A Fistful of Dollars
1964 · Italy/Spain · 99m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyAn unlicensed Yojimbo remake. Toho sued and won. Started everything.
Spaghetti western
1964–1978 · 24 films catalogued
Italian westerns shot in Spain. Dirtier, louder, and more cynical than the American kind.
Around six hundred westerns made by Italian companies between 1964 and the late 1970s, shot mostly in Almería in southern Spain, with international casts dubbed in post.
Where it started
Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) is an unlicensed remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which Toho successfully sued over. It cost very little and made a fortune.
What changed
The American western had heroes. The Italian one has men who want money. Violence is ugly and frequent, the church and the state are corrupt as a matter of course, and the landscape is dust rather than monument valley grandeur.
Ennio Morricone did the other half of the work. Morricone's scores are half the reason several of these films are remembered at all.
The political wing
The Zapata westerns, A Bullet for the General, Companeros, Duck, You Sucker, moved the setting to the Mexican Revolution and made the politics explicit. Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966) and The Great Silence (1968) are the bleakest things in the cycle. The Great Silence ends in a way no American studio would have permitted.
Where to start
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly if you have somehow not. The Great Silence if you have.
Spaghetti western films on file
All 24 Spaghetti western films →
For a Few Dollars More
1965 · Italy/West Germany · 132m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyVan Cleef arrives and the formula locks into place.
Once Upon a Time in the West
1968 · Italy/USA · 165m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyFonda cast against type as a child killer. Leone's masterpiece.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
1966 · Italy/Spain · 174m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyThe cemetery sequence is the best three minutes in the genre.
Duck, You Sucker
1971 · Italy · 157m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyLeone's revolution film. A Mexican bandit and an IRA dynamiter blow up the establishment together.
Django
1966 · Spain/Italy · 90m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyA coffin, a machine gun, and mud everywhere. Banned in Britain until 1993.
They Call Me Trinity
1970 · Italy · 110m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyThe comedy turn that ended the cycle by making it impossible to take seriously.
My Name Is Nobody
1973 · Italy/France · 116m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyThe spaghetti western attends its own funeral, cracking jokes. Fonda, Terence Hill, and Leone's fingerprints everywhere.
Sabata
1969 · Italy · 111m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyA gadget-toting gunfighter blackmails a whole town. Lee Van Cleef, having an obvious blast.
Death Rides a Horse
1967 · Italy · 120m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyRevenge, Van Cleef, and a score Tarantino lifted wholesale.
El Topo
1970 · Mexico · 125m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyJodorowsky's mystical, violent acid western. It essentially invented the midnight movie.
A Bullet for the General
1967 · Italy · 118m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyThe most openly political of the Zapata cycle, and the sharpest.
The Great Silence
1968 · France/Italy · 105m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyCorbucci in the snow. The ending would never have cleared an American studio.
Keoma
1976 · Italy · 97m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyLate, strange, half-sung by a folk narrator. Castellari's best film.
Companeros
1970 · Italy/Spain · 115m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyZapata western with Franco Nero and a very good Morricone theme.
Day of Anger
1967 · Italy/West Germany · 114m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyA gunfighter mentors a despised young man, then has to face what he created. Van Cleef at his best.
Face to Face
1967 · Spain/Italy · 112m
Obscurity: knownSollima's smartest western: watch a decent man discover he likes it.
The Mercenary
1968 · Spain/Italy · 107m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyCorbucci's Zapata western. A Polish gun-for-hire, a peasant revolutionary, and Jack Palance in a frock.
The Big Gundown
1966 · Italy/Spain · 110m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallySollima's best. A manhunt that keeps turning into a political argument.
Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!
1967 · Spain/Italy · 116m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyNothing to do with Django, and one of the strangest and cruelest westerns Italy ever shot.
Four of the Apocalypse
1975 · Italy · 104m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyFulci does a bleak, hallucinatory western. Four outcasts cross a hostile frontier. Most do not make it.
Cemetery Without Crosses
1969 · France/Italy · 90m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyThe French corner of the spaghetti cycle: gaunt, ritualistic, and dedicated to Leone.
The Grand Duel
1972 · France/West Germany · 90m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyLee Van Cleef, one three-way showdown, and the Bacalov theme you know from Kill Bill.
If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death
1968 · France/West Germany · 95m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyThe gadget-gunslinger spaghetti west arrives fully dressed in black.