Me to :).
An average SW is better than an average Conventional Western. There is more shooting, jokes and mostly better music. 
exactly! They also have that dirty look to them - no one rides around all clean in the Old West.
In most Conventional Western everybody wears white shirts and is clean-shaved. No big surprises in a Conventional Western.
John Wayne⌠I had a nightmare with him. ;D SO I donât like the olâ fat racist guy. He was good in Red River, but those old westerns⌠too clear, too happy⌠hero kills Indians and marries the blonde teachress. :-\
I like the dirty, bloody SWs. 
Mexican bandits, assassins, bounty killers, greedy thievesâŚ
I need to see UnforgivenâŚ
[quote=âSieglinde, post:65, topic:709â]John Wayne⌠I had a nightmare with him. ;D SO I donât like the olâ fat racist guy. He was good in Red River, but those old westerns⌠too clear, too happy⌠hero kills Indians and marries the blonde teachress. :-\
I like the dirty, bloody SWs. Mexican bandits, assassins, bounty killers, greedy thievesâŚ
I need to see Unforgiven⌠[/quote]
well said on everything. Yeah definitely check out Unforgiven
I like good olâ Clint 
Oh, Wyatt Earp⌠I almost slept on it. Tombstone was really good - Val Kilmer was great as Doc - but this thing with Costner⌠:-\
[quote=âSieglinde, post:67, topic:709â]I like good olâ Clint
Oh, Wyatt Earp⌠I almost slept on it. Tombstone was really good - Val Kilmer was great as Doc - but this thing with Costner⌠:-[/quote]
yeah Costner⌠snooze. Heâs either preachy (Dances with Wolves) or overblown and dull (Waterworld, Wyatt Earp).
Oh I dunno - I agree that Costner can be bad - very bad! But I thought âOpen Rangeâ was an excellent western by any standard and featured one of the best gunfights in the history of the genre at the end. It was a thoroughly grimy and realsitic western that brought âUnforgivenâ to mind with its unapologetically brutal violence and non-traditionally dirty landscapes and costumes (for an American western that is).
Yes, I really enjoyed Open Range.
And give Costner his due, he is just about the only major star still making westerns in the past 20 years or so.
[quote=âPhil H, post:70, topic:709â]Yes, I really enjoyed Open Range.
And give Costner his due, he is just about the only major star still making westerns in the past 20 years or so.[/quote]
I have not seen Open Range as Iâve been burned by his tripe so much in the past. If itâs good Iâll check it out.
Itâs certainly worth giving a go. Robert Duvall certainly doesnât hurt the thing either. He is always good value in my opinion.
Open Range is the best Costner western for me.
Yeah Duvall is always good in my book too.
Open Range was a nice Western, reminded me a little bit on John Fordâs âMy Darling Clementineâ and others. Some good Scenes in this movie.
(Sorry this turned out so lengthy ⌠it could have gone on longer but I decided to spare everyone my wrath.)
I have actually been thinking of this subject a lot lately. One of my colleagues is an idiot, I have to work with the guy twice a week usually and the subject of movies always comes up, and the week before last I had one of the new DVDs of THREE BULLETS FOR RINGO with me as just something to stare at and familiarize myself with while waiting in the elevator or whatever. The instant he saw it the not so subtle abuse began:
âTHREE BULLETS FOR RINGO? Was this a Beatles project or are the people who made it just morons.â
I explained that it was a spaghetti western from Italy made in 1966 with Mickey Hargitay and Gordon Mitchell.
âWait a minute, isnât Mariska Hargitayâs father named Mick or something like that? He was a body builder from Mae Westâs show who married Jayne Mansfeild, so it canât possibly be the same Hargitay.â
I politely explained that they were one in the same person, that Mickey Hargitay had recently passed away and was one of the heroes of Italian genre cinema, probably better known for his horror movie roles but yes, he also made some westerns in Italy as well.
âNo, it canât be the same guy who was married to Jayne Mansfield. If it was he would have made some REAL westerns with Howard Hawks and John Wayne. You know Squonk, those Italian westerns arenât real westerns, and I can say this because I am a huge fan of westerns of all kinds, I was actually just watching LONESOME DOVE the other night and Squonk, some of it is so emotionally moving that it sort of chokes you up.â
Trying not to vomit my breakfast all over the place I tried to explain to the loser that THERE ARE NO âREALâ WESTERNS BECAUSE IT ISNâT 1881, AND ONCE YOU GET DOWN TO IT EVERY WESTERN EVER MADE IS A RE-CREATION OF A PAST EPOCH, and that because of this underlying fact it should be of zero consequence WHERE the movie was made, who it was made by, and who was in it.
âNo, Squonk, ârealâ westerns are made in America by Americans. Itâs a uniquely American genre, nobody else had places like Monument Valley and Tombstone or Dodge City, just America, so any cowboy movie made anywhere else is just a joke compared to the great John Ford movies, or even Peckinpah whoâs a bit arty and weird for my tastes, but at least he had authentic western actors like Warren Oates and Jason Robards.â
Now with the blood pressure rise tingling on the back of my neck I tried to patiently explain that Jason Robards steals the show in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which was made by Italians for the most part in Italy and is as âauthenticâ as MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, which starred Henry Fonda who was also one of the stars in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.
âNo, Squonk, they filmed that in Monument Valley. I know that Ennio Morricone did the music but thatâs an actual western, not some piece of crap B movie like THREE BULLETS FOR RINGO or whatever.â
So at this point I am really wishing I had never taken the DVD out of my backpack and ask the jerk if heâs ever even seen THREE BULLETS FOR RINGO.
âNo, Squonk, and I donât have to because itâs just a dumb B western, probably with foreign subtitles or something like that. I mean, Squonk, you canât compare that kind of BS to some sweeping epic like THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY either, which I actually have seen and while it went on a bit too long it was great except for those stupid black bars at the top and bottom of the TV screen when they show it on AMC.â
Now you can see my exasperation. For about the twenty third time in the past three years I take a deep breath and plead with the guy to get it through his thick skull that just because a movie is played on AMC that doesnât mean it was necessarily MADE exclusively in the US. And that in fact THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY like ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is a Sergio Leone spaghetti western made in Spain and Italy with a mostly European cast.
âYeah, Claudia Cardinale, but it also had Charles Bronson and Keenan Wynn, and the other one had Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach in addition to Clint Eastwood, and I hate to break it to you Squonk but they are all Americans. They also got that Civil War period detail right too, which I am afraid to say that no foreign filmmaker could have done anywhere but right here in the USA. And if itâs on AMC itâs gotta be an AMERICAN movie, Squonk, or else they wouldnât call it AMC. Besides you canât compare even a movie like those with garbage like THREE BULLETS FOR RINGO.â
Opting to spare my liver distress by arguing that no gunfighters from the wild west ever encountered Civil War cavalry while riding hell bent for leather in search of a missing payroll box, I instead plead with the guy to stop disparaging movies heâs never even bothered to see, accept the fact that the Mickey Hargitay in THREE BULLETS FOR RINGO is the same Mickey Hargitay who married Jayne Mansfield & sired Mariska Hargitay, and that both THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST were for the most part filmed in studios in Rome, Italy, with certain exterior locations from Spain and yes, a segment of film where a horse cart is shown as traveling near or through Monument Valley â because film is an artifice of reality you can combine elements that may not have been filmed in the same locations and edit them to look âseamlessâ and create an artificial place where the movie is set that might not even exist.
âNo, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is set near Flagstaff, Arizona, which is probably where they filmed it Do you really think Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda went all the way to Italy just to pretend they were in Arizona? They were pretty big stars, Squonk, and would have demanded the authenticity that you see in the movie.â
Now I lose my patience, and with a âLOOK, DUDEâ point out that the actual name used in the film is FLAGSTONE and that the setting is no more real than the Cloud City that Lando Calrissian lives on in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. And that both Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson were DELIGHTED to go to Italy and work with Sergio Leone on ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, since he was probably the most vital and happening director making westerns in 1968 â and that indeed Leone had wanted Charles Bronson for the Clint Eastwood role in FISTFUL OF DOLLARS but Bronson passed up on it & later came to regret the decision once it was clear that Leone and Segio Corbucci (and others) had effectively created a new kind of film that hadnât existed before.
âYeah well Clint Eastwood was on âRawhideâ at the time Squonk, and he really wasnât that well known so I can imagine why someone like Charles Bronson, who had just been in THE GREAT ESCAPE, would pass up on doing some stupid B movie in Italy or wherever. You see Squonk, those of us who are connessiours of real westerns have a certain set of standards and those B movies from Italy starring people nobodyâs ever heard of before really donât cut the muster.â
Work has now become impossible as I somewhat angrily remind the guy of the big shot American names he had just dropped to try and correct me, and as a case in point ask him if heâs ever heard of Franco Nero before.
âYeah, he was married to Vanessa Redgrave and did some movie with her I think, he was just a trophy husband for her, heck I canât even think of one movie he made so obviously he never did anything that had any kind of impact.â
Now themâs is fighting words and while unreeling my iPod to drown out this infantalia with some music I ask if heâs ever heard of DJANGO.
âDjango Reinhardt, of course. You got some on your iPod there?â
No, DJANGO, the Sergio Corbucci film where Franco Nero drags a coffin around, machine guns down a whole army and has the scene where the guy gets his ear cut off that Quentin Tarentino referenced in RESERVOIR DOGS.
âYou mean Michael Madsenâs big scene with âStuck In The Middle With Youâ?â
YES!! I exclaim rejoicingly, under the impression for a glorious moment that maybe we had made some progress here.
âSquonk they probably just ripped that off of Tarentino, but he ripped that movie off some Hong Kong B movie and I didnât think that Uma Thurman was so hot looking in KILL BILL as everyone says. Besides, Tarentinoâs career is basically over, so whoever this Corbucci guy is must really be hurting for material if heâs ripping him off.â
And with that I gave up. So when people ask me or bring up the subject of the difference between spaghetti westerns and âconventionalâ westerns, my usual thought is that fans of âconventionalâ westerns are for the most part complete buffoons who may actually like a few examples of spaghetti but for the most part have no clue of what they are watching when they encounter one. They also are mistakenly under the impression that you can effectively re-create the âold westâ only in the United States, that only American talent is capable of carrying an effort to make an âauthenticâ western, and that everyday people who are not schooled in the idiom will for the most part either stammer and stare in disbelief when you mention westerns being made in places like Spain, Morocco, Yugoslavia or even Israel, and that the know it allâs in the peanut gallery will find themselves compelled to change the subject since the whole idea of making a western anywhere else but in the American west is too bizarre for them to comprehend.
For my own part I prefer the artifice of un-reality that spaghetti westerns almost inevitably create: Watching them reminds me of playing cowboy as a kid with my brothers & friends, where weâd dress up in our boots and hats and pretend to have shootouts in the back yard, which became some dry, dusty street running down the middle of a clapboard hellhole in our mindâs eye. The whole idea of an âauthentic westernâ beyond maybe getting period detail right is absurd, unless Howard Hawks had access to a time machine that allowed him and a cast of hundreds plus his technical crews to travel back in time, film EL DORADO and then transport themselves back to 1967 to do the lab work.
Which isnât to mean entirely that I look upon American made or âconventionalâ westerns with scorn. In fact some of my favorites were American productions made in America and exclusively starring people from our continent: EL DORADO, THE WAR WAGON, THE WILD BUNCH, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, THE PROFESSIONALS ⌠I also have a taste for the more existential paranoid 70s westerns that deserve to be re-discovered like DIRTY LITTLE BILLY and DOC with Stacy Keach, all filthy & stoned out of his mind. I even like more modern efforts like THE LONG RIDERS and TOMBSTONE, which is a glorious, goofy B movie blown all out of proportions and has my favorite Doc Holliday performance from Val Kilmer, of all people.
I personally am one of those movie buffs who sees no reason in distinctions between different forms beyond maybe a need to classify them for shelving purposes in my own library: I keep my spaghetti collection and my significantly smaller âconventionalâ or American made westerns specifically separated, more in a somewhat hopeless effort to free up shelf space for more spaghettis as they become available to me, but also because there IS a genuine distinction between the two. They are very different modes of expression, I see more in common between spaghetti westerns and cartoons than I do between spaghetti westerns and stuff like THE SEARCHERS or MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, which are fabulous movies in their own right but just always seem to be lacking a certain special something whenever think about them. I think itâs a sense of reckless experimentation and a creative urge to SEE whether or not a couple dozen Spanish and Italian stuntpeople & supporting players can populate a fictional world that is modeled on the appearance of what we know of the old west period.
But that to me is where the similarities end, for the most part, since spaghettis donât seem so pre-occupied with recreating the period as using it like a backdrop against which familiar tales of lusty men play out. And I prefer that sense of make believe; I find spaghetti westerns to be far more relaxing as far as entertainments because you sort of do have to switch certain areas of your brain off when watching them lest you get carried away by completely pointless concerns like the dubbing, what kind of weapons the characters are carrying and whether or not their clothes look like they came from a department store in Rome or some hand loom type process from 100 years ago. They ride horses, carry six guns, have family loyalty and thanks to certain writers have some great lines that have stood the test of time. You donât question the âauthenticityâ of Darth Vader or the alien from ALIEN, so why question the authenticity of Anthony Steffen or Mark Damon?
Unless of course, you are a total idiot.
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Interesting comments, amigoâŚand I agree with much of what you are saying.
I happen to like tons of conventional Westerns, myselfâbut, I do tend to prefer Spaghetti Westerns, for whatever reason.
I do quite a bit of re-enactingâand the likeâin Tombstone, AZ and I deal with the âauthenticityâ crap all the time. A great number of my good friends are professional Old West historians and with the exception of three (Drew Gomber, Bob Boze Bell, and Jeff Morey)âthey all tend to dismiss European-made Westerns instantly.
The funny thing is, some of the same guys that whine and gripe about âauthenticityâ will turn right around and say how much they love the movies of Roy Rogers and Gene Autryâthe least âauthenticâ of all types of Westerns!
It is a funny worldâŚ
Well, I bet you feel better getting that off your chest!
I feel your pain brother, which is why I tend not to talk spaghettis with anyone other than fellow fans or family members who will humour me.
The whole âconventional v spaghettiâ argument is an interesting one though I find. So many people seem to hitch their horse to one rail or the other and defend their position more out of a misplaced sense of loyalty than any rational process. There is also the fact that some people just donât dig older movies as much as modern ones or just get off on one period or other. For me, I like westerns, full stop. I am particularly passionate about italian ones but I have a deep love of the Hollywood variety too. I look upon them as different manifestations from the same genre continuum. (Damn, sounds like Trekkie speak) As a result, I value My Darling Clementine as highly as I do Django and The Far Country as much as Companeros. They are all great films using the same genre to tell different stories.
Which is why I totally agree with you on the ârealisticâ angle. Westerns are based around a mythological world as far as Iâm concerned, not an historical one. It is a world with a general historic and geographic starting point but these are no more based in reality than the myths and legends of ancient Greece. They are just back drops in a theatre that provide a framework for the stories to be weaved around.
Wow what a great post Sqonk!!! I feel for you man, the majority of people just donât âget itâ when it comes to SWâs. Its their loss.
The collegue that you were speaking toâŚI would pay first class money to see him and SD stuck in an elevator together hahaha.
The whole reason why I started this thread in the first place was that I did notice that fans of SWâs and fans of hollywood westerns seemed to be 2 totally different, mutually exclusive groups, since we are talking about two totally different types of movies here.
But it is gratifying to see so many open minded people on this board that are fans of both types.
Being the pluralist that I am I hate it when people stubbornly close the shutters on one school of thought in favor of another.
Squonk I am amazed you did not tear out his kidneys and serve them to him for dinner⌠what an ignorant fool. Thatâs why I rarely discuss movies with people I know are not on the same wavelength as me.
And Iâll be honest I feel SWâs as conventional and more realistic than the bland hokey John Wayne snoozefests. But then again SWâs were made to mimic the samurai movies where duels last seconds and the loser killed in dramatic fashion. Just watch any of the Lone Wolf and Cub or Lady Snowblood movies. Seeing three assailants wiped out in the blink of an eye in those movies is just as plausible as it is in a Leone western. Yes mythic does come to mind when describing SWâs.