Thank you, Ennioo. It is so touching to read this type of response after so long. Sebastian has written a very understanding review.
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Thank you, Phil.
Maybe someone can help flesh out this page a bit:
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Christopher_Frayling
Itâs here, my epic review of Fraylingâs âSergio Leone - by himselfâ
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Nice review mate
I too have Fraylings first SW book, the original edition from 1981. Like you say itâs too academic. Itâs not a book you read from cover to cover, still it contains some interesting stuff.
Regarding Django Kill, I doubt heâd seen this film at the time, he only repeated the urban myth that it was the most violent SW ever made.
He also writes that 300 SWs were released in Italy between 1963 and 1969, and that fewer than 20 per cent of these were released internationally. This is also wrong, werenât most SWs at least shown outside of Italy even if they of course werenât distributed to every country in the world? Maybe itâs what he thought at the time, that the films were made for domestic consumption.
He writes in the book âI have seen approximately 55 italian westerns (most of them distributed internationally)â, and he writes he saw these films âin the fieldâ in cinemas in England, France, West Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
Isnât it still the most violent SW ever?
Maybe the one with most âgoreâ, blood and so on, but I donât think itâs the most violent in a dramatic sense.
And he also mentions things that is not in the film, like someone already wrote in this thread.
For me it is, but of course others like Django or Cut Throatâs Nine are close
This is what Frayling writes in his book and this kind of violence is not in the film, itâs just a myth.
Anyway, itâs cool Frayling had the chance to see so many SWs in theaters, he saw many films even before they started to come out on VHS rental tapes in the 1980s.
And as you know many cinemas shut down in the 1980s, there is a thread âcinemas of your hometownâ, it was the same everywhere.
First many cinemas shut down in the 1960s because of television and then in the 1980s because of home video.
Thereâs no reason why Sir Christopher didnât see âDjango Killâ when it was released in the UK in May 1970. Granted it only played in select cinemas but it got a wider release in 1974. The bullet extraction and scalping scenes were censored anyway by public order intervention in Italy. All the other stories about supposed atrocities were complete fabrications.
I donât know, there is also the bit about the parrot. Maybe he didnât remember correctly?
Ultimately it is better today though when you have old films available on good quality DVD or Bluray, plus modern widescreen TV.
And also they are restored versions and not worn out 35mm copies, sometimes not even complete because of censorship, et cetera.
Cinema was better than watching VHS on old 4:3 CRT TV though.
The advantage was you could rent or buy the film, older films were only screened occasionally in cinemas.
When was that book published - 1981? Presumably written c.1979/1980, therefore penned entirely from memory without the luxury of playing back scenes to check little details, as good luck trying to source âDjango Killâ on video at the turn of the decade.
Regarding Frayling and his 55 spaghetti westerns seen in the field: at least 63 were shown in the UK between 1966-1974, a tad fewer in the U.S. but they continued releasing titles into the latter half of the '70s (âMachine Gun Killersâ, âBlood & Gunsâ etc), whereas the UK stopped screening them altogether (except ones by Leone) after 1975.
Nothing to do with SWs but his new book about âartistâ movies sounds very interesting. Iâll definitely buy it when I have âŹ50 to spare.
Good review of the book.
There are a lot of errors in Fraylingâs original 1981 book, written before the home video market had started, - the entire appendix of Leone western cut scenes is wrong about which stuff was cut from which version - but there was nothing else like it at the time. I wouldnât place much store about what he says about other films like Django Kill, which was released in the UK in a version missing 15m.
Montero - by my own count (and obviously no-one can agree on exactly what is a European western and what is a Spanish-shot American western), 124 European (including British and German) westerns were released in the UK between and including The Savage Guns (1962) and Keoma (1977). There about 12 German, 5 British and 2 French westerns in this list so I guess close to 100 Italian/Spanish westerns. 7 post 1974 (1975-77).
The tally of 63 between 1966-1974 (64 if you include âThe Magnificent Banditsâ) were the ones I considered noteworthy. I didnât have the time or inclination to research them all. But as an estimate, as we know some titles were classified by the BBFC but never released (âThe Big Showdownâ), a total around 90-100 is probably accurate.
There was some other book on westerns in general from the 1980s where Frayling mentioned what were the 10 best or most significant spaghetti westerns to him at the time.
i donât have the book now, so I canât check, but I remember he mentioned these:
Django (1966)
The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
A Bullet for the General (1966)
The Hills Run Red (1966)
Face To Face (1967)
Django Kill (1967)
A Professional Gun (1968)
A Fistful of Dynamite (1971)
And Iâm not sure but think he also mentioned,
They Call Me Trinity (1970)
My Name Is Nobody (1973)
One film missing but I donât remember what it was.
EDIT: It struck me now that it was Django Kill (1967).
So 8 films Iâm sure and the other 2 almost sure.
That was in Phil Hardyâs Western Encyclopedia.
There he contributed to a criticâs top 10, but he named 17 American westerns. Restricted to sound films and only one film per director, and he included OuTW.
He also named 10 more SWs, not restricted to one per director, and claims âthat the choice was not as easy as some film critics might thinkâ.
Sombrero got them all above:
Django (1966)
The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
A Bullet for the General (1966)
The Hills Run Red (1966)
Face To Face (1967)
Django Kill (1967)
A Professional Gun (1968)
They Call Me Trinity (1970)
A Fistful of Dynamite (1971)
My Name Is Nobody (1973)
Interesting that he ignored FoD and FaFDM, and from nowadays point of view, and looking at our forumâs Top 20, also no Big Gundown.
And yes he hadnât watched TGS and also most likely not Cemetery without Crosses.