As anyone who has read my vampire western short story entitled High Moon will know, I'm a big fan of westerns - especially the spaghetti westerns. There's just something that grabs me about them. Perhaps it's the wide, open vistas. Perhaps it's the sound of pounding hoof beats. Perhaps it's the random sporadic killings. I'm not sure, but out of all this genre my ultimate favourite has to be Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I can just crash out on my well-loved sofa with beer and freshly microwaved popcorn and let the whole epicness of the masterpiece bathe me in its panoramic beauty.
It starts off with perfect introductions to the main characters, painting a precise picture of their individual, flawed, characters and then progresses to knit their progressing narratives together against the background if the brutality of the American Civil War in the hunt for buried treasure. What more could you ask for?
And as for the music... I have this soundtrack on my music system and every time it randomly blasts from my speakers my living room is transported into the Wild West and I'm Clint Eastwood riding my horse through the sun-baked desert of New Mexico.
Then there's the acting... I just can't begin to talk about this without drooling in rapture! Eastwood as the enigmatic Blondie, Van Cleef as the ruthless Angel Eyes and Eli Wallach as the wheeling dealing Tuco; they just work together perfectly. The final Mexican stand-off in the centre of the midst of the graveyard is cinematic history.
But perhaps the thing that blows my mind about the film is that it was actually a prequel and set before the Dollars movies in order to flesh out the story of the Man With No Name (towards the end we actually see him obtain his
eponymous poncho). There wasn't a Gungan in sight. Perhaps George Lucas should have studied this before he penned Phantom Menace?
It starts off with perfect introductions to the main characters, painting a precise picture of their individual, flawed, characters and then progresses to knit their progressing narratives together against the background if the brutality of the American Civil War in the hunt for buried treasure. What more could you ask for?
And as for the music... I have this soundtrack on my music system and every time it randomly blasts from my speakers my living room is transported into the Wild West and I'm Clint Eastwood riding my horse through the sun-baked desert of New Mexico.
Then there's the acting... I just can't begin to talk about this without drooling in rapture! Eastwood as the enigmatic Blondie, Van Cleef as the ruthless Angel Eyes and Eli Wallach as the wheeling dealing Tuco; they just work together perfectly. The final Mexican stand-off in the centre of the midst of the graveyard is cinematic history.
But perhaps the thing that blows my mind about the film is that it was actually a prequel and set before the Dollars movies in order to flesh out the story of the Man With No Name (towards the end we actually see him obtain his
eponymous poncho). There wasn't a Gungan in sight. Perhaps George Lucas should have studied this before he penned Phantom Menace?
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