From the wiki for "Captain Apache":
The vocals of the opening and credits song were performed by Van Cleef.
!!!
My fave campy Ennio deep cut is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewtB8GPqWLw
It's from a movie called "Duello new Texas," or "Dual at Red Sands." apparently the first western with a Morricone score.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 28 June 2020 13:58 (three years ago) link
Ugh, autocorrect. The movie was called "Duello nel Texas," aka "Gunfight at Red Sands."
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 28 June 2020 13:59 (three years ago) link
Was just looking around on wiki and realized how few non-Leone spaghetti westerns I've actually seen. I've seen, say, A Bullet for the General, and My Name is Nobody, but do any/many more of them approach the mastery and majesty of Leone?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 28 June 2020 14:06 (three years ago) link
Rick Dalton's spaghettis are supposed to be great.
― "...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:24 (three years ago) link
I've seen dozens of spaghetti westerns so I'll try to answer. The first four Leones are undeniable and there's a reason they each topped the Italian box office in their respective years. I'd maintain there are a good handful (a fistful?) of non-Leones that are great in their own way and not too imitative of him - depending on taste, perhaps a bit more than a handful.
My non-Leone POX would look something like this (in chronological order):
A Pistol for RingoThe Return of RingoDjangoThe Ugly Ones (aka The Bounty Killer)A Bullet for the GeneralThe Big GundownThe Great SilenceCemetery Without CrossesTepepaThe Price of Power
― Josefa, Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:34 (three years ago) link
I've seen a lot of them but they were usually released under a dozen different titles so it's difficult to distinguish them. One of the best is the one with Jean-Louis Trintingnant that's set in winter, The Big Silence, I think? Also the first (or second?) Django with Franco Nero.. there's dozens of films with Django in the title though. A particularly memorable one, I think called Requiescant, has Pasolini on it, playing a priest
― Future England Captain (Tom D.), Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:36 (three years ago) link
... The Great Silence (xp)
Saw quite an entertaining one the other day with Klaus Kinski as the unluckiest gambler in the west - possibly one of the Sartana (sp?) films.
― Future England Captain (Tom D.), Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:41 (three years ago) link
Requiescant is great, good call
― Josefa, Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:41 (three years ago) link
Thanks! How far do a lot of these veer from style into exploitation film grit and grime, sex and violence qua sex and violence? I'd like to avoid that, if possible.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:46 (three years ago) link
The ones I mentioned all have more going on than gross-out/shock elements. Most have some sort of political angle. Fwiw spaghettis tend to downplay sex (as opposed to sexual assault, which may be what you mean)
― Josefa, Sunday, 28 June 2020 15:58 (three years ago) link
My Name is Nobody score sounds like a Morricone compilation that couldn't get the rights to the actual original compositions
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, 28 June 2020 16:00 (three years ago) link
xpost Yeah, sexual assault (or its threat) is pretty prevalent even in stuff like "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "For a Few Dollars More," but I never got the feeling they were playing for shock, just legit gross man menace. A la Mann's "Man of the West," which goes pretty far down that road for 1958 - Jack Lord's character is like a spaghetti western villain prototype - but which is just too old fashioned to make the impact that the sweaty, dirty spaghetti stuff does, imo. The women in these movies are often so sad, tired and tragic, stuck in this macho world that doesn't value them as much more than servants or playthings.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 28 June 2020 16:40 (three years ago) link
The most objectionable spaghetti I've seen in terms of ugliness and base pandering is Blindman (1971)
― Josefa, Sunday, 28 June 2020 16:51 (three years ago) link
Violence and misogyny are pretty much a constant.
― Future England Captain (Tom D.), Sunday, 28 June 2020 16:55 (three years ago) link
For sure (see also: most movies with guns). But Leone offers a real sense of poetry and vision that helps escape the gravitational pull of that particular gutter. A lot of action movies, esp. low budget action movies of that era, struggle to pull that off.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 28 June 2020 17:01 (three years ago) link
The rape of the rich white woman at the beginning of duck you sucker is treated so casually (I quite liked the film by the end - some amazing scenes - but it was a drag in places and rod steiger is fucking terrible as the annoying caricature mexican)
― covid coronenberg (wins), Sunday, 28 June 2020 17:05 (three years ago) link
His accent is abysmal and you need a tolerance for his customary scenery chewing, which I've got tbh.
― Future England Captain (Tom D.), Sunday, 28 June 2020 17:33 (three years ago) link
He’s so one-note and shouty, I just wanted him to fuck off. Didn’t have this reaction to wallach
― covid coronenberg (wins), Sunday, 28 June 2020 17:53 (three years ago) link
finally watched For a Few Dollars More, liked it but not nearly as much as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
― Dan S, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 00:40 (three years ago) link
Eastwood was very charismatic in the Dollars trilogy
― Dan S, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 00:41 (three years ago) link
and the ponchos he wore
― Dan S, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 01:07 (three years ago) link
Same poncho in all three. I think his entire outfit is identical.
― Josefa, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 01:36 (three years ago) link
is it the same poncho? he wore it so well
― Dan S, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 01:54 (three years ago) link
It was pointed out to me somewhere that The Good, Bad, & Ugly is actually the film where he gets the poncho, despite being the third in a "trilogy."
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 03:24 (three years ago) link
I like the vest or undercoat he wore with wool lining in For a Few Dollars More
― Dan S, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 03:37 (three years ago) link
El Indio as Volonté portrayed him was a great character
― Dan S, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 03:44 (three years ago) link
Volonté was a marxist who basically despised the movies. There's an anecdote of him turning to another lefty crew member and going "we're Italian communists making these capitalist movies in fascist Spain, does this make any sense to you?".
Great portrayal tho yeah.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 11:08 (three years ago) link
"For a Few Dollars More" is fantastic.
― Sonny Shamrock (Tom D.), Wednesday, 5 August 2020 11:15 (three years ago) link
Lee Van Cleef is great in it too.
― Sonny Shamrock (Tom D.), Wednesday, 5 August 2020 11:16 (three years ago) link
He wears that vest in all three as well. His hat, poncho, vest, shirt, and as far as I can tell his jeans are the exact same items throughout the "trilogy."
― Josefa, Wednesday, 5 August 2020 12:42 (three years ago) link
interesting
― Dan S, Thursday, 6 August 2020 02:10 (three years ago) link
Just watched the Eastwood trilogy over the last several days, for the first time in like twenty years. All much better than I remembered, but TGTBATU was just utter wowsville. I see on Letterboxd that it is both the most popular and the highest rated film of '66. Pretty sure I've never seen a film claim both top spots for any other year. Rare that a movie that's actually The Best is also just so broadly enjoyable.
― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Saturday, 17 July 2021 02:56 (two years ago) link
lol, okay, I only had to look as far as '72 and '74 for other examples. But it's still rare!
― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Saturday, 17 July 2021 03:27 (two years ago) link
Yeah, I love how the dollars trilogy just goes bigger and better with every installment.
― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 17 July 2021 11:14 (two years ago) link
It's just astounding and entertaining in equal measure. Love it to death. And I love those little doodles Sergio Leone did in the margins of Mad, too.
In more seriousness, I never pass up an opportunity to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjDBUL_zhqs
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 17 July 2021 12:33 (two years ago) link
OK, "Good Bad Ugly," per my previous posts I love this movie and always have. But I just started the Red Letter Media review on it (which is neither here nor there*), and within seconds they point out that Eli Wallach is, problematically, playing Tuco in brown face. Which I guess he is, but weirdly all the times I've seen this it never once occurred to me. Sure, he's playing a Mexican character, but I'd always thought that one big trademark of all the spaghetti westerns is that the lead/American actors (and really everyone else) *all* have tons of make-up slathered on, which just adds to the sweaty, dirty, gross, sun-burned desert vibe. That is, I never thought Eli Wallach's character as particularly darker skinned than Clint Eastwood's or Lee Van Cleef's, let alone most of the rest of the largely Italian casts.
Like, here's Henry Fonda in "Once Up a Time ..."https://filmforum.org/do-not-enter-or-modify-or-erase/client-uploads/_1000w/west-slide.jpg
Anyway. Now I am irreversibly aware.
*though worthwhile because one of the guys had never seen it before, despite always wanting to get around to it, and immediately realized it was one of the greatest movies ever made.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 18 August 2022 17:20 (one year ago) link
That was kind of Wallach's thing. See Also: The Magnificent Seven.
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, 18 August 2022 17:59 (one year ago) link
Spaghetti westerns are chock full of Italian actors playing Mexicans/Native Americans. In For a Few Dollars More it was Gian Maria Volonté playing "El Indio."
― Josefa, Thursday, 18 August 2022 18:09 (one year ago) link
..and Volonté was surely browned up to play El Indio - compare his complexion there to his complexion in Investigation of a Citizen Under Suspicion. He was a Northern Italian who grew up in Turin.
― Josefa, Thursday, 18 August 2022 18:21 (one year ago) link
Charles Bronson in "Once Upon a Time in the West", Rod Steiger in "Giu la Testa" etc.
― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Thursday, 18 August 2022 18:35 (one year ago) link
Oh, I knew they were often playing Mexicans or Native Americans. But I was always struck by how everyone in these movies seemed to have the same skin-tone (like Fonda above), no matter who they were playing. Like, Bronson in "West," is his character's ethnicity even stated?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 18 August 2022 18:46 (one year ago) link
It's not stated but you see him as a child in flashbacks - when you eventually find out where the harmonica playing comes from, for instance - and he doesn't look Lithuanian!
― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Thursday, 18 August 2022 19:20 (one year ago) link
You're right though, even Fonda, of all people, is brown as a berry in that film!
― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Thursday, 18 August 2022 19:21 (one year ago) link
https://hotcorn-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/06/27123618/The-Good-The-Bad-And-The-Ugly-Clint-Eastwood.jpg
Lee Van Cleef is Dutch:
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 18 August 2022 19:24 (one year ago) link
Here's Jason Robards as Manuel "Cheyenne" Gutiérrez:
http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Cheyenne_Robards.jpg
And then Claudia Cardinale (who is Italian) playing the presumably Scottish or something "Jill McBain":
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DTraHI1YJbs/WtsauCwD4rI/AAAAAAAACdI/m5c7Dg-PPVky-aoWAOuIbO2SKSrgWb6aQCLcBGAs/s1600/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west-1968-008-claudia-cardinale-close-up-angry-look.jpg
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 18 August 2022 19:34 (one year ago) link
I always thought the name Jill McBain was hilarious for someone with the look of Claudia Cardinale. Italians playing Confederate soldiers makes me snicker as well.
― Josefa, Thursday, 18 August 2022 20:09 (one year ago) link
Franco Nero was believable but some of the other guys…
― Josefa, Thursday, 18 August 2022 20:12 (one year ago) link
She's called McBain because she took her husband's name tho! Frank Wolff, of German descent.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 21 August 2022 11:56 (one year ago) link
He's supposed to be Irish, so of course he has bright red hair.
― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Sunday, 21 August 2022 12:03 (one year ago) link