A Fistful Of Dollars

The first of the ‘spaghetti westerns’, A Fistful Of Dollars became an instant cult hit and launched the film careers of Italian writer-director Sergio Leone, and a little known American television actor named Clint Eastwood. As the lean, cold eyed cobra-quick gunfighter, Clint became the first of the ‘anti heroes’. A Fistful Of Dollars is the western taken to the extreme – with unremitting violence, gritty realism, tongue-in-cheek humour and striking visuals.

For A Few Dollars More

A Fistful of Dollars had proven so successful that a sequel was inevitable. The superbly scripted For A Few Dollars More tells the tale of a ruthless quest to track down the notorious bandit El Indio, played by Gian Maria Volonte, by an unforgettable alliance between ruthless gun-slingers Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Sergio Leone’s direction is both violent and operatic and Ennio Morricone’s atmospheric score keeps the tension taut as the action moves from jail breaks and hold ups to spectacular gun battles.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

In the third of Eastwood’s spaghetti trilogy, director Sergio Leone substitutes the upright puritan Protestant ethos, so familiar in Hollywood westerns, for a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and morality. The complex plot of bloodshed and betrayal winds its way through the American Civil War following a team of brutal bandits battling to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked grave, and boasts a fine Ennio Morricone score featuring a main theme that reached No.1 in the world’s pop charts.

Hang 'Em High

They riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes: they hanged the wrong man... and they didn’t finish the job. In his first American-made western, Clint Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guy – cool-headed, iron-willed and unrelenting in the pursuit of revenge.