Does anyone know which spaghettis were biggest at the box office in Italy? I know Leone’s did well of course and They call me Trinity (or the sequel) was the biggest success ever in Italy but it would be nice to know the top10 or more.
I don’t know about a Top 10 but here’s a quote from “Spaghetti Westerns - Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone” by Christopher Frayling, Page 51 “Spaghettis and Society”
Films which made a fortune on Italian domestic release alone include: Leone's trilogy, Corbucci's Django (plus some derivatives), Tessari's Ringo films, Lizzani's The Hills Run Red, Petroni's Death Rides a Horse, Valreii's Day of Anger, Damiani's A Bullet for the General, Corbucci's Navajo Joe and A Professional Gun, Sollima's Big Gundown and Face to Face, Parolini's Sabata an the first two Trinity films.
I found this at www.boxofficemojo.com, but that’s USA only
COMIN’ AT YA!
Domestic Total Gross: $12,000,000
Distributor: Filmways Release Date: June 1981
Genre: Western Running Time: N/A
MPAA Rating: R Production Budget: N/A
A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS
Domestic Total Gross: $14,500,000
Distributor: United Artists Release Date: January 18, 1967
Genre: Western Running Time: 1 hrs. 42 min.
MPAA Rating: Unknown Production Budget: N/A
Posters at MovieGoods.com
TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
Domestic: $14,500,000
MERCHANDISE LINKS
• DVD: A Fistfull of Dollars
THE PLAYERS (click name to view)
Actor: Clint Eastwood
GRADE THIS MOVIE
Readers B (103 votes)
Your Grade Log in
GRADE BREAKDOWN
A’s: 42 40.8%
B’s: 50 48.5%
C’s: 9 8.7%
D’s: 2 1.9%
F’s: 0 0.0%
CHARTS (click to view) Rank
All Time Domestic 2,607
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
Domestic Total Gross: $15,000,000
Distributor: United Artists Release Date: May 10, 1967
Genre: Western Running Time: 2 hrs. 11 min.
MPAA Rating: M Production Budget: N/A
TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES
Domestic: $15,000,000
MERCHANDISE LINKS
• DVD: For a Few Dollars More
THE PLAYERS (click name to view)
Actor: Clint Eastwood
GRADE THIS MOVIE
Readers B (98 votes)
Your Grade Log in
GRADE BREAKDOWN
A’s: 40 40.8%
B’s: 43 43.9%
C’s: 12 12.2%
D’s: 3 3.1%
F’s: 0 0.0%
CHARTS (click to view) Rank
All Time Domestic 2,552
Bert Fridlund’s book has extensive box office data of SW’s in the appendix. Unfortunately its only italian box office. I would be interested in knowing the box office gross in Germany, Spain, France, UK, US and worldwide as well.
Number of Films Per Director
Marchent 16, but 7 are from Joaquín (including Gringo getta il fucile, set in 1960’s Guyana) and 9 from Rafael… 
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Bros be bros
If you don’t count the movies with costumed heroes (4 Coyote / Zorro for Joaquín and 2 Black Wolf films - unreleased in Italy - for Rafael in 1981) their westerns are nothing alike. I personally prefer the ones directed by Rafael.
Also, it is interesting to note that His Name Was Pot is here credited only to co-director (so it seems) Dandolo, that is to say Lucio Giachin.
Oops - yes, good point. This is aways a pitfall of handling big data: overlooking details that should be obvious. I’ll amend the stats tomorrow.
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I made an inflation adjusted list long ago by combining the Fridlund data (many thanks to MrChallenge) with average ticket prices from Italy in these years, and calculated by that how many spectators the Spagies had. It still has the character of an estimation, but that is much closer to the truth than only taking the BO income, cause the inflation was enormous in Italy then. The average ticket prices rose from about 225 lire in 1964 to about 460 lire only 10 years later.
Interestingly while most of the data from this Excel list (Spaghetti Western Box-Office Statistics - Google Tabellen) are the same as the one from Fridlund, some are different. And there are also a few for films which I had no data for.
While the data for the Dollar trilogy are the same, the difference for Trinity Is Still My Name would decide if Barboni’s film sold the most tickets in Italy or the first 2 dollar films.
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More data can be found in this thread here: Official Spaghetti Western Box Office Gross thread---Just ask!
Maybe the 2 threads should be merged.
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I wondered about the inflation factor, but wasn’t sure how it should be weighed up against other variables such as declining cinema attendances in the early 70s. I make no claims to be a statistician, so I thought I’d simply present what I’d found as transparently as possible, and draw some tentative conclusions.
Of course there are many factors which can be thought about when looking at such data, and the conclusions may vary for that.
But it would be now interesting why there are differences for some films in the lists, and for others not.
I have the 2nd Trinity with 6.088, you with with 5.269, but no difference for the first one. 4 of the Leones have the same data in both lists, but I have Giu la testa with 2.465 compared to your 1.829. (all lire data in thousands).
Inflation adjusted the list differs then of course considerably, which means that the films from the 70 are not that high in the BO ranking.
As an example in your list the highest Corbucci would be his comedy The White, the Yellow and the Black at # 9 and Django is only at # 47, in my list they had more or less the same amount of spectators and are at # 26 (Django) and # 27.
Maybe we could put both lists in the database. I haven’t used (so far) all available data, apart for the most successful films only for all the other films of the more famous directors. Still my list captures about 200 Spags.
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I’m certainly all for collating as much info as possible (and for seeing how more capable data analysts than me might use it).
Yes, I read Fridlund’s figures and wondered why there are some discrepancies and some concordances with the AGIS figures. I wonder if they could be something to do with prima visione only listings vs total BO across all exhibition sectors?
It would also be of interest to compare the SW figures with those of contemporary US westerns.
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I’ve just looked at Fridlund again, and his source is the AGIS 5th edition from 1978. Mine was the 3rd edition from 1975. Maybe some figures were revised upwards in later reports?
It seems so. At least it is the only explanation, as these figures would hardly change in case of Leone only for Giu la testa.
Can these AGIS lists be found somewhere in the net nowadays?
Not as far as I know. I accessed it in the BFI library.
OK, then I think I keep the Fridlund data in case of the differences.
You took only data for SWs?
Yes: just SWs. I’d love to go back and look at gialli too, but alas such archives are under lock and key at the moment.