As a relatively young fan of the genre, I’m very curious about what it was like to search for these films and what kind of quality was available during the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
I’m sure the Dollars Trilogy had relatively high quality and accessible VHS releases at the time due to its popularity, and it was also available on the superior LaserDisc format. But what about the rest - like the Westerns made by the other Sergios? Did you have to make do with third-generation VHS tapes where you could barely see what was going on, or were there better options available?
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In the 70s you could see these films in the cinema, I believe this is how many of the old timers here and elsewhere got into the genre. In the late 70s home video took on and hundreds of spaghetti westerns was released on rental home video all over the world. These early VHS was made of much better quality components than the ones made later on, and had a retail price of around $50 to $60. Actual cinema prints was scanned so therefore the quality could differ alot from different releases, some was beautiful clean widescreen prints while some was awful 2nd generation pan-and-scan prints.
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