Free Spaghetti Westerns by Howard Hughes Page B

directors (in particular Tessari, Corbucci and Sollima) expanded the Leone formula and included meaty roles for actresses, Leone stuck to a male-orientated world. The only women in the movie were prostitutes, hoteliers, peasants or farmers’ wives. Even then, they either had one scene or had their scenes cut. In fact, there have been several versions of the film available, of various lengths, each with its own merits. Love scenes for Eastwood were excised from both For a Few Dollars More and The Good , the Bad and the Ugly , and sex doesn’t enter into the equation. In this macho, war-torn world, there aren’t even any nurses in the hospitals. And again violence was directed at women, a feature of the film that Van Cleef, for one, loathed.
    Though it’s best remembered for Morricone’s title theme – with its screaming, yelping vocals, cavalry trumpets and Shadows-style guitar, powered along by a pounding drumbeat – the score is much more than an echoing coyote howl in the desert. The Civil War scenes are accompanied by a haunting choral piece (‘The Soldier’s Story’) and a more expansive, trumpet-led composition – as when Angel Eyes visits a Confederate hospital in a scene only included in Italian prints (though the piece is still present on the soundtrack album). Blondy’s ordeal in the desert has an epic (as in Biblical epic) score, while Tuco’s breathless search for the grave in Sad Hill’s cross-strewn vastness is accompanied by one of Morricone’s best ever tunes, the towering ‘Ecstasy of Gold’. While there are none of the extended, montage-driven gundowns throughout the film, Leone makes up for it in the finale, where the three protagonists face each other in the huge circular arena in the middle of the graveyard. Here, the action consists of the three men staring meanly at each other for nearly five minutes – half of which consists of them taking their places at points on the circle before the contest can begin, accompanied by Morricone’s macabre bolero.
    The most astonishing aspect of the film is the way Leone varies the film’s tempo – long scenes of silence (with little action), fast shootouts, chases, gags, pathos – but never loses its momentum. The camerawork by Tonino Delli Colli is superb, the performances perfect, the Spanish and Italian locations breathtaking. And for all its attempts at social comment (however successful or apparent), The Good , the Bad and the Ugly is also one of the great action Westerns. Eastwood has never been involved in a better film (though he’d probably argue he has), Van Cleef has never been more villainous, Wallach so overly dramatic and expressive. Its phenomenal success also resulted in the usual bunch of rip-offs, from Enzo G Castellari’s Seven Winchesters for a Massacre (1967), with a poncho-clad hero involved in a Civil War treasure hunt, to The Handsome , the Ugly and the Cretinous (1967), an imaginative, scene-for-scene slapstick comedy version of Leone’s film.
The Verdict
     
    Though many claim that the films that bookend The Good , the Bad and the Ugly in Leone’s canon – the vengeful For a Few Dollars More and epic Once Upon a Time in the West – are his finest work, this is his best film, made by a director at his zenith, with a global superstar-in-waiting in the lead and a fantastical plot that is never short on surprises.

BOX-OFFICE DYNAMITE: 1967–69
     
     
The Hellbenders (1967) 
     
    Directed by: Sergio Corbucci 
    Music by: Ennio Morricone
    Cast: Joseph Cotten (Colonel Jonas), Norma Bengell (Clare), Julian 
Mateos (Ben), Al Mulock (Beggar) 
88 minutes
     
Story
     
    In the years following the Civil War, Jonas, an ex-Confederate colonel, and his three sons steal a shipment of Yankee gold. With it they plan to resurrect the Confederacy. They pose as a funeral escort with Clare, a prostitute, impersonating the wife of the ‘deceased’ and the money hidden in the coffin. Their ruse works, as they avoid Yankee patrols