Spaghetti Westerns and their length

The SW was primarily an anti epic genre. This is reflected in the runtimes which are mostly beneath 100 min.

But there are nonetheless some really lenghty SWs, and especially the films of the most famous SW director became astonishing long for action films.

Here are just for fun the runtime kings:

  1. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly 179 min

  2. Once Upon a Time in the West 165 min

  3. Duck, You Sucker! 157 min

  4. Tepepa 132 min

  5. Ace High 131 min

  6. For a Few Dollars More 131 min

  7. Trinity is Still My Name 127 min

  8. Man of the East 125 min

  9. Long Days of Vengeance 122 min

  10. Run Man, Run 121 min

  11. Companeros 120 min

  12. Jonathan of the Bears 120 min

  13. A Bullet for the General 118 min (135 min)

  14. A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die 118 min (122 min)

  15. A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die 118 min

The 135 min version of Quien sabe was possibly shown at the Venice film festival.
The 122 min version of A Minute to Pray is possible if different scenes from the MGM DVD are added.

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Forgot Jonathan of the Bears is that long.

Wonder which Spaghetti has the shortest running time thenā€¦

Why is boot Hill not on that list Stanton?
That seemed to go on for years :wink:

Actual length, Phil, actual lenght. Not felt lenght.

Lā€™ultimo pistolero with Franco Nero with about 10 min.

These are a few short ones with 82 min which are probably uncut:

Allā€™ombra di una Colt (Grimaldi)
Per un dollaro a Tucson si muore (Canevari)
Rimase uno solo e fu la morte per tutti (Mulargia)
Vaya con Dios, Gringo (Mulargia)

The shorter ones of my collection are all cut.
This one by Giuseppe Vari has in my version 78 min, but the uncut version has probably also only 81 min:
Con lui cavalca la morte

The Road to Alamo was even shorter if I remember correctly.

[quote=ā€œStanton, post:5, topic:1995ā€]Lā€™ultimo pistolero with Franco Nero with about 10 min.[/quote]Whats the shortest true Spaghetti? Not counting a neo Spaghetti short film.

Drummer of Vengeance (cut) is very short at 75 minutes. As is Forgotten Pistolero at 79 minutes.

Lo Chiamavano King: 73 minutes.

Just under 76 mins.

[quote=ā€œkorano, post:7, topic:1995ā€]Whats the shortest true Spaghetti? Not counting a neo Spaghetti short film.

Drummer of Vengeance (cut) is very short at 75 minutes. As is Forgotten Pistolero at 79 minutes.[/quote]

The Drummer runs 98 min uncut. Only a candidate for the Most Heavily Cut Award.
As is Lo chiamavano King which Bruckner gives us with 96 min.

Forgotten Pistolero has 83 min in all released versions.

Correct for the Pal DVD. Means actually 79 min in the cinema or on a NTSC DVD.

As is Lo chiamavano King which Bruckner gives us with 96 min.

I find that more than a little unbelievable. For starters, it doesnā€™t feel like thereā€™s anything missing. And itā€™s already padded up with a whole lot of stock footage. Why cut 20 minutes of a cheap B-western? Seems to defy logic to make a movie on the cheap (very cheap, that is), only to cut about 1 fourth of it afterwards.

As for Bruckner, Iā€™ve never read the book but I think we shouldnā€™t take any book or database as a holy bible for running lenght or any other information :slight_smile: I sometimes wonder if certain given running lengths are for all footage shot before editing (work prints).

And what is supposed to be the definitive print? The Italian one? German print of Seven Hours of Gunfire only runs 73 minutes (yes, another shortest spaghetti contender), but they changed just about everything in the dialogue, even lead character names. Plus it has a ten minute intro thatā€™s missing from the Italian print shown on Australian SBS TV. That same Italian print is also missing a long saloon scene (7 minutes) present in the Spanish version.

All footage taken together will probably yield a 100+ minute movie. But was it ever intented that way? This was a Spanish/Italian/German co-production, and it seems they made a different version for each country. So itā€™s clear the IMDB runtime of 76 minutes (24fps) only takes count of the German version. Granted, IMDB isnā€™t much of a reliable database anywayā€¦

A few more shorties:

watch out gringo (83)
ballad for a bounty hunter (83)
ride and kill (82)
woman for ringo (81)
fury of the apaches (80)
5,000 dollars on one ace (79)
la belva (77? could be cut)
outlaw of red river (74)

Donā€™t know how reliable Anica.it infos are either but they claim Lo chiamavano King was shown at France with a length of 90minutes. And they give the Italian film print a length of 2650m which makes around 90 minutes or over (if anybody wants to calculate the exact length, please do).

http://www.anica.it/arc/1971/71ag3051.thtml

The new DVD from France is supposed to be 77minutes, but I wonder if that is just what the cover states and it is in fact shorter.

Iā€™d actually really like to know how reliable Anica.it is. Lots of titles appear there as longer than what we have on DVD, at least according to the film print lengths measured in metres and I would think they donā€™t pull out those numbers from their ass but instead maybe these have been calculated when the film got its visas and ratings or whatever that thing(s) is called they have in Italy.

For example for Seven Hours of Gunfire they show it would have been 89minutes in the UK, much shorter in Germany (but only the metres is listed) and the original metric length is 2545 which I suppose is something like 90minutes (again).
http://www.anica.it/arc/1965/65ag1751.thtml

EDIT: Seven Hours of Gunfire was over 89 minutes in Finland according to Elonet.fi (a data base maintained by National Audiovisual Archive and the Finnish Board of Film Classification (Valtion elokuvatarkastamo, VET)) which has Finnish rating infos for lots of movies. According to them the film print they rated was 1:29:53 / 2459 m from which 13seconds (6metres) was cut for censorship purposes (well Iā€™m not sure if it was cut from that 1:29:53 or if it already has taken the cuts into account).
http://elonet.fi/title/ek2x77/tarkastus

And for Fury of the Apaches VET gives rating to a video which is almost 86 minutes PAL. But I suppose this might contain some trailers before or after the film as well. Donā€™t know if they are counted with these (video cassettes).
http://elonet.fi/title/ekgk2t/tarkastus

Durango, I mentioned Bruckner in the this case because several of his run times (and they are probably all from anica.it) are wrong, so that itā€™s obviously not the holy bible. I mentioned him to give the source which could be but must not be correct.

At least a much longer version of Drummer of Vengeance was released in Germany on VHS. This one exists, but I have to check the exact run time.

I think the Italian version should be considered as the original, but if there are longer versions in other countries ā€¦

Itā€™s a shame that this anica.it site has all the runtimes in meters, and so often they are still wrong. A total chaos.

Thats what i supposed.
Where so many informations are collected,there are unfortunately faults,too.
When i stumbled over this site,i was rather sure that Bruckner took the runtimes over to his book.

Do you already made some compares,where the runtimes from anica are wrong for sure ?

The long version of the drummer runs 87ā€™44 min.

Allright. Sundance, the Finnish print of Seven Hours of Gunfire is shorter than the Spanish one (91 minutes). And the Spanish one is missing 11 minutes compared to the German print. Unless they are present later on in that version. Once Iā€™ve finished watching the German print, Iā€™ll know for sure. Anyway, Iā€™d say itā€™s about time for a directorā€™s cut.

What is really sad is that Italian companies often distribute cut versions of their own (Italian, that is) productions. It seems the rare DVD for Born to Kill is slightly cut. And I have seen this happen with several Italian war movies too. Sometimes more than 5 or 10 minutes is missing, compared to scruffy old international prints. Seems like the only chance to ever get the complete version is gone then :frowning:

I have from more than 200 westerns runtimes in a list from Bruckner, Westerns allā€™Italiana and from the versions of my collection, many of them supposed to be uncut. And of course for many of these films I have now 3 different runtimes. Thatā€™s what I meant with chaos.

For the Database I compare all 3, but the uncut DVDs are the ones I use if there is a doubt.

For American westerns the runtimes in guides from Halliwell or Maltin or whoever are (nearly) all correct. Thereā€™s generally for all American films not much questioning about their actual length.

Perhaps the runtime (meters) at anica refers to the material which was filed to the producers company.
There are these two different dates,the second one is the cinema premiere.
The first one could be the filing at the company and they reworked it.
What do you think ?

The first one is the date the film got itā€™s censorā€™s certificate. The 2nd one is the release date.

Anyway,the material could be reworked in some cases
http://www.anica.it/arc/1966/66ag1856.thtml
Here is just ā€˜Djangoā€™ for example,iā€™d like to know what ā€˜v.c.n.ā€™ before 46740 means