A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars is a 1964 film from Italy, Spain, West Germany and the USA, directed by Sergio Leone, running 99 minutes. reelscum files it under spaghetti western.
- Year
- 1964 · 1960s films
- Country
- Italy · Spain · West Germany · USA
- Runtime
- 99 min
- Director
- Sergio Leone
- Updated
- 30 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (0/100)
- Also known as
- A Fistful of Dollars
Defined in the glossary: Spaghetti western
An unlicensed Yojimbo remake. Toho sued and won. Started everything.
The film that started it, and an unlicensed remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which Toho successfully sued over. A nameless drifter rides into a border town split between two criminal families and plays them against each other for profit, and Clint Eastwood becomes a star doing almost nothing.
Sergio Leone strips the American western of its decency and its heroes, keeps the iconography and the Morricone score, and invents a whole genre in the process. It cost very little and made a fortune.
Rougher than what followed, and the foundation of everything on this shelf.
Trailer
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Where to watch
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Filed alongside
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The cemetery sequence is the best three minutes in the genre.
For a Few Dollars More
Van Cleef arrives and the formula locks into place.
Once Upon a Time in the West
Fonda cast against type as a child killer. Leone's masterpiece.
Duck, You Sucker
Leone's revolution film. A Mexican bandit and an IRA dynamiter blow up the establishment together.
Django
A coffin, a machine gun, and mud everywhere. Banned in Britain until 1993.
They Call Me Trinity
The comedy turn that ended the cycle by making it impossible to take seriously.
My Name Is Nobody
The spaghetti western attends its own funeral, cracking jokes. Fonda, Terence Hill, and Leone's fingerprints everywhere.
Sabata
A gadget-toting gunfighter blackmails a whole town. Lee Van Cleef, having an obvious blast.
El Topo
Jodorowsky's mystical, violent acid western. It essentially invented the midnight movie.
Death Rides a Horse
Revenge, Van Cleef, and a score Tarantino lifted wholesale.
A Bullet for the General
The most openly political of the Zapata cycle, and the sharpest.
The Great Silence
Corbucci in the snow. The ending would never have cleared an American studio.