10 Best Spaghetti Westerns You Must See Before You Die

5. The Big Gundown

Lee Van Cleef crops up again in this Sergio Donati thriller, which served primarily as an allegory for American Imperialism in Latin America.

Resurgent in the 1960s as a consequence of the Cold War climate, Donati conceived the project within the context of Mussolini's Italy, producing a tale that is as much about America's relationship with the southern continent as it is about social injustice and the dynamic shared between rich and poor.

While such themes are not entirely anomalous to the genre (Rail Barons, rich prospectors etc. were villains both in history and in cinema), the way The Big Gundown juggles them is spectacular, with Van Cleef again assuming the position of a morally ambiguous antihero who, upon acquiring his bounty, is faced with the reality that all might not be as it seems.

Thematically ambitious and riveting in every sense of the word, praise for The Big Gundown may have been slow to accumulate, but now - more than ever - it's proven to be one of the most salient works of the decade, and a classic in every sense of the word.