The Grand Duel

A trio of bounty hunters make jokes about a horse's anus while their quarry escapes. Lee Van Cleef is good; everything else is okay to sub-par.

Van Cleef and an awesome musical theme help this a lot. Interesting villains, too, but everything doesn't quite gel into a great movie. I felt my attention drifting during stretches of the film and seemed like I was getting lost, and I've gotta knock off points for a horse fall that looked like it resulted in mortal injury (if not mortal it looked serious). But it's mostly entertaining and has some odd quirks and style that help.

Lee Van Cleef teams up with a man falsely accused of murder to take on a corrupt but powerful family. Standard formula Spaghetti Western stuff, but Van Cleef has a few classic moments.

The opening shootout is quite impressive and fun. some of the music fits well and some of the music, well some of the music is fairly odd. There's a lot more comedy in the film than I was expecting. The English dub was terrible and made things seem more comical than they were intended. The film tended to drag a bit once the characters made it to town. After a while the whole movie started to feel repetitive. The main mystery ended up being a bunch of bullshit.

One of the last spaghetti-westerns, but certainly not the least. In fact it's one of the best. GS was assistant-director under Leone on his two masterpieces and he clearly learned a lot from the master about directing and how to built tension. The score is absolutely amazing (QT sure knows which one to re-use). Lee van Cleef plays very well a accumulation of his famous previous roles. The movie loosens some momentum in the middle, but apart from that this a very good entry in the genre.

Rightfully iconic. Sometimes silly and mostly violent, this film does a lot with a little: it feels genuine - genuinely timeless and genuinely fun - which is more than many films can say. The soundtrack is just plain sexy.

I found it a little tough to follow, but once I got into it, its a really cool movie. And also, Tarantino takes tons (including music) from this film.

A hidden Spaghetti western gem and star vehicle for Lee Van Cleef. Has a nice giallo feel to it. Very violent.

I dislike the westerner genre, but this was actually quite good.

Even at 94 minutes it feels overlong, like a lot was added to pad the time out to feature length. But the parts that work do so fantastically. Especially the final duel, which is befitting of Leone. Loses my interest in a lot of places but is worth the payoff. The dubbing is awful though and I'd like to try and find it in Italian.

Released quite late in the spaghetti cycle which means that more emphasis is put on comedy than earlier films. Luckily the film becomes more serious as it progresses and contains some brutal stuff in latter half. Lee Van Cleef is noticeably older but still COOL and Gastaldi's script gives him some hilarious lines. Bacalov's theme is great (no wonder QT used it in Kill Bill). Santi might not be on par with Leone & co., but he knows how to put together a solid film (complete with flashback seqs)