As a fan of classic horror & old school Hong Kong cinema, I see a lot of similarities in SW’s. The slow pace & atmosphere’s of classic Roger Corman/Vincent price movies are seen in a lot of sw’s. The ‘you murdered my family, I’ll avenge, mass murder, final duel, tragic ending’ seen in tons of Shaw Brothers movies are seen time & time again in most sw’s. One of the reasons I recently got into this genre (& of course the passion this site has for the genre). Are any of you familiar with these other genre & if so, care to add to this topic?
Some are maybe coincidence, like the horror movies you mention, never heard of that before
And in some cases, like the Shaw Brothers movies, they were probably influenced by SWs a great deal
There are a lot of parallels between SWs and US westerns. Let’s say the guns 'n stuff. Horses, saloons, shooting, you name it ;D
Never thought of that
It’s never too late…
The biggest similarity I find between Spaghetti westerns and other non-western genres are the Samurai movies. Most often you have a loner who is bent on revenge who will dispense his brand of justice in a blink of an eye leaving behind a trail of death. If you have seen any of Kurosawa’s movies , the Lone Wolf and Cub films, or Lady Snowblood you’ve seen the similarities and they are frighteningly close. I am not an expert on the samurai movie but everyone knows that the one that started it all A Fistful of Dollars and the movie it was based on.
Sushi anyone?
Yep, the chambara films were like westerns too. Thats probably why they were so easy to adapt into films like The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful, etc.
I always thought Mad Max was sort of influenced by the spaghetti westerns. Substitute the SW anti-hero for Max, horses for cars and the whole outlaw nomad gangs for bandits. Even the atmosphere in Australia recalled the the terrain of the SWs. Desolate and dusty.
Im pretty sure the kung fu films were inspired by the SWs. They even lifted alot of the scores from them. Tales of revenge, the country settings, colorful villains, switch martial arts for guns. They are similar in alot of ways.
The early SWs took the story from Samurai films, but apart from that they’re not so similar they say
Later on SWs was probably both stylistically and regarding story an influence to films like Mad Max/Road Warrior, many kung fu movies, and also Lone Wolf and Cub
Hell, even in Thriller-A Cruel Picture there is shades of spaghetti in some scenes 
I rewatched Yojimbo some time ago. It is always said, that Leone simply did a 1:1 remake of Kurosawas movie. IMO Yojombo and the stranger are two very different characters.
Never thought of Mad Max. Great point. With Shaw Studios making Kung Fu movies as early as 1950 I wonder who influenced who. As far as the early Horror influence I was thinking more atmosphere than story. Stranger comes to creepy (ghost)town, fog is replaced by dust, wisping wind, lots of graveyard scenes (check out Boris Karloff entering town in Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath). Fulci did both. Not all sw’s obviously but I see it as a reoccurring theme.
I think the creepy foggy part also appears in the Kurosawas.
Have you seen any of these early kung fu movies?
I haven’t, but I doubt if they look like the ones from around 1970
Maybe the really early Chinese films have tragic endings and such, but hardly the other stylistic elements?
Yes, in spite of the same basic script, I would side with Leone on this too. Nevertheless, even Leone admits that he really appreciated the use of silence and the slower pacing of Japanese cinema (in particular Kurosawa). In fact, he claims not to have really found his own rhythm until Once Upon a Time in the West where he was finally able to distance himself from the other directors around him and fully embrace, in his own way, this Japanese style which he really admired.