Vote for Our Official Top 20

Town Hall
3115

And the 2 winners are … ?

Of the top 20 I don’t care much for Death Rides a Horse (ok film) and Day of Anger (good but far from great), and within the next 10 I find with Mannaja a pretty average Spag.

Your list features several of the outsiders I really enjoy, and which I easily prefer to the 3 “classics” above (El puro, The Last Killer, Duel in the Eclipse, My Name Is Pecos, John the Bastard, A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die). So it is a good list, even if your # 1 does not make my top 20 (strong film though)

3116

At the suggestions of @stanton, @Phil_H, @Bill_san_Antonio, and @JohnBaxter, I’m doing something of an overhaul on both my top 20’s, here it goes

  1. Il Bouno, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) - Sergio Leone (1966)

  2. C’era una Volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) - Sergio Leone (1968)

  3. Une Corde, un Colt… (Cimitero Senza Corce/The Rope and the Colt/Cemetery Without Crosses) - Robert Hossein (1969)

  4. La Resa dei Conti (The Big Gundown/The Settling of Accounts) - Sergio Sollima (1966)

  5. Django - Sergio Corbucci (1966)

  6. I Giorni dell’Ira (Day of Anger) - Tonino Valerii (1967)

  7. W Django! (Viva! Django) - Edoardo Mulargia (1971)

  8. Una Pistola per Ringo (A Pistol for Ringo) - Duccio Tessari (1965)

  9. Sono Sartana, il Vostro Becchino (I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death) - Giuliano Carnimeo (as Anthony Ascott (1969)

  10. Le Colt Cantarono la Morte e Fu… Tempo di Massacro (Massacre Time/The Brute and the Beast) - Lucio Fulci (1966)

  11. Se Incontri Sartana Prega per la Tua Morte (If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death) - Gianfranco Parolini (as Frank Kramer) (1968)

  12. Per un Pugno di Dollari (For a Fistful of Dollars/A Fistful of Dollars) - Sergio Leone (1964)

  13. Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence) - Sergio Corbucci (1968)

  14. Il Ritorno di Ringo (The Return of Ringo) - Duccio Tessari (1965)

  15. Un Dollaro Tra i Denti (A Dollar Between the Teeth/A Stranger in Town) - Luigi Vanzi (1966)

  16. Due Once di Piombo (Il Mio Nome e Pecos/My Name is Pecos/2 Ounces of Lead) - Maurizio Lucidi (1966)

  17. Il Mercenario (The Mercenary) - Sergio Corbucci (1969)

  18. Vamos a Matar Companeros! (Companeros) - Sergio Corbucci (1970)

  19. Ehi Amico…c’e Sabata. Hai Chiuso! (Sabata) - Gianfranco Parolini (as Frank Kramer) (1969)

  20. Corri Uomo Corri (Run Man Run) - Sergio Sollima (1968)

1 Like
3117

Aha, no love anymore for The Specialists?

Well, your new ones Il mercenario and FoD are the much better films …

1 Like
3118

Thanks! The other omissions I do regret were The Mercenary, A Bullet for the General, and Return of Ringo. As I said, those “outsiders” happen to be more on my mind these days.

My two prizewinning cabbages are

  1. Run, Man, Run: perfectly OK film, passes the time, but precisely because I like Big Gundown so much, I find Cuchillo’s mutation into goofy peon a constant irritant. Linda Veras in uniform, and out of it, is something, but even she can’t make RMR top 20 material.

  2. The other one, sadly, is Duck You Sucker. There are powerful scenes, but I can’t handle Rod Steiger’s performance, and then … there’s that score. People seem to love it, and I rate Morricone as highly as any of us, but the main theme is like that phone muzak that eats your mind while you’re waiting for customer service to pick up. When those vocal sho-shos come in I want to hit myself over the head with a sock full of wet sand. So not top 20 or even 30.

Then again, I love the Keoma score, which probably says it all!

1 Like
3119

Also … John the Bastard is surely close to El Puro in the urgently needed blu-ray stakes …

1 Like
3120

Yes, these 2 are at the top of the ones which need to get a decent release

3121

I’ve heard that there is a widescreen version of John The Bastard floating around out there? Is that true?

Hate is My God is a strong contester as well! Such a weird but amazing spagh… Andrea Giordana’s brother Carlo is amazing in it, not to talk about Ted Kendall how gives his best spagh performance ever! FilmArt - Common!

3122

I rate RMR 5/10 and DYS 4/10, for similar reasons (and DYS boring) !
Not on my Top 83 i e all my 6/10 or higher rating SWs.

1 Like
3123

I still love Gli Specialiste, it just got the #1 spot in the Alternative Top 20.

3124

That would make me very happy!

3125

Good to know I’m not in a minority of one. Yes, DYS is indeed boring. And what on earth was Morricone smoking when he wrote that music?

3126

Yes ! (maybe also on A Pistol Of Ringo even if it might suit its partly lighthearted story element ).
DYS I watched once, (and it seems as a sort of transition to Once Upon A Time In America where I lasted maybe 15-20 minutes or so). Maybe you could describe it as more of “social realism” that I am not intersted in while watching SWs, which also goes for more obvious “zapatas”. I want a special, preferably dark or melancholic mood or like in The Stranger Returns (ironic, sarcastic jokes allowed), good music, original story, nice acting and directing, fine vistas etc.

3127

I’m not sure what floats my particular boat with SWs. I’m fine with the Zapatas - as I said above, The Mercenary and A Bullet for the General are omissions from my own list I really regretted, and magnificent films. But Tepepa is the unhealthy fixation that ended up on my top 20; I find the way it pitches long, dry, matter-of-fact historical speeches against the ambiguity of the characters who live that history works really well, for me anyway.

I came quite late to the Stranger movies after reading Alex Cox’s big Tony Anthony takedown, than which nothing could be further from the truth! Sometimes they’re like watching a deadpan and talented mime artist.

3128

I’m finally doing it…here is my top 20:

  1. For a Few Dollars More
  2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  3. Once Upon a Time in the West
  4. The Mercenary
  5. The Big Gundown
  6. A Fistful of Dollars
  7. The Great Silence
  8. Death Rides a Horse
  9. Companeros
  10. Django
  11. The Return of Ringo
  12. Bandidos
  13. The Forgotten Pistolero
  14. My Name is Nobody
  15. Run Man Run
  16. Duck You Sucker
  17. Sabata
  18. God Forgives, I don’t
  19. The Grand Duel
  20. Cemetery Without Crosses

Just missing out on my top 20 (in no particular order):
Day of Anger, A Pistol for Ringo, Django Kill, If You Live Shoot, Navajo Joe, If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death

Some discussion points:
FAFDM is at number 1 partly for nostalgic reasons (first spag I remember watching with my dad growing up), but also because of the tighter narrative relative to the more wandering epic that is GBU, but ultimately for me it may as well come down to the flip of a coin as to which of these two Leone classics I think is better.

The Mercenary is higher on my list than most would have it, and I admit it may not be as consistently strong throughout as some of the others that l ranked lower (not to mention that I typically prefer my westerns to be free of cars and airplanes). However, L 'Arena is quite possibly my favorite piece of music to appear on a soundtrack and the duel in the arena is just about on par with the final standoffs in GBU and FAFDM. Furthermore, I prefer the Mercenary to Companeros in part because I’m not always a fan of Milian who can be guilty of being over the top at times (although he is absolutely excellent in the Big Gundown).

Similarly, my ranking of Sabata reflects how much I enjoyed certain parts of the film (for example, Sabata having dinner with Stengel, playing a game of cat and mouse while the music rises to a maelstrom-like crescendo), rather than how it comes together as a whole, with its overuse of acrobatics and gimmicks, and its confusing and at-times nonsensical plot.

On the other hand, some of the much loved classics appear a bit lower on my list for various reasons. For example, I need to give Django another chance because the image quality on the version I watched was subpar, which probably caused it to drop down a couple of spots.

Finally, and admittedly this will probably discredit everything I’ve said, but i have yet to watch a couple of the films on the official top 20: Face to Face, which has proved elusive to find either on DVD or various streaming services despite my best efforts, and Keoma, which is next on my list. So who knows, I might be revising this ranking sooner rather than later.

12 Likes
3129

I think it is consistently strong (except for one scene), and I have it higher in my top 20 (well one rank), and I think it is on of the key works of the genre, as well as for directing as for narrative ideas as for its content.
Actually I think that FaFDM has much more flaws (mainly in the 2nd half), but yes overall The Mercenary is a much underrated movie.

2 Likes
3131

I’d be interested to hear more about the flaws you see in FaFDM… like i said, nostalgia has quite likely made me overlook or even miss some of these.

edited to reply directly to Stanton instead of the general thread.

3132

The story telling is quite confident in the first half, but in the 2nd half it often all goes bonkers, and the directing seems less inspired, but luckily the final duel and the whole ending is very well made, which saves the film. For me FaFDM is a bridging film between the roughness of FoD and the lavish virtuosity of GBU. Actually I think everything which was great in FaFDM was done even better in GBU.

For me the essence of the SW are Leone’s GBU and OuTW and Corbucci’s The Great Silence and The Mercenary. These are nor only the best directed, but also represent the narrative and thematic possibilities of the SW at its best. Interestingly 3 of these were release in late 1968 within 5 weeks.

These 4 films are doubtless the most entertaining Spags, to put it in other words, for me.

2 Likes
3133

Just curious, which scene do you have an issue with?

3134

The scene in which Kowalski and Colomba provoke Paco to a fistfight, including a pig-mud bath and over-the-top slapstick.
Corbucci called Il mercenario a picaresque, so there is by concept some humour in the film, but in this scene it is totally out of balance in an otherwise brilliantly balanced film. Somehow he even “outbalanced” the more serious looking Quien sabe?. :wink:

Il mercenario is different form Django and The Great Silence, but it is a not less cynical film, despite a foxing light-heartedness.

1 Like
3135

I like that scene…I think it’s quite funny. But I think you’re right, it does feel a bit out of place.

1 Like