The Official Thread of Spaghetti Westerns & Kung-Fu Movies!

[Serum]

Okay, first of all, this thread isn't just for Spaghetti Westerns and Kung-Fu movies, but for all obscurities.

Now that we have that out of the way, I know a lot of you are pretty young and probably don't know what a Spaghetti Western is. A Spaghetti Western is a movie about the American Old West that was filmed in Italy-- as it brought production cost down by about fifty percent and Italians work cheap to pretend to be gunslingers, Mexicans and Native Americans. Many Spaghetti Westerns were never even released in the United States, despite the United States being the central figure of all Western films. Many of them are fully in the Italian language, but many of those have been dubbed into English. Some great examples of Spaghetti Westerns include...

"The Dollars Trilogy"

A Fistful of Dollars

Clint Eastwood stars as 'The Man With No Name' in this American remake of Akira Kurosawa's Japanese samurai action movie Yojimbo.
A wandering gunslinger comes to a town divided by two warring factions and offers his services to both sides, without them realizing he's
playing the two factions against each other in order to take all their money! It came out in the United States in 1964.

For a Few Dollars More

The Man With No Name returns in this big sequel, in which he's now a bounty hunter who must team up with another bounty hunter (played
by Lee Van Cleef) in order to take down a sick and twisted criminal and his gang of bandits and banditos. It came out in the U.S. in 1965.

The Good, The Bad & the Ugly

The epic final installment in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy," The Good, (Clint Eastwood) The Bad (Lee Van Cleef in a different and completely
opposite role from the previous film) and the Ugly (Eli Wallach, who's really the star of the show) form an alignment of hatred in order to
find a quarter of a million dollars in gold coins buried in a Civil War Cemetery. It came out in 1967 in the United States and is three hours long.

The "Django" Films

Django

A drifter (Franco Nero) who drags a coffin behind him wherever he goes gets caught up in a battle between Mexican banditos and the Ku Klux Klan,
but what neither of them know is that inside Django's coffin is a MACHINE GUN! It came out in 1966 in the United States, fully dubbed into English.

Django Strikes Again

Set twenty years after the first film, it is the only official sequel to Django. (Over 100 unofficial sequels are reported to have been made!)
Django, now older and living in a monastery, repentant for his selfish life, gets drawn into violence once again when his daughter is kidnapped.
It came out in 1987 in the United States and is available only on a limited edition out of print DVD from Anchor Bay, so snag a copy if you can!

...And those are just a few of the literally hundreds, maybe thousands of Spaghetti Westerns! As for Kung-Fu movies, I'm sure many of you have seen a Jet Li, Jackie Chan or Donnie Yen movie-- but how many of you have seen one of the old master's movies? Who am I talking about? The one and only Bruce Lee, of course! Bruce Lee was a martial arts master back in the 60s and 70s, and he sadly died before his time. Many movies are listed as starring "Bruce Lee" but are actually pieced together after his death. The most famous example of a "Bruce Lee" movie like this is Game of Death, which he started filming, but died before finishing.
Here's a few examples of some great Bruce Lee movies...

The Big Boss aka Fists of Fury

A man who has taken an oath of peace has to fight to take down the corrupt superintendent of an ice factory.
This is Bruce Lee's very first feature film! It launched his career in acting and directing Kung-Fu movies.

Fist of Fury aka The Chinese Connection

In the days of the First World War, a man comes home to China to find his Kung-Fu master has died under mysterious circumstances.
A rival, Japanese martial arts school challenges them to a violent fight and Bruce Lee must take revenge on them for killing his master!

Way of the Dragon aka Return of the Dragon

A man comes to Rome where his cousin's restaurant is under attack by a mafia-like organization. He helps protect them from the onslaught
of mob men who want to take over the restaurant and in the end, he must fight their best man-- played by Chuck Norris, to the death!

Enter the Dragon

A secret agent is sent to an island off the coast of China where he is to infiltrate a criminal mastermind's lair. The mastermind is hosting a
martial arts tournament and Agent Lee fights his way through them to get to the bottom of the mastermind's sick plan.

Game of Death

Pieced together from footage of another movie Bruce Lee had begun to film, but tragically died before completing, this movie is about a
Kung-Fu movie star who has to fake his own death in order to take down the people who are constantly trying to ruin his life.

...There's also a bunch of other "Bruce Lee" movies, like The Chinese Connection 2, The Dragon Lives Again and most infamously: Game of Death II, but none of them are very good because they have very little Bruce Lee in them. If you're looking for a good Kung-Fu movie after you've seen all of the traditional Bruce Lee films, I'd suggest Ip Man and Ip Man 2 (pronounced Yip Mon) in which Donnie Yen plays Ip Man, the man who trained Bruce Lee and they're all about the adventures he had long before he trained Bruce Lee in martial arts. There are about a trillion (I'm exaggerating) other Kung-Fu movies out there to check out, as well!

Has anyone seen any of these movies? If so, what are your opinions? What other obscure Spaghetti Westerns or Kung-Fu movies do you know of that are awesome?

[Redstar]

All I know of "Spaghetti Westerns" are that Quentin Tarantino likes them and I don't like Quentin Tarantino. Sell me on the genre, Merritt.

[Serum]

All I know of "Spaghetti Westerns" are that Quentin Tarantino likes them and I don't like Quentin Tarantino. Sell me on the genre, Merritt.

Okay, here goes nothing:

Now then, the "Spaghetti Western" genre is an umbrella term to cover to any and all "American Old West" movies filmed either in Italy (which looks suspiciously like the American Southwest) or were filmed with Italian actors pretending to be cowboys, gunslingers or drifters and were filmed somewhere in a place like Brazil, Portugal or Spain ("Django Strikes Again" was filmed in Columbia with mostly Italian and British talent). The genre is known for taking the ordinary Western movie, something like the original "True Grit" or "The Magnificent Seven" and making it a whole hell of a lot more gritty, violent and dark in nature. Spaghetti Westerns, at the time of many of their releases, were given "X" ratings due to extreme violence and occasional nudity/sex-- all of which is tame by today's standards for the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s. But what makes the genre so great is that these movies tend to be either really long or really short and tell really good, but outlandish stories that draw you in and make you want to watch, even if you're not a fan of the Western genre.

Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of Spaghetti Westerns because his boyfriend, Robert Rodriguez tends to model the movies they make together after Spaghetti Westerns in terms of style. Take for instance 1996's "From Dusk Till Dawn," or better yet "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," the title alone is an homage to one of Sergio Leone's greatest Spaghetti Westerns "Once Upon a Time in the West." Because Rodriguez and Tarantino are such good friends, they're also contemporaries who tend to bum off each others' ideas and scripts all the time leaving for a fine line between a good Robert Rodriguez movie and a crappy Quentin Tarantino movie, or in some cases, a good Quentin Tarantino movie and a crappy Robert Rodriguez movie. But to answer your question, you should watch the classic Spaghetti Westerns because they're fun, often epic in the true scale of the word and have a great story that draws in fans of Westerns and fans of 'traditional' movies as well. If you like violent, over-the-top b-movies, you'll probably enjoy a good old fashioned Spaghetti Western.

I'd suggest starting with the films of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci, go check them out!

[Prime Evil]

As for martial arts films, I have the original Street Fighter with Sonny Chiba in it. Good Lord, is it gory...but it becomes almost Pythonesque in places, like the scene where Sonny attacks his sister's (girlfriend's?) would-be rapist with KUNG-FU GRIP (think about it and wince...the poor sod will have to sing falsetto from now on).

My copy is double-banked with the sequel, Return of the Street Fighter. Must get around to watching that one day. Now that I have some extra spending money, I'll make an effort to pick up some martial arts films from the dollar-store. (I never said I had a lot of spending money...)

Westerns...I saw the one with Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe in it a while ago--can't think of what it was called. It's not Unforgiven, but something else. I thought it was marvelous, if only for the depth of character and sheer emotion.

For a pastiche of westerns, Back to the Future III is really my favorite.

[Serum]

Westerns...I saw the one with Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe in it a while ago--can't think of what it was called. It's not Unforgiven, but something else. I thought it was marvelous, if only for the depth of character and sheer emotion.

For a pastiche of westerns, Back to the Future III is really my favorite.

First of all, I think you're thinking of "Tombstone," but "Unforgiven" and even "Back to the Future Part III" are traditional Westerns-- they were filmed in America.

Second, we're talking about Spaghetti Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns were all filmed in Italy, which looks suspiciously like the American Old West of the 1860s...

[Redstar]

Westerns...I saw the one with Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe in it a while ago--can't think of what it was called. It's not Unforgiven, but something else. I thought it was marvelous, if only for the depth of character and sheer emotion.

First of all, I think you're thinking of "Tombstone," but "Unforgiven" and even "Back to the Future Part III" are traditional Westerns-- they were filmed in America.

You're both mistaken; the Hackman/Crowe western is 1995's The Quick and the Dead

Tombstone may not have a spaghetti western, but it is one of the best modern westerns and indeed a personal favorite.

[Serum]

So Redstar, did I help convince you why Spaghetti Westerns are amazing? If not, go to your local video store and rent "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," or "Once Upon a Time in the West," which are widely regarded as the best of the Spaghetti Westerns.

[Prime Evil]

Second, we're talking about Spaghetti Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns were all filmed in Italy, which looks suspiciously like the American Old West of the 1860s...

Oh. I thought the only qualification was that the director had to be Italian.

You must forgive me; the Western isn't exactly my favorite genre.

[Serum]

Second, we're talking about Spaghetti Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns were all filmed in Italy, which looks suspiciously like the American Old West of the 1860s...

Oh. I thought the only qualification was that the director had to be Italian.

You must forgive me; the Western isn't exactly my favorite genre.

Well, technically "Django Strikes Again" wasn't filmed in Italy, but rather in Columbia (Where John Leguizamo's from!) but all the actors and crew in it except Donald Pleasance are Italian.