Spaghetti Westerns at Film Forum! Bravo!

When I was a kid and movies would come on TV some of the ones that always fascinated me were the weird, crazy movies that seemed and looked like westerns but were somehow much different.  Obviously they were dubbed into English, had really cool music soundtracks, were very violent, the women were really sexy and everybody was very sweaty and had lots of makeup and unique costumes on.  Yeah, these cowboy movies were different all right from lame "Bonanza," or "Gunsmoke," they were made in Spain and Italy financed by Germans, with an American star directed by Italians with Italian crews and using actors from all over Europe, these were Spaghetti Westerns.  Originally this term was derided by the craftsmen who made these films on shoestring budgets but the genre became such a hugely successful worldwide box office sensation, that they didn’t mind.  From the Mid-Sixties until the Mid-Seventies, these movies were very, very popular with worldwide audiences making international superstars out of some unlikely actors like Lee Van Cleef who spent years appearing in small parts in features and television and Clint Eastwood who co-starred on "Rawhide" for years, Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Terence Hill, Bud Spencer and Charles Bronson. In the upcoming posts, I’ll be going through this wonderful genre of films.  Right now the great Film Forum will be showing a bunch of these films and if you get a chance to see these crazy movies on the big screen do yourself a favor and go see them. 

Here’s My Top 30 Spaghetti Westerns: 

For A Few Dollars More 

 Once Upon a Time in the West 

 The Great Silence 

 A Bullet For The General  

 Duck, You Sucker

 The Big Gundown 

 Death Rides a Horse 

 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 

 Django  

 Fistful of Dollars  

 The Hills Run Red  

 Companeros  

 Django Kill 

 Sabata

 Face to Face 

 The Hellbenders 

 Django The Bastard 

Day of Anger 

 Vengeance

Requiescant 

The Mercenary 

 

Navajo Joe 

 If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death 

 

Keoma 

 And God Said to Cain  

Return of Ringo

Any Gun Can Play

My Name is Nobody  

Adios Sabata 

The Ruthless Four

Alex Cox’s Top Twenty Spaghetti Westerns

1. For a Few Dollars More
2. Once Upon a Time in the West 
3. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 
4. Django 
5. The Great Silence 
6. Requiescant 
7. Johnny Hamlet 
8. Arizona Colt 
9. Django Kill 
10. A Bullet For the General 
11. Tepepa 
12. Cemetary Without Crosses 
13. California 
14. Today It's Me... Tomorrow You 
15. Black Jack 
16. The Ruthless Four 
17. $1,000 on the Black 
18. Bandidos 
19. And God Said to Cain 
20. Dont Touch the White Women 

Quentin Tarantino’s Top Twenty Spaghetti Westerns

1.    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2.    For a Few Dollars More

3.    Django

4.    The Mercenary

5.    Once Upon a Time in the West

6.    A Fistful of Dollars

7.    Day of Anger

8.    Death Rides a Horse

9.    Navajo Joe

10. Return of Ringo

11. The Big Gundown

12. A Pistol for Ringo

13. The Dirty Outlaws

14. The Great Silence

15. The Grand Duel

16. Shoot The Living, Pray For the Dead

17. Tepepa

18. The Ugly Ones

19. Viva Django

20. The Machine Gun Killers    

Sir Christopher Fraling's (genre expert) Top Ten Spaghetti Westerns

1. Once Upon a Time in the West 

2. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 

3. The Great Silence 

4. For a Few Dollars More 

5. Django Kill 

6. The Big Gundown 

7. Django 

8. My Name is Nobody 

9. The Mercenary 

10. A Bullet For the General 

Most of these movies will be playing at the Film Forum here in NYC for the next three weeks.  I hope that you might catch them there on the big screen or on DVD or streaming on Netflix or YouTube.  I sure that you will thoroughly enjoy them, they're a lot of fun. Feel free to comment.  Enjoy!

Happy BIrthday Henry Fonda

Doing a quick post celebrating the birthday May 16th of the great Henry Fonda, one of the best actors that we've ever had on the screen or stage.  He was a portrait of quintessential American dignity as "Tom Joad" in John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath,"  and as a "Young Mr. Lincoln" in yet another Ford Masterpiece.  Fonda amassed a tremendous body of work in a career spanning over 50 years, creating the great role of "Mr. Roberts" in the play of the same name and then the classic movie.  Oddly enough he started acting in his native Nebraska at the urging of Dodie Brando (yes Marlon's mother).  This dignified presence that Fonda brought to the screen had him often playing "The President" in several of his later films.  He was the liberal yin to the conservative yang of his friend John Wayne. 

Fonda was also very cool as he showed in his western performances.  I particularly like him as "Wyatt Earp" in Ford's "My Darling Clementine, and " William Wellman's "The Ox-Bow Incident," and in Edward Dmytryk's "Warlock" based on a great novel by Oakley Hall (one of Thomas Pynchon's favorites btw).  "Warlock" is a inversion of the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday legend with Fonda ambiguously portraying an Earp like hired gunman/marshall. 

One other performance of note was as the title character in the Alfred Hitchcock chilling masterwork "The Wrong Man."  He plays a man whose life is destroyed when wrongly accused of murder.  

Some of Fonda's other excellent films and performances include:  The Ox-Bow Incident, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Lady Eve, You Only Live Once, Jezebel, The Return of Frank James, The Male Animal, Daisy Kenyon, Fort Apache, War and Peace, The Wrong Man, 12 Angry Men, The Tin Star,  Advise and Consent, The Best Man, Fail Safe, Firecreek, Once Upon a Time in the West, Battle of the Bulge, Big Hand for A Little Lady, There Was a Crooked Man, My Name is Nobody, On Golden Pond, Summer Solstice. 

Most of these films are available on Netflix and are shown regularly on TCM. Please check them out, you will be entertained.

Here's Some clips of this wonderful actor's work: