My boyfriend dislikes this thread 
How about the two homo hitmen in Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, played by Gig Young and Robert Webber. When the Mexican prostitute in the bar puts the move on one of the henchmen, he violently knocks her out and leaves her lying on the bar room floor, and continues his conversation as if nothing ever happened. Very twisted freaks.
LOL
Well, I think there is a modern tendency to leap at “homoeroticism” ; the comment about the Italian culture being reflected in the “male bonding” in these films is closer to the truth. That said, the way these relationships are STRUCTURED frequently resembles the plotting of ROMANCES- with macho versions of “meeting cute” and “breaking up and getting back together” type cliches. Except in THESE “romances”, there’s a good chance they’ll “consumate” by shooting each other!
I agree with your point about the way these relationships are structured.
It’s interesting to look at from that angle. From what I’ve seen in these movies, male partnerships do involve break-ups, and obsession, and jealousy, and possessiveness, and indulgently savouring each other’s victory over the other.
It doesn’t mean they’re gay, it just means they either really, really like each other or they have a whole lot of grudging respect for each other.
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As for Chuncho and Tate, I think that one is pretty ambivalent, though I raised eyebrows when Chuncho wasted time treating Tate’s malaria.
Maybe I have too much of a gaydar, but the relationship between Orlowsky and Lozoya in Viva la muerte… tua! is very much a bromance. Lozoya has kind of a behaviour towards Orlowsky that- excuse my Japanese- is kind of tsundere. He starts out disrespecting , threatening and betraying the Russian conman constantly, but grows to legitimately respect him over time. They even leave the main female character behind and ride off into the mountains to continue their friendship.
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Happy Pride Month to all us queer people of the forum 
I don’t know if it’s because I’m an aromantic asexual, but everytime a spagh protagonist is not interested in romance or relationships, I go “He must be somewhere on the aro and/or ace spectrum” 
I also feel like some of the Spagh friendships are some sort of queerplatonic relationships, for example Lord & Bull from The Moment to Kill, and I view Hutch & Baby Doll from Boot Hill as a gay couple 
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Gal from Finland, I thought you were into romance, you started a “marry an SW character”- thread?
Anyway, there is nothing gay in A Bullet for the General, it’s 2 male would-be partners and it drives the story forward, until the very end.
And in some other SWs they have gay looking costumes. (Even James Bond had a very gay looking wardrobe in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.) But this just looks a bit gay with modern eyes, as someone already pointed out in the thread.
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Furthermore there are feminine gay men with feminine outfits. But also masculine gay men dressed in leather. I don’t know which group is the largest, but I suspect it is the feminine type of gay men.
My prejudices tell me that the majority of gay men are not into romance, they are more into just the sex, perversions and to frequently change partners.
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I’d like to know if the paedophile remark was in the original, too. I enjoyed the film but some of the dialogue was questionable indeed.
Some aromantic people can still like romance, feel romantic attraction under certain circumstances or desire a romantic relationship. I made the thread when I didn’t know yet that I’m on the aro-spectrum, but nowadays I dream of a queerplatonic relationship with a man.
A romantic relationship is more of the platonic kind, as opposed to an erotic relationship. Holding hands more than making babies. The term platonic originates from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. No need to call it queer.
I mean they were business partners. And Chuncho had women in every mexican village the gang arrived in, while Tate was only interested in money.
When Tate got paid by the authorities for assassinating General Elías, they first handed him paper money, then he demanded gold coins. There you have the SW gold motif once again.
I think this is a perfect example of people trying to read something into movies that isn’t there. I’ve watched the Mercenary multiple times, and not ONCE did it even REMOTELY cross my mind that there’s anything gay in it.
I think people here underestimate how devastating any gay stuff would have been to the chances of successfully marketing a film in Italy, let alone North Africa or other places, in the 1960s.
These films definitely aren’t gay, they simply reflect the strong asexual bonds between men in those cultures. I once spoke to a Sicilian taxi driver, and he told me the reason he didn’t want to go to a more wealthy place to work is that people there felt too cold and distant for his liking. And that was a few years ago, so one can only imagine how much more this would have applied to Italians of the 1960s, when the culture wasn’t as strongly influenced by Anglo-American cultural hegemony as it is nowadays.
Back then the Catholic Church also had a lot of say in places like Italy or Spain - in fact, most of the SW productions couldn’t shoot on Sundays, because the local priests only granted permission to film to non-Christian film companies (this is how Leone got an exception - his producers cited the company producing them was Jewish, which gained them the Church’s blessing).
If a film had dared to go against Catholic teachings too strongly, it would have been in massive trouble.
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That’s true, and actually I never had the idea that Kowalski could be called gay. I even never read such.
But of course Ricciolo is obviously meant to be gay.
Which btw was maybe one of the first times that such was presented obviously in a genre film?
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There are homoerotic themes or hints in other spaghettis as well such as in Yankee? I get the point about societal strictures in the 60s and 70s at the same time entertainment pushed boundaries and sought our exploitative elements that would give these films and edge that would add to marketability
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People sure do get bored, don’t they. There was a guy the other day made a poll about whether or not Sentenza (Angel Eyes) was gay
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Given that these films were intended to be marketed to the Middle East/North Africa among other places, where pushing such themes would get you stoned even today, as well as deeply Catholic countries like Italy, Spain, and all the nations of South America, I strongly doubt it (I believe this is entirely down to viewing these films with modern sensibilities/perception).
Maybe in some extremely rare cases, there may have been some very toned-down indications that one of the villains may be gay, but these films didn’t really cater to the types of audiences who would have wanted to be bothered with such things (in fact, many of the left-wing intellectuals in Northern Italy were known to frown upon the entire Cinecitta studio system because of it’s historic ties to the fascist regime of Mussolini, so risking the outrage of your core audiences just to appeal to those wouldn’t have been tolerated by the producers whose money was on the line).
People seem to forget that even in America, it caused quite some controversy when “Philadelphia” (with Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas) showed a gay kiss on screen (and even that film about a gay romance didn’t dare to show anything more raunchy), so I believe any reading of homosexuality into pre-1980s Southern European cinema is entirely wishful thinking on behalf of those who read such things into these films.
Corbucci had some obviously gay characters in his cheap/awful 1980s comedies, but even then, they were just strongly implied thru mannerisms, clothing and the way they spoke (AND they were usually bad guys, or guys somehow siding with the villains). So I totally disagree with any such claims about 60s SWs.
Even Joe Biden and Barack Obama opposed gay marriage as recently as 2012, so in the 1960s, the issue was still so taboo (especially in Catholic countries) that coming out with a film that portrayed homosexuality would have been a reliable way to get your film boycotted at best, if not banned in many countries.
Everyone can have their own opinions about it, but even Wikipedia struggles to find any concrete examples when it lists “homosexuality” as themes in Spaghetti Westerns (and admits the issue barely appears in these films). To me, it feels like trying to rewrite history to claim films of the 60s contained themes that were still very controversial even in more liberal countries decades later.