My own rather carefully selected current Top 6 non-(Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Henry Fonda)-SWs with just a short motivation added follow below after one year as a genre aficionado.
As opposed to the more famous and rightly so usually highly ranked films with the above mentioned actors, these other SWs are much more diversified in the Top 20 of different aficionados and therefore sometimes more interesting to read about if you are a fairly new fan of the genre in the search for another scarce little gem.
Django Kill - Interesting story and characters in a slightly surrealistic environment emphasized by the repeated and very good main music theme (composed by Ivan Vandor) but extensively with an apperarance as if it was only another cheapish B- or C western if you were not watching it carefully.
Cemetery Without Crosses - The perfect tight serious pastish of a moody tragic revenge SW (except for the surprising contrasting Leone directed dinner scene practical joke) and reminding me of the feeling of a comic book adventure from ones youth, accompanied by different suitable and lovely music themes (composed by Andre Hossein).
Anda Muchacho Spara - A type of mood I prefer, good acting, nice revenge story with several short flashbacks and a fantastic main music theme by Bruno Nicolai which underlies the quality of the film.
Requiem For Gringo - Nicely artistically framed revenge story with an environmentally hispanic touch creating a mood which is heavily underlined by the beautiful music - especially the main theme (composed by Francesco Angelo Lavagnin), also with a final silouette view with possible reference to the 1950’s movie Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
The Forgotten Pistolero - A stylish film with very good classic SW music (composed by Roberto Pregadio) and contrasting Viennese waltz accompanying a theme of revenge for the past regarding a family murder case in an well depicted upper class hispanic environment.
Ramon The Mexican - An, as I believe, underrated spaghetti-western revenge story where the very good music (composed by Felice Di Stefano) underlies and emphasizes the mood, and where the main villain is a bit more of an interesting character than the hero who nevertheless pulls himself together and by a drastic quick-draw training programme gets prepared for the final shootout with a surprise.
If this topic constitutes an enough interesting new(?) angle deserving a forum thread, feel free to contribute. Maybe the list could or even should be expanded to include a few more (10 - 20 ?) such films to further diversify the picture of preferred SWs by aficionados.
This list is a little tough to trim down, but here it goes
Une Corde, un Colt…(Cimiterio Senza Croce/The Rope and the Colt/Cemetery Without Crosses)
(tie) Se Incontri Sartana,…Prega per la Tua Morte (If You Meet Sartana…Pray for Your Death) &
Sono Sartana, il Vostro Becchino (I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death)
Gli Specialisti (The Specialists)
Una Pistola per Ringo (A Pistol for Ringo)
Un Dollaro Tra i Denti (A Dollar Between the Teeth/A Stranger in Town)
Honorable Mention: Il Ritorno di Ringo (The Return of Ringo), Black Jack, Garringo, Prega il Morto e Ammazza il Vivo (Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead), and Requiem para el Gringo (Requiem per un Gringo/Requiem for a Gringo)
After having watched Anda Muchacho Spara in my very good image quality DVD-R in Italian with English subtitles probably for the 4th or 5th time in less than a year I raize it to a 8 out of 10 which lifts it up several steps in my ranking above (to just after Cemetery Without Crosses) and a huge leap in my overall current SW ranking from 18 to 8.
It is a really heavy, serious SW with a mood I like, well played, nice story and a fantastic main music theme by Bruno Nicolai.
I normally definitely prefer English voices but somehow that doesn’t affect my impression of this film.
The Big Silence/The Great Silence (Sergio Corbuccio)
Viva Django / Django, Prepare a Coffin (Ferdinando Baldi)
Those 2 SWs I rank after Requiem For a Gringo (thus new on 5th and 6th place)
And the following after Ramon the Mexican (thus 9 th place etc)
Django (Sergio Corbucci)
10.The Return Of Ringo (Duccio Tessari)
11.Johnny Hamlet/The Wild And The Dirty (Enzo G. Castellari)
12.My Name Is Pecos (Maurizio Lucidi)
This might be controversial but I enjoy the films of Anthony Steffen. I know he is perceived as a poor man’s Eastwood but he is more Jack Palace with his craggy features haunted gaze.
I don’t like him so much but 4 SWs on my Top 40 have him as the leading character and he is not that bad there. At least he looks good even if he acts a bit stiff:
26 No Room To Die/Hanging For Django/A Noose For Django (Sergio Garrone) 7/10
28 Garringo (Rafael Romero Marchent) 7/10
35 Django The Bastard/The Stranger’s Gundown (Sergio Garrone) 6/10
40 Blood At Sundown/One Thousand Dollars on the Black (Alberto Cardone) 6/10
I’m beginning to warm to him … though it’s taken a while I’ve enjoyed the ones mentioned and also ‘Gentleman Killer’ was good stuff … though it did have an excellent supporting cast of familiar ‘baddies’ and fab music.
That is a film I have wanted to see for years. Bad quality YouTube videos are the only available option at the moment. Wild East DVD is always unavailable.
A Man Called Django, Ringo Face of Vengeance and Some Dollars For Django are worth seeing at least once.
I would add A Man Called Django (1970), Some Dollars For Django (1960) and Ringo Face of Vengeance (1967) for completist sake.
I’ve enjoyed the ones mentioned and also ‘Gentleman Killer’ was good stuff … though it did have an excellent supporting cast of familiar ‘baddies’ and fab music.