10 Best Spaghetti Westerns You Must See Before You Die
8. A Bullet For The General
M. C. M.
One of the more famous Zapata Westerns, A Bullet for the General is one of Damiani's best works. Set during the burgeoning moments of the Mexican Revolution, the film follows Gian Maria Volontè (who famously played El Indio in the original two Dollars films) as he dons the role of El Chuncho, a bandit turned revolutionary, as he navigates the revolutionary milieu with an ostensible prisoner of the government's forces, El Nino (Lou Castel), who's also American.
What follows is a brilliant tale of deception, political intrigue and loss that serves as one of the most heartfelt and politically-charged cinematic portrayals of the conflict ever put to film. It's brilliant, and Volontè's portrayal of Chuncho remains one of the most overlooked in the genre, with the actor having undertaken a particularly difficult task in conveying the character's shift from militant opportunist, to socially-conscious revolutionary.
It's one of the best Westerns out there, and a definite watch if you were at all engrossed by Volontè's villainous turns in Leone's Dollars Trilogy.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
