Exploitation films

If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death

The gadget-gunslinger spaghetti west arrives fully dressed in black.

Cemetery Without Crosses

The French corner of the spaghetti cycle: gaunt, ritualistic, and dedicated to Leone.

The Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef, one three-way showdown, and the Bacalov theme you know from Kill Bill.

Four of the Apocalypse

Fulci does a bleak, hallucinatory western. Four outcasts cross a hostile frontier. Most do not make it.

Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!

Nothing to do with Django, and one of the strangest and cruelest westerns Italy ever shot.

The Big Gundown

Sollima's best. A manhunt that keeps turning into a political argument.

Companeros

Zapata western with Franco Nero and a very good Morricone theme.

Day of Anger

A gunfighter mentors a despised young man, then has to face what he created. Van Cleef at his best.

Face to Face

Sollima's smartest western: watch a decent man discover he likes it.

The Mercenary

Corbucci's Zapata western. A Polish gun-for-hire, a peasant revolutionary, and Jack Palance in a frock.

Keoma

Late, strange, half-sung by a folk narrator. Castellari's best film.

The Great Silence

Corbucci in the snow. The ending would never have cleared an American studio.

A Bullet for the General

The most openly political of the Zapata cycle, and the sharpest.

Death Rides a Horse

Revenge, Van Cleef, and a score Tarantino lifted wholesale.

El Topo

Jodorowsky's mystical, violent acid western. It essentially invented the midnight movie.

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.

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.

Duck, You Sucker

Leone's revolution film. A Mexican bandit and an IRA dynamiter blow up the establishment together.

A Fistful of Dollars

An unlicensed Yojimbo remake. Toho sued and won. Started everything.

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.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The cemetery sequence is the best three minutes in the genre.