Saucy Stories [archived newspaper article]

 

A filmography of spaghetti western is better than most of the movies themselves.

SPAGHETTI WESTERNS – THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE VIOLENT: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Filmography of 558 Eurowesterns and Their Personnel, 1961-1977. By Thomas Weisser. McFarland & Co. $45

South Florida Sun Sentinel

By ROGER HURLBURT

Entertainment Writer

March 14, 1993

 

     In 1964, Clint Eastwood took a respite from the Rowdy Yates role on TV’s popular Rawhide series to create a decidedly different type of wrangler.

     Gnawing a cheroot, donning a serape and sporting a beard stubble and a sneer. Eastwood jingled spurs and poured hot lead across the Spanish plain in the gritty European ode to sagebrush mayhem. A Fistful of Dollars.

     Backed by Sergio Leone’s pithy direction and Ennio Morricone’s melodically ramrodding score, the film launched the cycle of so-called “spaghetti westerns.”

     But unless you have consulted Thomas Weisser’s painstakingly detailed, deftly cross-indexed testament to Old World-produced horse operas. Spaghetti Westerns – the Good, the Bad and the Violent: a Comprehensive, Illustrated Filmography of 558 Eurowesterns and Their Personnel, 1961-1977, these movies remain merely a side dish of cinematic pasta.

     But how European audiences ate them up.

     The posse of big-screen showdowns featured cynical, manipulative bounty hunters, crazed half-breed henchmen, sadomasochistic ruffians and grizzled banditos, not to mention psychotic hunchbacks, stool-pigeon dwarfs, thugs with eye patches and a saloonful of assorted – always expendable – rum soaked scoundrels.

       Aside from the Leone trilogy with Eastwood, which includes the aforementioned, the sequel For a Few Dollars More (1965) and the rousing classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), even the most astute film buff is hard-put to cite additional titles.

     Leone’s acclaimed epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), with all-star gunslingers Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Jack Elam and Woody Strode, remains a stylish, trigger- happy production that puts Hollywood efforts to shame for authenticity.

      Although Weisser’s encyclopedic approach is neither as scholarly nor as well written as Christopher Frayling’s hard-to-find study Spaghetti Westerns, Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981 Routledge & Kegan Paul), the former is a handy volume sure to please.

     Besides spicy plot synopses for more that 550 Italian-made and joint-venture westerns, an alphabetical filmography is included for every performer mentioned in the film credits, as well as directors, music composers, scriptwriters and cinematographers. He even provides lists of the best and worst films based on a poll of spaghetti-western experts.

     Aside from the seminal Leone films other leather slappers are given high marks. Check out Bullet for the General (1966) starring Gian Maria Volonte as a renegade Mexican, the remarkably lurid Django (1966) with Franco Nero; Big Gundown (1966) with “Angel Eyes” Lee Van Cleef’ Death Rides a Horse (1967) also with van Cleef; Bandidos (1967); Return of Ringo (1966) comedy-laced My Name is Nobody (1973) to name only a few.

     Weisser’s synopses are especially valuable because the vast majority of spaghetti westerns are unavailable on video.

     And what tantalizing titles: If One is Born a Swine (1972); Heads You Die… Tails I Kill You (1971); Ruthless Colt of the Gringo (1967); Pistol Packin’ Preacher (1972); My Horse, My Gun, Your Widow (1972); Seven Nuns in Kansas City (1973); Rita of the West (1967); Vengeance is a Dish Served Cold (1971) and Terrible Sheriff (1963)

     The films – the good, the bad, and the execrable also energized the sagging careers of several familiar actors, including Guy Madison, Lex Barker, John Ireland, Jack Palance, Eli Wallach, Mark Damon and Wayde Preston.

     At $45 and in a plain library binding with scattered black-and-white photos - Spaghetti Westerns – the Good, the Bad and the Violent is no sumptuous coffeetable volume.

     But for Eurowestern addicts and neophytes of dubbed-in tumbleweed entertainment, Weisser’s nifty laboe of love is browser’s treat and a compendium destined to remain the source.

 

[Roger Hurlburt, an art and film critic at the Sun Sentinel, has seen more spaghetti westerns than he acres to admit.]

 

*Hurburt also knows little to nothing about what he writes. I could go on and on about the errors in this book and how both myself, William Connolly and the late Craig Ledbetter were suckered into helping him comprise and put together this monstrosity. Many of the plots are a figment of Weisser’s imagination along with title he concocted on his own and incorrect credits. He obviously saw very few of these films and merely copied reviews, many incorrect, he found in other publications. All I can say is buyer beware. By the way I’m still waiting for him to return all of the 100+ posters he “borrowed” for use in the book to be returned. Tom Betts