10 Best Spaghetti Westerns You Must See Before You Die
6. A Fistful Of Dollars
United Artists
The first of Leone's venerable Dollars Trilogy, Fistful might not reach the heights of its sequels, but it's iconic and, if anything, deserves mention for its introduction of Clint Eastwood's 'Joe', the revered 'man with no name' that would go on to star in the remainder of the trilogy.
A loose adaptation of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, Fistful's plot is known to all by now. Focussing on a gang war tearing a town apart, Eastwood's anonymous bounty killer rides in and proceeds to play the two groups against each other, using deception as his main means of collecting after announcing himself with what has to be one of the coolest scenes ever put to film.
It's seminal in so many different ways, and while Leone improved upon his original concept in the releases that followed, the original Dollars film stands head and shoulders above the competition.
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.
