The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is one of the greatest spaghetti westerns ever made!

If you ask fans of spaghetti westerns, which movie is the greatest one ever made, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t mention “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”  You’ll often find it near the top on western movie lists and on movie critic’s lists of great western movies.

The movie is about three men, all motivated by greed.  There’s “The Good” named Blondie (Clint Eastwood), “The Bad” named Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) and “The Ugly” named Tuco (Eli Wallach).  All of them are despicable in their own way and none of them trust each other.  But they need to work together.  Each knows about $200,000 in gold that has been buried in a remote cemetery.  The Ugly knows the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden while The Good knows the name on grave where it is buried.  The Bad is determined to get the gold using the information that the other two have.

Against the backdrop of the raging Civil War, in a stark and inhospitable desert land, the three pursue their quest for the gold.

Will they all survive?  Or will one or two of them manage to kill the others and keep all of it?

• “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” was the third spaghetti western movie that film director Sergio Leone made with Clint Eastwood.  The other two famous spaghetti westerns that they made together were:

• A Fistful of Dollars
• For a Few Dollars More

These Italian westerns became so famous that they eventually became known as “The Man with No Name Trilogy .”

• “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” was the last western movie that Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone made together.  Apparently, their relationship became very strained while Clint Eastwood was doing voiceovers for the film in post-production.  Director Leone wanted to make changes to the original script that was used to shoot the movie, while Eastwood wanted to stick as close as possible to the original script.  The tension between them became so great that they never worked together again.

• The cast for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” was literally from around the world.  The only real English speakers were the three main stars – Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach.  For the Italian release of the movie, these main star’s voices were dubbed in Italian.  For the American release of the film, the other actor’s voices were dubbed.