So i think the topic is pretty self explanitory. I’ll start it off, the movie that started it all for me is of course Sergie Leone’s masterpiece “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. I remeber the day I watched it for the first time, It was like someone turned on a switch in my brain and suddenly the world was so much brighter. Up until this point I pretty much watched Tarantino films, sci fi and horror movies. Suddenly I relized that there was so much more available to me. I’ll never forget that day or the friend who changed my life forever.
that person would be me, your welcome hoover
You know… i couldn’t tell ya even if my life depended on it. I do vaguely remember watching the Leone westerns in the early 90’s and being mildly amused at the time.
Then when the DVD era arrived i just sporadically bought some SW titles because of certain actors like Klaus Kinski. Somewhere along the line i must have caught the SW bug. Although i must say i’ve only been a full blown SW fan since the last three years.
But to be honest i had good start with the Leone and Corbucci titles, so naturally i developed a certain taste for more SW. Of course you encounter two turds for every gem but that’s common with most genres of course.
I’m 22 years old and studied film when I was 18-19 I had seen" A fistful of dollars" a few years ago and thought it was pretty Awesome but didnt make me crave to see more westerns
but when my older brother show’d me " DJANGO " last year I couldnt stop watching them more like I couldnt stop watching Franco Nero, anything with him in it is awesome even if the movies bad his acting will be spot on …
now i’ve seen 30+ westerns & have ideas on writing my own spaghetti western
I don’t think I’ve seen a movie with Kinski or Nero in it that I didn’t like.
Prior to ~ 2 years ago, I had only seen some of the Leone films (many years ago, but several times), A Pistol for Ringo (on late-night TV) and the Trinity films. Then I read a piece by Alex Cox on the Spaghettis in the Financial Times. He mentioned a strange-sounding film called “Django.” I bought the Blue Underground DVD and now… I’m addicted.
I’ve been thinking about it and I want to modify my original post, Leone introduced me to the world of SW, but the film the started me down the road to collecting is Red blood, Yellow Gold aka Professinals for A Masacre, that movie introduced me to George Hilton who is now one of my fav SW actors.
I saw Fistful of Dollars on it’s opening night in 1967. I went to laugh at an Italian western but was intrigued with the promotional campagin of “He may be the deadliest man who ever lived.” etc. Fistful was no laughing matter except for the black humor. The music and the Man With No Name character blew me away. You have to remember us older guys grew up on singing cowboys and TV westerns. Seldom was a villain killed no matter how vile he was. He was usually just beaten up or received a flesh wound and sent to jail. The SWs were a new form of western the bad guy got what he deserved and the hero was a sagebrush James Bond. This was hero for the me generation but he did deal out violence and death to those who deserved it. It was a comic book hero placed in a violent and bleak Southwestern landscape. The music and the costumes were heads and above what the American westerns were releasing. To this day the SWs are still having their effect on westerns and film making in general. Sergio, Ennio, Clint and Carlo Simi changed the entire thinking of film making. Gracias amigos, gracias!
Dude that’s awsome. I’d give anything to be able to go back to when these where new and watch them at a drive in or theatre. You sir are the coolest of them all.
I Think I saw A fistfull of Dolars when I was six years old, in a small Portuguese village in a traveling cinema, well it was a SW (but I think to remember that barrel scene), but the one who real got me was GBU, I was a kid and that final scene was just too much, this after a great film, diferent from everything I’ve seen before.
IMO if a SW was made today in Almeria in classical way and with some production value (a big producer, not big millions avatar style, but not also borrowing money from you girlfriend to do it) some stars (Pitt, Clive owen, those Mexican actors who knows ) maybe Del toro for the direction, it would be a hit, a Zapata one with connections to the reality of today’s world, like I said it would be a sure hit (at least for me ;D), I would go to Almeria just to be on the set and to appear on it as some Mexican Federal Soldier that’s dies in 5 seconds or a Campesino or someone running from the Salon or Cantina.
It’s not a question of "those were the days"syndrome, but it was much better to grow up with icons like the SW heroes (Eastwood, Nero, Spencer, Hill/Trinita), Bruce Lee, Indiana Jones, even fuckin Rambo and Robocop, than what kids have this days computer game heroes and none is Pacman.
[quote=“El Topo, post:10, topic:2452”]I Think I saw A fistfull of Dolars when I was six years old, in a small Portuguese village in a traveling cinema, well it was a SW (but I think to remember that barrel scene), but the one who real got me was GBU, I was a kid and that final scene was just too much, this after a great film, diferent from everything I’ve seen before.
IMO if a SW was made today in Almeria in classical way and with some production value (a big producer, not big millions avatar style, but not also borrowing money from you girlfriend to do it) some stars (Pitt, Clive owen, those Mexican actors who knows ) maybe Del toro for the direction, it would be a hit, a Zapata one with connections to the reality of today’s world, like I said it would be a sure hit (at least for me ;D), I would go to Almeria just to be on the set and to appear on it as some Mexican Federal Soldier that’s dies in 5 seconds or a Campesino or someone running from the Salon or Cantina.
It’s not a question of "those were the days"syndrome, but it was much better to grow up with icons like the SW heroes (Eastwood, Nero, Spencer, Hill/Trinita), Bruce Lee, Indiana Jones, even fuckin Rambo and Robocop, than what kids have this days computer game heroes and none is Pacman.[/quote]
Nicely said. there trying to remake RoboCop I dont know how they can do it 1987 (year I was born) the movie is so ahead of its time the sequals were pretty bad but its a great stand alone film in some ways its like a western too
My father introduced me to the genre by telling me that there will be italian westerns, so called spaghetti westerns playing on TV (Dollar trilogy, Nobody-movies and Spencer&Hill-productions) and we watched them together. This was in early 90’s I think, and I was about 11 years old or something. Anyway, when I really got hooked on the genre was whenI bought GBU VHS on my high school days. Then I went buying all Leone’s movies and the first non-Leone SW that I had was Run man Run. Then on dvd era I started collecting the genre.
Anyway, GBU and RMR are the movies that got me hooked on SWs.
Like alot of people the Dollar films. Viewed Django in the early 80’s via a U.K VHS pre-cert transfer, and thats the one that started me collecting them.
A fistful of dollars. I wasn’t a fan of westerns before that.
GBU when I was a kid…had never seen anything like it before and loved it.
i would have to say django with franco nero. that movie left me speechless the first time i saw from the anchor bay dvd.
Django. It really blew me away, it changed my whole take on a lot of things artistic.
I had seen GBU and various bits of the Leones before but they didn’t really make much of an impression at the time. Django was sort of mind expanding.
Django.
not sure which one got me hooked on them but my first viewings was A Fistful Of Dollars in the 80s and then in the mid-90’s I saw Upon A Time In The West. I would probably say the movies that got me going once DVD’s came along was For A Few Dollars More as well as Day of Anger.
Doing some thinking, it was probably GBU cause it’s the first one I saw.