I do like Minesotta Clay, this a very straight western like The Great SILENCE it shows he could do them with less humour. But they lose the “Corbbuciness” when they are less funny.
Besides the obvious with any Sergio Leone film I would recommend three titles that I always liked:
The Hellbenders
Death Rides A Horse
Cemetery Without Crosses
Totally agree with you there they are great! Death Rides a Horse in particular. The Hellbenders fits into an American Western on European soil bracket, like Valdez is Coming (with Burt Lancaster).
Actually you will find here for nearly every Spag at least one who does, and often with some fervor.
Well here’s a shout out to fans of RED SUN!
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Just check the film’s thread.
I btw don’t think it is a Spag, for me Red Sun was always an Euro-western for style and crew.
Thanks. Euro western and Spaghetti Western are different but it is tricky to explain to people.
In the most cases not that tricky for me.
Euro westerns are not made by Italian or Spanish directors, and are closer to the then contemporary US-Westerns than to Spagies. But of course there are several exceptions in both directions.
And of course many Spags, especially most of the early ones, are also more US clons than Leone inspired films.
I would class them the opposite way Euro Westerns (to me) are films made on European soil by British, French or American producers. Using European players (mostly). Spaghetti Westerns are made by Italian producers and directors occasionally headed by an American star.
Euro westerns emulate the traditional US/John Ford style.
Cemetery Without Crosses might fit at least in that respect, but i think it feels even more spaghetti than most spaghetti-westerns 
No simple definition would work on all films I guess.
That’s not really the opposite of my view, it is more or less the same. Only that for me westerns shot in Europe by US directors are mostly US westerns. Like Valdez the Half Breed or 100 Rifles or The Valdez Horses. The British westerns are typical Euro westerns, but Chato’s Land was always US for me, just like Winner’s other western Lawman.
And like Runner said Cemetery Without Crosses is definitely a Spag, but the other Frenchie Guns for San Sebastian not.
You forgot all the German westerns, with the Karl May films being the prototypical Euro western as naive copy of old fashioned US westerns.
The John Ford style I see hardly in Euro westerns (nor in SWs), I think the Euro Westerns belong to the cycle of 60s and 70s US Westerns, which are pretty far away from Ford or Hawks.
Actually most of the so called Euro Westerns (following my definition) are rather forgettable, they are all neither fish nor flesh.
Well, I will think if there is for me at least one Euro Western which is worth possessing, maybe I forgot one which is not that mediocre, but at the moment I can’t remember any.
Well, Chato’s Land if I view it as an Euro Western.
(do we need at the moment a Corona western?)
Fair points Stanton. When I think about it Ford is the wrong comparison. I think of Some Dollars for Django, The Hellbenders and Texas Adios as closer to American Horse Operas. Still love em’ though. 
Savage Guns 1960 made by Hammer Films’ Michael Carreras to me is the first Euro western of the Golden age. Have you seen it?
I find Corbucci the most accessible for the uninitiated. The Mercenary is my first pick, closely followed by Django.
I’ll remember that. The only film friends I have tried to convert enjoyed was Companeros. Plus I have been meaning to buy a copy of The Mercenary for a while.
Oh and Run Man Run. I like it no Idea why my friend did.
… and yet it’s British 
Yep, that was what I said.
A British production (but also with US money from United Artists), but with all these American actors it always felt like an US film for me. One reason for that is that Winner started with Chato’s Land his cycle of US films with Bronson, and his other (and previous) western was already made in the states (but shot in Mexico), and I associate all his films of these years with the USA.
Still a British film, yes …
Yes, it is watchable, but not much more. 5/10
The Hellbenders is a good example.
The story is closer to a psychological drama western, which is nothing what Spags are usually interested in, but the style is typical SW, but as a result it does neither work as a drama (all the characters and conflicts are much too flat) nor as a Spagie. Not a bad film though, but all ín all rather unmemorable for me. Also 5/10
Actually the comparison between US Westerns and Spags is not an easy one, because there are too many different directions in which the US W went already in the 50s, so that there is not the one US W with which the SW could be compared. The first mistake is always that in that comparison only contemporary US Ws should be compared with SWs, cause there was always a development of themes and styles in the US W, and the US W of the late 60s is often markedly different from a more typical US W of the 50. Often as different from a 50 western as the SW is.
A late 60s US W is still pretty different in many respects from a SW, these are 2 lines of western making which went largely separately from another, but the difference is not that the SWs were more dirty, or more violent, or had more ambivalent characters, the difference is that they told different stories, that they used music differently, that they directed the action in another way, that they used the mythology of the western in a rather different way. One German critic once wrote that the US W of the late 60s and 70s is about the destruction of the West, while the SW is set in a destroyed West. As a result both kinds of westerns are quite pessimistic, and for that opposed to let’s say the Ford kind of western, which often feels even then optimistic when the themes were darker than usual. That is also the interesting difference between the first twilight westerns, Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country and Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and is maybe the reason why Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn is not very convincing in tackling the Indian genocide.
A destroyed west?! Heavy stuff Stanton! I looked at the Leone vision as an honourless west, a failed one. A anti Ford/Hawks west, with John Wayne’s white Knight of the plains being replaced with a Eastwoodesque opportunist rogue.
The 60s US westerns were clearly influenced by the Spaghetti western theme if not the visual style. Hang Em High and The Professionals spring to mind.
Of course we had that discussion before sometimes.
I’m one who thinks the influence of Spags on US Ws was very little, cause American directors did not care much for any Spag, not even much for the ones by Leone. They did not value the European kind of westerns, apart from Clint Eastwood. Nearly everything what happened in US Ws of the 60 and 70 stands in a direct line to older US Westerns. If you watch all the important westerns from the late 50s to the mid 70s you won’t find any abrupt change, but a continuing development of themes and styles.
Even in Hang em’ High, which is basically an Eastwood film, I find that much Spag, it does not feel much like one, and could have been made like it is, even if Eastwood had never been in the Dollar films. And The Professionals was made to early to be influenced. Actually it is more likely the other way round, and it was Brooks who influenced maybe some Spags.
Films like The Professionals, The Dirty Dozen, Bonnie and Clyde and all Peckinpah westerns were much more important for the development of the US western than any Spag. In older US books about the western the SWs are mostly barely mentioned, the US critics and historians still ignored them in the 70s and the 80s.
I know that SW fans often think that US Ws were simple good guy, bad guy films, “white knight of the plains” films like you said, and that they suddenly then adapted many of the SW characteristics, but actually it is not that easy, not even with John Wayne. There were always dirty US Ws, and there were always also some with doubtful protagonists, and these all had already increased in the early 60s, long before Leone’s films were released in the USA. If you watch Peckinpah’s TV series The Westerner you will be surprised how many elements generally to be associated with SWs you can find there. And that was only a (short lived) TV series, in which much less was allowed than in feature films.
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