ because of the massive bounty on their heads. The bandits steal a solid-gold stagecoach (yes, you read it right) and the stranger gets beaten up and dragged behind the coach before levelling the gang with his four-barrelled shotgun. But the details of the film – which is more parodic and less slavishly imitative than A Stranger in Town – work a lot better. The stranger sunbathes under a pink parasol, has a natty sidekick (called the Prophet) with a box full of fireworks, christens his horse Pussy (which makes for some rather strange dialogue) and never finishes his ineptly rolled cigarettes – they taste so bad.
The Verdict
The most successful imitators of the Eastwood movies, the ‘Stranger’ films demonstrate just how powerful and popular an icon the poncho-draped Western hero had become in the sixties.
A Bullet for the General (1966)
Directed by: Damiano Damiani
Music by: Luis Enriquez Bacalov & Ennio Morricone
Cast: Gian Maria Volonte (El Chuncho), Klaus Kinski (Santo), Lou Castel (Bill Tate), Martine Beswick (Adelita)
114 minutes
Story
During the Mexican Revolution, a young gringo called Bill Tate joins a band of Mexican gunrunners working for the revolutionaries. The band is led by Chuncho (who’s in it for the money) and his half-brother Santo (a believer in the cause). They steal guns from the government to sell to General Elias, whose hideout is in the hills. On the way, the gang stop off at San Miguel and help the peasants kill their rich, exploitative boss. But after their liberation they want Chuncho to stay on as mayor. Chuncho seems keen, but Tate is determined to get to Elias and convinces the rest of the gang to leave with the guns.
Eventually, Chuncho abandons the peasants and rejoins his gang, but, in a battle with government troops, the gunrunners are decimated. Chuncho and Tate survive and continue alone to Elias’s headquarters, though the Mexican has to nurse the gringo when he catches malaria. At the headquarters, Chuncho sells the guns but General Elias sentences him to death – San Miguel has been attacked, the peasants massacred, but the armaments could have prevented it. Santo escaped and is about to kill Chuncho when Tate intervenes and kills Santo and Elias. Weeks later, Chuncho and Tate meet up in Cuidad Juarez and Tate tells him that he is a hired assassin and that their whole relationship has been an elaborate ruse to complete his contract. With that, Chuncho shoots Tate as they are boarding a train to the US – the Mexican is no longer a bloodthirsty bandit, but a revolutionary.
Background
This is the only Spaghetti Western to deal with the Mexican Revolution with anything remotely resembling incisiveness. Corbucci’s imaginative political Westerns were much more light-hearted in their commitment, while other attempts, like Tepepa (1968), Run Man Run (1968) and Leone’s Duck You Sucker (1971), either didn’t have the power to convey the key issues of the Mexican people or got lost in star-laden, overblown scenarios – films that existed purely to blow up trains, bridges and extras as elaborately as possible. Most forgot what the word revolution actually meant.
Damiani didn’t and A Bullet for the General, based on an excellent screenplay by political writer Franco Solinas (Salvatore Giuliano [1961], The Battle of Algiers [1966]), was much more than a succession of over-the-top set pieces. Carefully constructed, the film featured plenty of action (filmed in Almeria), but the story was a strong element in the film. The relationships between the main characters highlighted the revolution’s differing perspectives. Chuncho is a bandit, seeing the war as an opportunity to make a few pesos. Santo is a priest, devoutly observing his twin beliefs – God and the revolutionary people. Tate, a character who for much of the film seems quite sympathetic, is the ultimate betrayer (a government assassin), and Adelita is a peasant girl who rides with Chuncho’s hombres, but finds that, through the gringo’s manipulation, she has lost the thing she holds most dear (her lover, another of Chuncho’s band). Along the way, this gang encounter various groups (the army, peasants, political prisoners and revolutionaries) and their presentation in the film is utterly convincing.
There are certain things that make it obvious this is a Spaghetti Western, like the golden bullet Tate carries around in his valise (to the accompaniment of a riff on the soundtrack that sounds as though it has come straight out of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), which hammers home its significance to the story. But, for the most part, Damiani has succeeded in his aim, which was to make a serious statement about the Mexican Revolution. Even the usually excessive Kinski is more subdued than normal as the monastically clad, pistol-packing padre, though in one sequence he is allowed to indulge in histrionics and throw hand grenades at an army parade in the name of the ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost’. The film was originally called El Chuncho – Quien Sabe? (‘El Chuncho – Who Knows?’), a title as elliptical as Solinas’s plot.
The Verdict
This is much better than Castel’s other political Western, Requiescant (1967), directed by Carlo Lizzani. Damiani gets the balance right between tension, action, politics and history and allows his characters to develop. Not your usual Spaghetti, then, but that was Damiani’s intention. Bullet was a surprise commercial success and opened the floodgates for the political Westerns that followed.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Clint Eastwood (Blondy, ‘The Good’), Lee Van Cleef (Angel
Eyes, ‘The Bad’), Eli Wallach (Tuco Ramirez, ‘The Ugly’), Luigi Pistilli (Padre Pablo Ramirez), Al Mulock (Bounty hunter)
167 minutes
Story
During the Civil War, Angel Eyes, a hired gun, learns of a shipment of Confederate army gold that has vanished and sets about locating the one man who can identify its whereabouts, a Confederate cavalryman called Bill Carson. Meanwhile, a bounty hunter named Blondy has joined up with Tuco, a Mexican outlaw, in a bounty scam. But after Blondy double-crosses Tuco, the Mexican takes him into the desert to torture and kill him. There they encounter Carson, half-dead, who tells each of them one part of the gold’s location. Tuco knows that the cache is buried in a war cemetery on Sad Hill, while Blondy learns the name on the specific grave.
With the two now disguised as Confederate soldi
ers, Blondy recovers at a monastery functioning as a war hospital (run by Tuco’s brother Pablo). Moving on, they are captured by a Union patrol and taken to a Union prison camp where Angel Eyes is working as a sergeant. He tortures the name of the cemetery out of Tuco and packs him off to jail, while Blondy sides with Angel Eyes and his gang to find the gold. Later, Tuco (who has escaped his escort) and Blondy are reunited and wipe out Angel Eyes’ gang, though their leader evades them. Continuing towards the graveyard, the duo intervene in a battle for a strategically important bridge, blowing it sky high. Eventually finding the vast cemetery, they also find Angel Eyes and the three shoot it out with a fortune at stake. Blondy kills Angel Eyes and outwits Tuco, takes half the money and rides into the distance, while Tuco is left alive – rich but without a horse.
Background
This is probably the most famous Spaghetti Western of them all, no doubt due to Ennio Morricone’s distinctive theme tune (which everyone, whether they’ve seen the film or not, is familiar with). Moreover, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the most popular, enduring Westerns ever. Along with The Searchers (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), it is regularly voted into lists of contemporary audiences’ favourite films of all time. It is also unusual in that it works not only as an action film, but also as a great art movie and a morality tale. Seldom has a Western looked so beautiful and asked so many questions about human nature. It is truly epic in scale, even more so than Leone’s next film, Once Upon a Time in the West, as the Blue and the Grey (actually the Spanish army in period costume) fight it out as the backdrop to Leone’s treasure hunt.
Leone recast his two leading men from For a Few Dollars More, but altered their characters. Eastwood was now Blondy, more a cunning conman than a bounty hunter, while Van Cleef was the villainous hired gun, christened ‘Angel Eyes’ (originally called ‘Setenza’ in the Italian version, which means sentence, as in ‘death sentence’). Eastwood even abandoned his trademark poncho for the film (he only wears it in the final gunfight, after he steals it from a dead Confederate artilleryman). But Leone was obviously less concerned with Blondy and Angel Eyes and more interested in the character of garrulous, foul-mouthed Mexican bandido Tuco (played by Wallach, who appeared in The Magnificent Seven). For the first time in a Leone movie, we see a major character with his guard down. Tuco comes across as a slightly inept, bumbling outlaw and is easily outwitted and double-crossed by Blondy; but nevertheless, using his own distinctive methods, he manages to survive. He is also a fall guy for Eastwood. It is Tuco who always ends up on his knees in the dust or dangling precariously from a rope, while Blondy strides through every situation without breaking a sweat. In return for this humiliation and betrayal, Tuco leads Blondy into the wasteland to kill him (but inevitably fails). We also learn more about Tuco’s character than was expected in a Leone film. In one affecting scene, he visits his brother, a monk, and learns of the death of his parents.
The intricacies of the plot are down to Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni and an uncredited Sergio Donati (who co-scripted Sergio Sollima’s best movies and Once Upon a Time in the West). Like all the best adventure films, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly relies on outrageous coincidence and surprise to power the story and captivate the viewer. The initial premise upon which the whole story rests takes place before the film has even begun. A Union patrol ambushes a Confederate gold shipment. Three of the escort survive and one of them hides the cache in a grave. Only Angel Eyes does any detective work to locate the cache – Blondy and Tuco become involved in the search by chance – and the treasure hunt is only a small part of the movie. There are also some great lines of dialogue – “If you have to shoot, shoot… don’t talk”, “There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend”, “I always see my job through” and the logical “Two can dig a lot quicker than one”.
But it is the imaginative Civil War setting that allows Leone the opportunity to inject pathos into his West. The war gave him the chance to direct epic scenes and it must have amused him staging the battle sequences in Spain, near Madrid (a second Spanish Civil War). Every detail looks authentic (though several aren’t) and the Civil War of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the most convincing cinematic staging of the conflict. Refugees flee ruined towns, generals are reduced to travelling on rickety wagons, armies are shifted by railroad and soldiers kill and loot (and are executed when they are caught). This was a violent, merciless war, based partly on World War One (with entrenched armies fighting over a bridge at the behest of their idiot commanders) and World War Two (a prison camp with starving, rag-clothed inmates, high fences, gravediggers and death wagons piled high with corpses). If this film had depicted either of those more contemporary conflicts, it would have run into serious censorship problems.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly begins as a pretty standard Spaghetti Western (a shootout in a ghost town, a killing at a farm, a murder, a fumbled ambush) but the Civil War becomes more apparent as the film progresses and hangs over the action like a vulture. The first soldier who appears in the film is a legless Confederate reduced to selling information for a price, while several shots dwell on the dead or severely injured. Blondy (‘The Good’) is saddened by the conflict, seeing it as a waste of human life, Angel Eyes (‘The Bad’) runs a racket in a prison camp, selling on inmates’ possessions, while to Tuco (‘The Ugly’), a Mexican, the war means nothing and merely slows down his route to the graveyard.
To the annoyance of several (mostly American) critics, there was still no room for women in Leone’s West. While other Italian Western directors (in particular Tessari, Corbucci and Sollima) expanded the Leone formula and included meaty roles for actresses, Leone stuck to a male-orientated world. The only women in the movie were prostitutes, hoteliers, peasants or farmers’ wives. Even then, they either had one scene or had their scenes cut. In fact, there have been several versions of the film available, of various lengths, each with its own merits. Love scenes for Eastwood were excised from both For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and sex doesn’t enter into the equation. In this macho, war-torn world, there aren’t even any nurses in the hospitals. And again violence was directed at women, a feature of the film that Van Cleef, for one, loathed.
Though it’s best remembered for Morricone’s title theme – with its screaming, yelping vocals, cavalry trumpets and Shadows-style guitar, powered along by a pounding drumbeat – the score is much more than an echoing coyote howl in the desert. The Civil War scenes are accompanied by a haunting choral piece (‘The Soldier’s Story’) and a more expansive, trumpet-led composition – as when Angel Eyes visits a Confederate hospital in a scene only included in Italian prints (though the piece is still present on the soundtrack album). Blondy’s ordeal in the desert has an epic (as in Biblical epic) score, while Tuco’s breathless search for the grave in Sad Hill’s cross-strewn vastness is accompanied by one of Morricone’s best ever tunes, the towering ‘Ecstasy of Gold’. While there are none of the extended, montage-driven gundowns throughout the film, Leone makes up for it in the finale, where the three protagonists face each other in the huge circular arena in the middle of the graveyard. Here, the action consists of the three men staring meanly at each other for nearly five minutes – half of which consists of them taking their places at points on the circle before the contest can begin, accompanied by Morricone’s macabre bolero.
The most astonishing aspect of the film is the way Leone varies the film’s tempo – long scenes of silence (with little action), fast shootouts, chases, gags, pathos – but never loses its momentum. The camerawork by Tonino Delli Colli is superb, the performances perfect, the Spanish and Italian locations breathtaking. And for all its attempts at social comment (however successful or apparent), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also one of the great action Westerns. Eastwood has never been involved in a better film (though he’d probably argue he has), Van Cleef has
never been more villainous, Wallach so overly dramatic and expressive. Its phenomenal success also resulted in the usual bunch of rip-offs, from Enzo G Castellari’s Seven Winchesters for a Massacre (1967), with a poncho-clad hero involved in a Civil War treasure hunt, to The Handsome, the Ugly and the Cretinous (1967), an imaginative, scene-for-scene slapstick comedy version of Leone’s film.
The Verdict
Though many claim that the films that bookend The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Leone’s canon – the vengeful For a Few Dollars More and epic Once Upon a Time in the West – are his finest work, this is his best film, made by a director at his zenith, with a global superstar-in-waiting in the lead and a fantastical plot that is never short on surprises.
BOX-OFFICE DYNAMITE: 1967–69
The Hellbenders (1967)
Directed by: Sergio Corbucci
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Joseph Cotten (Colonel Jonas), Norma Bengell (Clare), Julian
Mateos (Ben), Al Mulock (Beggar)
88 minutes
Story
In the years following the Civil War, Jonas, an ex-Confederate colonel, and his three sons steal a shipment of Yankee gold. With it they plan to resurrect the Confederacy. They pose as a funeral escort with Clare, a prostitute, impersonating the wife of the ‘deceased’ and the money hidden in the coffin. Their ruse works, as they avoid Yankee patrols and sheriffs’ posses and are saved by the army from a bandit gang, until finally their goal, the Hondo River, is in sight. But they are almost robbed by a beggar and one of the sons rapes and murders an Indian girl. The sons have been at each others’ throats throughout and this atrocity is the last straw. In a final shootout, all the brothers are left dead or dying, while Clare has pneumonia and Jonas is mortally wounded. Even worse, Jonas makes the horrible discovery that it has all been for nought. The coffin contains the corpse of an executed bandit. The money has been mistakenly buried by the Union army.
Spaghetti Westerns Page 6