10 Best Characters From Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns [Part 2 od 2]

Screen Rant

By Ben Sherlock

March 29, 2024

5 John H. Mallory - Played by James Coburn in “Duck, You Sucker!”

Whereas Juan doesn’t care about the revolution at first in Duck, You Sucker!, his partner John H. Mallory is all-in on the revolution from the get-go. Revolution is in his blood. Not only is John a Fenian revolutionary; he’s also an explosives expert – and a notorious wanted man. After being caught killing British troops in Ireland, John fled to Mexico, where he ended up joining another revolution.

John has a lot in common with the Man with No Name, drifting from one locale to the next and seeking justice along the way, but on a geopolitical scale. The Man with No Name takes down street gangs and hired guns, but John takes down political forces. As John inspires Juan to get involved in the revolution, he inspires the audience to get behind it as well.

4 Harmonica - Played by Charles Bronson in “Once Upon a Time in the West”

After finishing the Dollars trilogy, Leone left behind the Man with No Name and gave Once Upon a Time in the West a new antihero: Harmonica. Played with the perfect ice-cold stare by Death Wish’s Charles Bronson, Harmonia is so-called because he plays his harmonica right before he guns down one of his enemies. Much like the Man with No Name, Harmonica is softly spoken and doesn’t like to open up about his past. Instead, the film relies on flashbacks to fill in his tragic backstory.

When he finally tracks down the big bad, Frank, one last flashback reveals what he did. When Harmonica was a young boy, Frank hanged his older brother and forced him to support his dying brother on his shoulders. Before departing, Frank stuffed the harmonica in the younger brother’s mouth, at which point the younger brother swore revenge. A symbolic totem like this harmonica is a classic way to make a character iconic.

3 Tuco - Played by Eli Wallach in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”

The titular “The Ugly” in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is Tuco, played brilliantly by Eli Wallach. Tuco provides this blood-soaked spaghetti western epic with some much-needed comic relief, and Wallach’s comedic style lined up beautifully with Leone’s dark sense of humor. Out of the eponymous trio, “The Ugly” is the underdog, and arguably the most likable one of the bunch.

Throughout the middle section of the movie, the Man with No Name reluctantly travels with Tuco as they both seek the stolen Confederate gold. In these scenes, Tuco and the Man with No Name develop a hysterical on-screen dynamic, with Clint Eastwood playing the “straight man” opposite Wallach’s comic antics. Tuco is so memorable and iconic that he went on to become the namesake of an equally unpredictable and darkly comedic villain in Breaking Bad.

2 Frank - Played by Henry Fonda in “Once Upon a Time in the West”

Arguably the most ingenious piece of casting in Leone’s filmography was casting Henry Fonda against type to play Frank, the sadistic villain of Once Upon a Time in the West. Frank is easily the most diabolical villain in any of Leone’s movies. In his introductory scene, Frank massacres the entire McBain family – kids and all – making him a truly hateable baddie right out of the gate.

It was a stroke of genius to cast Fonda as this scene-stealing western movie villain. At the time, Fonda was one of the most renowned movie stars in the world, and he was famous for his clean-cut on-screen image as a righteous hero. It would’ve been shocking for an audience to see any grown man murder children in a movie in 1968, but it made it particularly shocking that that man was Henry Fonda.

1 The Man With No Name - Played by Clint Eastwood in the Dollars trilogy

Leone created the quintessential western movie gunslinger with the iconic antihero of his Dollars trilogy, the Man with No Name. Clint Eastwood’s grizzled on-screen persona can be traced back to his unforgettable turn as the Man with No Name. All the other gunfighters he’s played over the years have been variations on A Fistful of Dollars’ stern-faced protagonist. He’s a man of few words who tends to let his bullets do the talking. He’s a wanderer who drifts from town to town in search of injustices to fix and fortunes to seize.

The Man with No Name has since been used as a template for ice-cool gunslinger characters. Everyone from Boba Fett to Roland Deschain has taken influence from the Man with No Name. He’s remembered as the defining character of the Sergio Leone oeuvre.