[quote=“Squonkamatic, post:31, topic:893”]Wow I feel like such a beginner here, some of my most favorites – DEATH RIDES A HORSE, TEPAPA and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE – just get drenched here! All I can say is that I can’t defend the movies because I am just in awe of them, DEATH RIDES A HORSE in particular. I can see how to advanced viewers it might be a bit too ubiquitous. And FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE was the first Spaghetti I ever saw on anything but commercial TV. TEPAPA is TEPAPA, you either love it or you hate it, I worship it.
I don’t know if I’ve seen enough “great” Spaghettis to pick one I dislike, I usually seek out the more obscure titles. The lower the budget and the more low key the cast the more I enjoy them. But I was disappointed by MINNESOTA CLAY when I made myself sit through it, dreadful movie. I was also very disappointed by THE STRANGER & THE GUNFIGHTER, which may have been a great idea on paper but is just plain tedious as a movie.
But if I had to pick one that seems to be a staple of the form that I have just never really enjoyed much, beyond seeing the different cast members working together, it would be BEYOND THE LAW, which is not only annoyingly conventional but has Riz Ortolani’s worst music score ever. It’s got a great ending and a great cast, but I am always reminded of a quote by Shaw about a manuscript that some aspiring writer sent to him. His response was “The covers of your book are too far apart.” I always felt that BEYOND THE LAW would have worked better as an episode of “Bonanza”, about 50 minutes long with commercial breaks.
So
MINNESOTA CLAY
THE STRANGER & THE GUNFIGHTER
BEYOND THE LAW
but as someone else asks a couple times, are they really “great” Spaghettis in the first place? I don’t even know.[/quote]
Well, Death rides a horse ended #10 in our poll recently (I don’t know if the Top 20 has been updated yet) and For a few dollars more #3 . So yes, there are people here on the board who dislike these movies, but their’s is a minority standpoint.
Personally I adore TEPEPA; I’ll propose the text for a review on these pages, this week or the next one, so stay tuned.
My personal choice for WGS (worst great spaghetti) would be Four of the Apocalypse - absolutely dreadful - but I don’t like Beyond the Law either. Some say the longer version (never seen it) works better, but to me the cut version felt already way overlong.
About Shaw: his laconic, malicious answers would’ve done very well in spaghetti land
The first answer Harmonica gives in OUATITW could have been written by the great George Bernard