THE BIG GUNDOWN
1966, Sony Repertory, 110 min, Italy, Dir: Sergio Sollima

Ruthless Texas lawman Lee Van Cleef pursues fugitive Cuchillo (Tomas Milian), a peasant who has been framed for a child's murder. Working from a story by screenwriter Franco Solinas (THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS), director Sergio Sollima infuses the standard spaghetti Western formulas with a conscious sense of class-driven politics - and plenty of brutal action. In Italian with English subtitles.


FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
PER QUALCHE DOLLARO IN PIU
1965, MGM Repertory, 130 min, Italy, Dir: Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone’s sequel to FISTFUL stars Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef as rival bounty hunters who wind up tracking the same man (Gian Maria Volonte). The final three-way shootout ranks with the greatest set pieces in moviemaking history.


THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
(IL BUONO, IL BRUTTO, IL CATTIVO)
1966, MGM/Park Circus, 161 min, Italy, Spain, West Germany, Dir: Sergio Leone

From the opening whistle and whipcrack theme, to the final images of a vast cemetery stretching almost to infinity, THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY is surely one of the bloodiest, funniest and most wickedly entertaining portraits of human corruption ever made. Leone’s surreal masterpiece of the American West during the last days of the Civil War follows a trio of equally violent and unrepentant gunslingers (Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef) who engage in a jawdropping series of double- and triple-crosses to get their hands on a fortune in stolen Confederate gold.


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