Spaghetti Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef glares his way across a town of “upstanding citizens”—and takes them all on—in this brutal Western. A character’s concealed “banjo gun” was later lifted by El Mariachi. (107 mins)
As part of our series: The Hills Run Red: Italian Westerns, Leone, and Beyond
Running: January 10, 2013 - January 27, 2013
It was high noon when Sergio Leone rode into town ready to draw down on that most leather-clad genre, the Western. His nerve was unflinching as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) declared that the Old West was newly won. Leone followed with a string of sage sagas like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Duck, You Sucker, replete with ruthless desperadoes and rustic musings, ringed by the rugged landscapes of Italy and Spain. “Spaghetti” Westerns also featured American actors anxious to go from overlooked to Most Wanted: Warren Oates, Lee Van Cleef, Burt Reynolds, James Coburn, Jack Palance—the gang was rough and ready. Soon, other quick-draw directors came to town, among them Damiano Damiani, Gianfranco Parolini, and Sergio Corbucci, competent cowpokes themselves. Particularly fearsome was Corbucci, whose The Great Silence remains legendary but elusive. Here, we lasso Navajo Joe with a baby-faced Burt Reynolds, and The Mercenary, a tight-lipped Franco Nero vehicle with loopy-locked Jack Palance along for the ride. Damiani’s mildly Marxist A Bullet for the General wrangles the brooding Gian-Maria Volontè as El Chucho and unleashed the Zapata variant, a revolution-bound Western that follows the path of most resistance. Parolini’s Sabata takes the art of shifting alliances and edgy ambushes to new depths, all under the saurian gaze of Lee Van Cleef, and Monte Hellman takes back the helm with China 9, Liberty 37 as Warren Oates finds himself railroaded by western expansion. Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained brings Spaghetti back to the table. The Hills Run Red honors the original recipe.
$5.50 BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley Students, $9.50 Adults, $6.50 UC Berkeley faculty, non UCB students, seniors, youth, and disabled
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