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Thespaghetti Western is a broad subgenre ofWestern films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake ofSergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success.[1] The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns wereproduced and directed by Italians.[2]
The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre were internationalco-productions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978,[3] including nearly five hundred in Italy, which dominated the market.[4] Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot atCinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain.[5]
Leone's films and other core spaghetti Westerns are often described as having eschewed, criticized or even "demythologized"[6] many of the conventions of traditional U.S. Westerns. This was partly intentional, and partly the context of a different cultural background.[7] In 1968, the wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. Spaghetti Westerns have left their mark on popular culture, strongly influencing numerous works produced in and outside of Italy.
The phrasespaghetti Western was coined by Spanish journalistAlfonso Sánchez Martínez [es] in 1966, in reference to the Italian foodspaghetti.[8][9][10] Spaghetti Westerns are also known asItalian Westerns,Meatball Westerns or, primarily in Japan,Macaroni Westerns.[11] In Italy, the genre is typically referred to aswestern all'italiana (Italian-style Western).Italo-Western is also used, especially in Germany.
The termEurowesterns has been used to broadly refer to all non-Italian Western movies from Europe, including theWest GermanWinnetou films and theEastern BlocRed Western films. Taking its name from the Spanish rice dish, "Paella Western" has been used to refer to Western films produced in Spain.[12] The Japanese filmTampopo was promoted as a "Ramen Western".[13]
The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre wereinternational coproductions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978.[3]
These movies were originally released in Italian or with Italiandubbing, but, as most of the films featured multilingual casts, and sound was post-synched, mostwestern all'italiana do not have an official dominant language.[14] The movies typically had a B-movie setting or lower budget production similar to classic Western films.[15][16]
The typical spaghetti Western team was made up of an Italian director, an Italo-Spanish[17] technical staff, and a cast of Italian, Spanish, and (sometimes) West German and American actors.
Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot atCinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain.[5] Many of the stories take place in the dry landscapes of theAmerican Southwest andNorthern Mexico, thus, common filming locations were theTabernas Desert and theCabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, an area of volcanic origin known for its wide sandy beaches, both of which are in theProvince of Almería in Southeastern Spain. Some sets and studios built for spaghetti Westerns survived as theme parks, such asTexas Hollywood,Mini Hollywood, andWestern Leone, and continue to be used as film sets.[18] Other filming locations used were incentral andsouthern Italy, such as the parks of Valle del Treja (between Rome andViterbo), the area of Camposecco (next toCamerata Nuova, characterized by akarst topography), the hills aroundCastelluccio, the town of Wuustwezel and the area around theGran Sasso mountain, and theTivoli's quarries andSardinia.God's Gun was filmed in Israel.[19]
European Westerns are as old as filmmaking itself. TheLumière brothers had their first public screening of films in 1895, and already, in 1896, Gabriel Veyre shotRepas d'Indien (Indian Banquet) for them. Joe Hamman starred as Arizona Bill in films made in the French horse country ofCamargue (1911–1912).[20]
In Italy, the American West as a dramatic setting for spectacles goes back at least as far asGiacomo Puccini's 1910 operaLa fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West orThe Damsel of the West), which is sometimes considered to be the first spaghetti Western.[21][22]
The first Western movie made in Italy wasLa voce del sangue, produced by the Turin film studioItala Film.[23] In 1913,La vampira Indiana was released; a combination of Western and vampire film. It was directed byVincenzo Leone, father ofSergio Leone, and starred his mother,Bice Valerian, in the title role as the Indian princess Fatale.[24] The Italians also madeWild Bill Hickok films, while the Germans released backwoods Westerns featuringBela Lugosi asUncas.
Of the Western-related European films before 1964, the one that attracted the most attention is arguably Luis Trenker'sDer Kaiser von Kalifornien aboutJohn Sutter.[25] Another Italian Western isGirl of the Golden West. The film's title alludes to theGiacomo Puccini opera referred to above, but is not an adaptation of it. It was one of a handful of Westerns to be made during thesilent film andFascist Italy eras.[4] Forerunners of the genre were alsoGiorgio Ferroni'sIl fanciullo del West (The Boy in the West) andFernando Cerchio'sIl bandolero stanco, starringErminio Macario andRenato Rascel, respectively.[26][27]
After World War II, there were scattered European uses of Western settings, mostly for comedy, musical or otherwise. A cycle of Western comedies was initiated in 1959 withLa sceriffa andIl terrore dell'Oklahoma, followed by other films starring comedy specialists, such asWalter Chiari,Ugo Tognazzi,Raimondo Vianello, andFernandel. An Italian critic has compared these comedies to AmericanBob Hope vehicles.[28]
The first American-British Western filmed in Spain wasThe Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, directed byRaoul Walsh in 1958. It was followed bySavage Guns, a British-Spanish Western, again filmed in Spain. It marked the beginning of Spain as a suitable film-shooting location for any type of European Western. The same year, in 1961, an Italian company coproduced the FrenchTaste of Violence, with aMexican Revolution theme. In 1963, three non-comedy Italo-Spanish Westerns were produced:Gunfight at Red Sands,Implacable Three, andGunfight at High Noon.
In 1965,Bruno Bozzetto released histraditionally animated feature filmWest and Soda, a Westernparody with a marked spaghetti Western-theme; despite having been released a year after Sergio Leone's seminal spaghetti Western,A Fistful of Dollars, development ofWest and Soda actually began a year earlier thanFistful's, and lasted longer, mainly because of the use of more time-demanding animation over regular acting. For this reason, Bozzetto claims to have invented the spaghetti Western genre.[29]
Because there is no real consensus about where to draw the exact line between spaghetti Westerns and other Eurowesterns (or other Westerns in general), it cannot be said which film is definitively the first spaghetti Western. However, 1964 saw the breakthrough of this genre, with more than twenty productions or coproductions from Italian companies, and more than half a dozen Westerns by Spanish or Spanish-American companies. Furthermore, by far the most commercially successful of this lot was Sergio Leone'sA Fistful of Dollars. It was the innovations in cinematic style, music, acting and story of Leone's first Western that decided that spaghetti Westerns became a distinct subgenre and not just a number of films looking like American Westerns.[30]
In this seminal film, Leone used a distinct visual style with large face close ups to tell the story of a hero entering a town that is ruled by two outlaw gangs, and ordinary social relations are nonexistent. The hero betrays and plays the gangs against each other to make money. He uses his cunning and exceptional weapons skill to assist a family threatened by both gangs. His treachery is exposed, and he is severely beaten, but in the end, he defeats the remaining gang. The interactions in this story range between cunning and irony (the tricks, deceits, unexpected actions and sarcasm of the hero), and pathos (terror and brutality against defenseless people and against the hero after his doublecross has been revealed).Ennio Morricone's innovative score expresses a similar duality between quirky and unusual sounds and instruments, and sacral dramatizing for the big confrontation scenes. Another important novelty was Clint Eastwood's performance as theman with no name—an unshaven, sarcastic, insolent Westernantihero with personal goals in mind, and with distinct visuals to boot—the squint, the cigarillo, the poncho, etc.[31]
The spaghetti Western was born, flourished and faded in a highly commercial production environment. The Italian "low" popular film production was usually low-budget and low-profit, and the easiest way to success was imitating a proven success.[32] When the typically low-budget production,A Fistful of Dollars, turned into a remarkable box-office success, the industry eagerly lapped up its innovations. Most subsequent spaghetti Westerns tried to get a ragged, laconic hero with superhuman weapon skill, preferably one who looked like Clint Eastwood:Franco Nero,John Garko, andTerence Hill started out that way;Anthony Steffen and others stayed that way throughout their spaghetti Western careers.
Whoever the hero was, he would join an outlaw gang to further his own secret agenda, as inA Pistol for Ringo,Blood for a Silver Dollar,Vengeance Is a Dish Served Cold,Renegade Riders, and others, whileBeyond the Law has a bandit infiltrate society and become a sheriff. There would be a flamboyant Mexican bandit (Gian Maria Volonté fromA Fistful of Dollars, otherwiseTomas Milian, or most oftenFernando Sancho) and a grumpy old man, often an undertaker, to serve assidekick for the hero. For the love interest, ranchers' daughters, schoolmarms and barroom maidens were overshadowed by young Latin women desired by dangerous men, for which actresses, such asNicoletta Machiavelli orRosalba Neri, carried onMarianne Koch's role of Marisol in the Leone film. The terror of the villains against their defenseless victims became just as ruthless as inA Fistful of Dollars, or more, and their brutalization of the hero when his treachery is disclosed became just as merciless, or more—similar to securing the latter's retribution.[33]
In the beginning, some films mixed some of these new devices with the borrowed U.S. Western devices typical for most of the 1963–1964 spaghetti Westerns. For example, inSergio Corbucci'sMinnesota Clay, that appeared two months afterA Fistful of Dollars, an American style "tragic gunfighter" hero confronts two evil gangs, one Mexican and one Anglo, with (as inA Fistful of Dollars) the leader of the latter being the town sheriff.[34]
InJohnny Oro, a traditional Western sheriff and a mixed-race bounty killer are forced into an uneasy alliance when Mexican bandits and Native Americans assault the town. InA Pistol for Ringo, a traditional sheriff commissions a money-oriented hero played byGiuliano Gemma (as deadly but with more pleasing manners than Eastwood's character) to infiltrate a gang of Mexican bandits whose leader is played typically byFernando Sancho.
As with Leone's first Western, theDollars Trilogy strongly influenced the further developments of the genre, as did Sergio Corbucci'sDjango and Enzo Barboni's two Trinity films, as well as some other successful spaghetti Westerns.
After 1965, when Leone's second Western,For a Few Dollars More, brought a larger box-office success, the profession of bounty hunter became the choice of occupation of spaghetti Western heroes in films, such asArizona Colt,Vengeance Is Mine,Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre,The Ugly Ones,Dead Men Don't Count, andAny Gun Can Play. InThe Great Silence andA Minute to Pray, a Second to Die, the heroes instead fight bounty killers. During this era, many heroes and villains in spaghetti Westerns began carrying a musical watch, after its use inFor a Few Dollars More.[35]
Spaghetti Westerns also began featuring a pair of different heroes. In Leone's film, Eastwood's character is an unshaven bounty hunter, dressed similarly to his character inA Fistful of Dollars, who enters an unstable partnership with Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), an older bounty killer who uses more sophisticated weaponry and wears a suit, and, in the end, turns out to also be an avenger. In the following years, there was a deluge of spaghetti Westerns with a pair of heroes with (most often) conflicting motives. Examples include a lawman and an outlaw (And the Crows Will Dig Your Grave), an army officer and an outlaw (Bury Them Deep), an avenger and a (covert) army officer (The Hills Run Red), an avenger and a (covert) guilty party (Viva! Django akaW Django!), an avenger and a con-man (The Dirty Outlaws), an outlaw posing as a sheriff and a bounty hunter (Man With the Golden Pistol akaDoc, Hands of Steel), and an outlaw posing as his twin and a bounty hunter posing as a sheriff (A Few Dollars for Django).[36]
The theme of age inFor a Few Dollars More, in which the younger bounty killer learns valuable lessons from his more experienced colleague and eventually becomes his equal, is taken up inDay of Anger andDeath Rides a Horse. In both cases, Lee Van Cleef carries on as the older hero versus Giuliano Gemma and John Phillip Law, respectively.
One variant of the hero pair was a revolutionary Mexican bandit and a mostly money-oriented American from the United States frontier. These films are sometimes called Zapata Westerns.[37] The first wasDamiano Damiani'sA Bullet for the General and then followedSergio Sollima's trilogy:The Big Gundown,Face to Face, andRun, Man, Run.
Sergio Corbucci'sThe Mercenary andCompañeros andTepepa byGiulio Petroni are also considered Zapata Westerns. Many of these films enjoyed both good takes at the box office and attention from critics. They are often interpreted as a leftist critique of the typical Hollywood handling of theMexican Revolution, and of imperialism in general.[38]
In Leone'sThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly there is still the scheme of a pair of heroes vs. a villain but it is somewhat relaxed, as here all three parties were driven by a money motive. In subsequent films such asAny Gun Can Play (whose Italian title, "Vado... l'ammazzo e torno", is itself a quote from Leone's film),One Dollar Too Many, andKill Them All and Come Back Alone several main characters repeatedly form alliances and betray each other for monetary gain.[39]
Sabata andIf You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death, directed byGianfranco Parolini, introduce into similar betrayal environments a type of hero molded on the Mortimer character fromFor a Few Dollars More, only without any vengeance motive and with more outrageous trick weapons. Sabata is portrayed byLee Van Cleef himself, whileJohn Garko plays the very similarSartana protagonist. Parolini made some more Sabata movies, whileGiuliano Carnimeo made a whole series of Sartana films, at first with Garko and later withGeorge Hilton.[40]
Beside the first three spaghetti Westerns by Leone, a most influential film wasSergio Corbucci'sDjango starringFranco Nero. Django was one of the most violent spaghetti Westerns.The titular character is torn between several motives—money or revenge—and his choices bring misery to him and to a woman close to him. Indicative of this film's influence on the spaghetti Western style, "Django" is the hero's name in a plenitude of subsequent Westerns.[41]
Although his character is not named Django, Franco Nero brings a similar ambience toTexas, Adios andMassacre Time, in which the hero must confront surprising and dangerous family relations. Similar "prodigal son"[42] stories followed, includingChuck Moll,Keoma,The Return of Ringo,The Forgotten Pistolero,One Thousand Dollars on the Black,Johnny Hamlet and alsoSeven Dollars on the Red.[43]
Another type of wronged hero is set up and must clear himself from accusations.Giuliano Gemma starred in a series of successful films carrying this theme—Adiós gringo,For a Few Extra Dollars,Long Days of Vengeance,Wanted and, to some extent,Blood for a Silver Dollar—in which his character is most often called "Gary".[44]
The wronged hero who becomes an avenger appears in many spaghetti Westerns. Among the more commercially successful films with a hero dedicated to vengeance—For a Few Dollars More,Once Upon a Time in the West,Today We Kill... Tomorrow We Die!,A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die,Death Rides a Horse,Django, Prepare a Coffin,The Deserter,Hate for Hate, andHalleluja for Django—those with whom he cooperates typically have conflicting motivations.[45]
In 1968, the wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. However, the considerable box-office success ofEnzo Barboni'sThey Call Me Trinity and its enormously successful follow-up,Trinity Is Still My Name, gave Italian filmmakers a new model to emulate. The main characters were played byTerence Hill andBud Spencer, who had already cooperated as a pair of heroes in three earlier spaghetti Westerns,God Forgives... I Don't!,Boot Hill andAce High, directed byGiuseppe Colizzi. The humor started in those movies, with scenes with comedy fighting, but the Barboni films became burlesque comedies. They feature the quick but lazy Trinity (Hill) and his big, strong and irritable brother, Bambino (Spencer).[46]
The stories lampoon stereotypical Western characters, such as diligent farmers, lawmen and bounty hunters. There was a wave of Trinity-inspired films with quick and strong heroes, the former often called "Trinity", or coming from "a place called Trinity", and with few or no killings. Because the two model stories contained religious pacifists to account for the absence of gunplay, all of the successors contained religious groups, or, at least, priests, sometimes as one of the heroes.[47]
The music for the two Trinity Westerns (composed byFranco Micalizzi andGuido & Maurizio De Angelis, respectively) also reflected the change to a lighter and more sentimental mood. The Trinity-inspired films also adopted this less serious and often-maligned style.[48]
Some critics deplore these post-Trinity films and their soundtracks as a degeneration of the "real" spaghetti Westerns. Indeed, Hill's and Spencer's skillful use of body language was a hard act to follow, and it is significant that the most successful of the post-Trinity films featured Hill (Man of the East andA Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe), Spencer (It Can Be Done Amigo) and a pair of Hill-Spencer lookalikes inCarambola. A spaghetti Western old hand,Franco Nero, also worked in this subgenre withCipolla Colt, andTomas Milian plays an outrageous "quick" bounty hunter modeled onCharlie Chaplin'sLittle Tramp inSometimes Life Is Hard, Eh Providence? andHere We Go Again, Eh, Providence?.[49]
Terence Hill could still draw large audiences in a post-Trinity Western,My Name Is Nobody, with Henry Fonda, and acaper-story Western,A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe. In 1976, Franco Nero achieved a similar draw as a Django-style hero inKeoma. However, by the end of the 1970s, the different types of spaghetti Westerns had lost their following among mainstream cinema audiences, and the production ground to a virtual halt. Belated attempts to revive the genre included the comedy filmBuddy Goes West, the Spanish-American coproductionComin' at Ya!, which was shot in3D, andDjango Strikes Again.
Some movies that were not very successful at the box office[50] still earn a "cult" status in some segment of the audience because of certain extraordinary features in story and/or presentation. One "cult" spaghetti Western that has also drawn attention from critics isGiulio Questi'sDjango Kill. Other "cult" items areCesare Canevari'sMatalo!,Tony Anthony'sBlindman, andJoaquín Luis Romero Marchent'sCut-Throats Nine (the latter amonggore film audiences).
The few spaghetti Westerns containing historical characters such asBuffalo Bill,Wyatt Earp,Billy the Kid, etc., appear mainly beforeA Fistful of Dollars had put its mark on the genre. Likewise, and in contrast to the contemporary German Westerns, few films featureNative Americans. When they appear, they are more often portrayed as victims of discrimination than as dangerous foes. The only fairly successful spaghetti Western with a Native American main character (played byBurt Reynolds in his only European Western outing) isSergio Corbucci'sNavajo Joe, in which the (supposedly) Navajo village is wiped out by bandits during the first minutes, and the avenger hero spends the rest of the film dealing mostly with Anglos and Mexicans until the final showdown at a Native American burial ground.
Several spaghetti Westerns are inspired by classical myths and dramas. Titles, such asFedra West (also calledBallad of a Bounty Hunter) andJohnny Hamlet, signify the connection toGreek myth, the plays byEuripides andRacine, and theplay byWilliam Shakespeare, respectively. The latter also inspired 1972'sDust in the Sun, which follows the original more closely than Johnny Hamlet, in which the hero survives.The Forgotten Pistolero is based on the vengeance ofOrestes. There are similarities between the story ofThe Return of Ringo and the last canto ofHomer'sOdyssey.Fury of Johnny Kid follows Shakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet, but (again) with a different ending; the loving couple leave together while their families annihilate each other.
Some Italian Western films were made as vehicles for musical stars, such asFerdinando Baldi'sRita of the West, featuringRita Pavone andTerence Hill. In non-singing roles wereRingo Starr as a villain inBlindman and French rock 'n' roll veteranJohnny Hallyday as the gunfighter and avenger hero inSergio Corbucci'sThe Specialists.
The story ofA Fistful of Dollars was closely based onAkira Kurosawa'sYojimbo. Kurosawa sued Sergio Leone for plagiarism, and was compensated with the exclusive distribution rights to the movie in Japan, where its hero, Clint Eastwood, was already a huge star due to the popularity of the TV series,Rawhide. Leone would have done far better financially by obtaining Kurosawa's advance permission to useYojimbo's script.[51][52]Requiem for a Gringo shows many traces from another well-known Japanese film,Masaki Kobayashi'sHarakiri.
When Asianmartial arts films started to draw crowds in European cinema houses, the producers of spaghetti Westerns tried to hang on, this time not by adapting storylines, but rather by directly including martial arts in the films, performed by Eastern actors—for example, Chen Lee inMy Name Is Shanghai Joe, orLo Lieh teaming up withLee Van Cleef inThe Stranger and the Gunfighter.
Some spaghetti Westerns incorporate political overtones, particularly from thepolitical left. An example isRequiescant, featuring Italian author and film directorPier Paolo Pasolini as a major supporting character. Pasolini's character is a priest who espousesLiberation theology. The film concerns oppression of poor Mexicans by rich Anglos, and ends on a call for arms, but it does not fit easily as aZapata Western, for it lacks the typical hero pair of a flamboyant Latin revolutionary and an Anglo specialist.The Price of Power serves a political allegory about theassassination of John F. Kennedy and racism. The movie concerns the assassination of an American president in Dallas, Texas, by a group of Southernwhite supremacists who frame an innocent African-American. They are opposed by an unstable partnership between a whistleblower (Giuliano Gemma) and a political aide.
Although it is intimated in some films, such asDjango Kill,Requiescant andThe Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine, open homosexuality plays a marginal part in spaghetti Westerns. An exception isGiorgio Capitani'sThe Ruthless Four (in effect a gay version ofJohn Huston'sThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre), in which the explicit homosexual relation between two of its male main characters and some gay cueing scenes are embedded with other forms of male relations throughout the story.[53]
In the 1960s, critics recognized that the American genres were rapidly changing. The genre most identifiably American, the Western, seemed to be evolving into a new, rougher form. For many critics,Sergio Leone's films were part of the problem. Leone'sDollars Trilogy (1964–1966) was not the beginning of the "spaghetti Western" cycle in Italy, but for some Americans, Leone's films represented the true beginning of the Italian invasion of an American genre.
Christopher Frayling, in his noted book on the Italian Western, describes American critical reception of the spaghetti Western cycle as, to "a large extent, confined to a sterile debate about the 'cultural roots' of the American/Hollywood Western".[54] He remarked that few critics dared admit that they were, in fact, "bored with an exhausted Hollywood genre".
Frayling noted thatPauline Kael was willing to acknowledge this critical ennui, and thus appreciate how a film like Akira Kurosawa'sYojimbo "could exploit the conventions of the Western genre, while debunking its morality". Frayling and other film scholars, such as Bondanella, argue that this revisionism was the key to Leone's success, and, to some degree, to that of the spaghetti Western genre as a whole.[55]
Spaghetti Westerns have left their mark on popular culture, strongly influencing numerous works produced in and outside of Italy. In later years, there were the "return-of stories" filmsDjango Strikes Again withFranco Nero andTroublemakers withTerence Hill andBud Spencer. Clint Eastwood's first American Western film,Hang 'Em High, incorporates elements of spaghetti Westerns.
American directorQuentin Tarantino has utilized elements of spaghetti Westerns in his filmsKill Bill (combined withkung fu movies),[56]Inglourious Basterds (set in Nazi-occupied France),[57]Django Unchained (set in the American South during the time of slavery),[58]The Hateful Eight (set in Wyoming post-US Civil War), andOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood (about fictional American actorRick Dalton sometimes working in spaghetti Westerns).
TheBack to the Future trilogy pays homage to spaghetti Westerns (especially Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy) on a variety of occasions, most notably inthe third film. The American animated filmRango incorporates elements of spaghetti Westerns, including a character (the mystical "Spirit of the West", regarded as a sort ofdeity among the characters) appearing to the protagonist as an elderly Man with No Name. The 1985 Japanese filmTampopo was promoted as a "ramen Western". Japanese directorTakashi Miike paid tribute to the genre withSukiyaki Western Django, a Western set in Japan that derives influence from bothDjango and the Dollars Trilogy.[59]
TheBollywood filmSholay was often referred to as a "Curry Western".[60] A more accurate genre label for the film is the "Dacoit Western", as it combined the conventions of Indiandacoit films, such asMother India andGunga Jumna, with that of spaghetti Westerns.Sholay spawned its own genre of "Dacoit Western" films in Bollywood during the 1970s.[61]
In theSoviet Union, the spaghetti Western was adapted into theOstern ("Eastern") genre ofSoviet films. TheWild West setting was replaced by an Eastern setting in thesteppes of theCaucasus, while Western stock characters, such as "cowboys andIndians", were replaced byCaucasian stock characters, such asbandits andharems. A famous example of the genre wasWhite Sun of the Desert, which waspopular in the Soviet Union.[62]
American heavy metal bandMetallica has used aEnnio Morricone's composition, "The Ecstasy of Gold", fromThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to open several of their concerts. An Australian band,the Tango Saloon, combined elements oftango music with influences from spaghetti Western scores. The bandGhoultown also derives influence from spaghetti Westerns.[63] The music video for the song "Knights of Cydonia", by the English rock bandMuse, is influenced by spaghetti Westerns. The bandBig Audio Dynamite used music samples from spaghetti Westerns when mixing their song "Medicine Show". Within the song, there are samples from spaghetti Western movies such asA Fistful of Dollars,The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, andDuck, You Sucker!.[64]
Video game studioRockstar Games utilized aspects of the spaghetti Western, and paid homage to it in theirRed Dead Redemption series, as well as in its predecessor,Red Dead Revolver.[65]
In 2007, aretrospective took place as part of theVenice International Film Festival to pay homage to the genre. The retrospective included 32 films:[70]
esos productos baratos de fácil salida como los 'western-spaghetti' de la coproducción con Italia[those cheap, easy-to-produce products such as the "spaghetti western" of the Italian co-production]
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