This 92% Fresh Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western Changed Its Name 3 Times (But It's Still Perfect)

Comic Book Resources

By Angelo Delos Trinos

April 5, 2025

Duck, You Sucker! is, ironically, best known for being the most forgotten film of Sergio Leone's career. It doesn't help that the film changed its title three times after struggling to earn sales in its opening week. These constantly changing titles may be proof of a chaotic promotional cycle, but they don't speak to the film's quality. Not only does Duck, You Sucker! still have a strong 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it's a great film in its own right.

While it may not be a go-to favorite of fans of Leone and Spaghetti Westerns, Duck, You Sucker! is one of Leone's most important works. It could be argued that it's more important than the classics that turned both Leone and actor Clint Eastwood into irreplaceable titans of the Western genre and cinematic history. Duck, You Sucker! may not have left the same kind of impact that The Man With No Name did, but it's the kind of film that will speak to the moment in more ways than anyone expects.

Duck, You Sucker’s! Title Was Caused by Sergio Leone’s Honest & Hilarious Mistake

The Film’s Title Was Changed in Response to Its Poor Box Office Performance.

To anyone who watches the film for the first time, Duck, You Sucker! seems to have gotten its title from a catchphrase that its two main characters share. John H. Mallory first uses it as a joke when he blows up the fancy carriage that Juan Miranda and his family of bandits hijacked. Later, Juan borrows the phrase when he blows up the prison's metal door with some dynamite that John gave him. Even if he was motivated by greed at the time, Juan's use of the phrase is more heroic than the time John used it in his introduction. The last time the phrase is heard is during the film's darkest hour. Here, John rescues Juan from a firing squad. He made his presence known by telling Juan to duck as he hurled explosives around the military camp. From there, the film gets bleaker until its tragic ending.

Besides the fact that John and Juan used it a lot, Duck, You Sucker! was titled as such because Leone was — for some reason — confident that the phrase was a popular and well-known colloquialism in America. Additionally, "Duck, you sucker!" was Leone's very loose English translation of the Italian idiom for "Duck your head, dumb***!" Against better judgment and the suggestions of American colleagues who assured him that the phrase was not a part of their everyday parlance, Leone stuck with the title. This proved to be one of the biggest mistakes committed by the film's marketing. To American viewers, the title simply wasn't catchy, or it sounded like a weird anachronistic phrase.

It didn't help that Duck, You Sucker! was advertised in trailers and posters as a fun buddy-comedy, even if this lighthearted tone was only true for the epic's first half. This contradicted both Leone's preferences, and what audiences came to expect of the filmmaker behind the famously cynical The Dollars Trilogy. What's more, the film was cut down by almost 30 minutes due to its violence and overtly political themes. Worse, and for some reason, the film prints that cinemas got at the time were of poor quality. In an attempt to attract audience's interest, United Artists renamed the film to A Fistful of Dollars. This title not only evoked that of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, but turned Duck, You Sucker! into the "spiritual successor" of Leone's trilogy.

When A Fistful of Dynamite still failed to sell more tickets — most notably in international markets — it was then renamed to Once Upon a Time... the Revolution. This third name change evoked Leone's other Western epic, Once Upon a Time in the West. Some countries even got the film when it was titled Once Upon a Time in Mexico, especially when it made its way to home video. Coincidentally, Duck, You Sucker's! last unofficial title was reused by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez for his own Spaghetti Western tribute and the finale of El Mariachi's trilogy. When the uncut film was remastered for home video decades after its release in the '70s, its original title was restored. Since then, pretty much everyone refers to Leone's final Spaghetti Western as "Duck, You Sucker!"

Duck, You Sucker! Is a Very Different Kind of Spaghetti Western

The Film Is Notably More Politically Charged Than Its Contemporaries

None of this is to say that Duck, You Sucker! is bad. On the contrary, it's one of the best and most subversive Spaghetti Westerns of its time. Given how the late '60s and early '70s were absolutely swamped with nihilistic Westerns that starred amoral bounty hunters and callous gunslingers, this says a lot. It's also worth pointing out that Duck, You Sucker! is one of the most politically aware films of its kind. Where the likes of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or The Outlaw Josey Wales did their best to skirt around the racism and politics that were so synonymous with the eras they were set in, Duck, You Sucker! faced them head-on.

However, what's truly fascinating about Duck, You Sucker! is that it's one of the few Hollywood films to deconstruct the romanticization of revolution in fiction. Duck, You Sucker! is set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the government's harsh but ultimately futile attempts to stamp it down. As much as Juan wants to avoid this reality, especially since he's been burned out by revolutionary ideals in the past, he's dragged into it and even made a hero of the revolution. Of course, John played a part in making this happen, partly as a prank. However, Juan's participation in the revolution was inevitable, given just how widespread the uprisings and violence had become.

Unlike in other historical films, revolution in Duck, You Sucker! is not portrayed as cleanly heroic and easy. Instead, it's brutal and traumatizing. The oppressors are already cruel but become inhuman in retaliation for any defeat that the rebels hand them. The revolutionaries themselves are imperfect to a painfully human degree. Although their hearts were in the right place, they were not above committing their own sins (like selling out their comrades) to save themselves. As Juan bitterly pointed out, revolutionary leaders often let others do the fighting and dying while they were safe in the rear. John also saw these first-hand when he still fought for the revolution against British rule in Ireland. Unsurprisingly, this left him a bitter and jaded cynic in the present. All this was intentional on Leone's part, who used Duck, You Sucker! to comment on similar uprisings that were erupting globally at the time.

Leone wanted to show the dark realities and harsh demands of revolution to those who idealized righteous rebellion and nationalism. It's also worth noting that Leone, along with his fellow Italian artists, were reconciling with their country's fascist past and its alliance with Nazi Germany in World War II. Leone also grew up during Benito Mussolini's rule. He knew from experience just how monstrous fascists were, and how costly revolution was. That said, Duck, You Sucker! wasn't made to dissuade rebellion. Rather, it warned people of what they would be facing if they were serious about taking up arms against a government. After all, John and Juan were reluctant but ultimately heroic rebels who helped overthrow a petty tyrant and his private army.

Given how Leone became a cinematic legend after he demolished the mythic Wild West by exposing its inherent amorality and violence, his somber approach to Duck, You Sucker! is no surprise. Leone's demystification of revolutions didn't just help this film age well, but it also made it one of his best and most underappreciated works. Leone's collaborations with Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson changed filmmaking and fiction forever, but they weren't as thematically resonant and relevant as this film. Where The Dollars Trilogy and its spiritual successor/epilogue Once Upon a Time in the West commented on a popular genre, Duck, You Sucker! spoke to the real current events of then and now. In a broader context, Duck, You Sucker! is one of only a handful of Westerns (Spaghetti and otherwise) that not only acknowledged its era's injustices, but was so brazenly politically charged as well.