10 Criminally Underrated Westerns You Must See Before You Die
10. Death Rides A Horse
United Artists
One of the all-time great Spaghetti Westerns, Death Rides a Horse not only has the most genius tagline in the history of taglines ("When you've waited 15 years to kill a man... It's a shame you can only kill him once!"), but a compelling story too, starring Lee Van Cleef in a leading role.
Cleef had previously endeared himself to audiences in the revered The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (as well as the overlooked For a Few Dollars More), and his performance as a revenge-seeking criminal in Death Rides a Horse is one of his best. The film, directed by Giulio Petroni, features Cleef teaming up with John Phillip Law's Bill, a man who seeks vengeance against the same gang who wronged Cleef's Ryan - albeit for drastically different reasons.
Perhaps due to the fact it released in the wake of the aforementioned Good, Bad and Ugly, Death Rides a Horse is somewhat overlooked today. That should provide ample incentive to track it down though, as it's certainly one of the sixties' better films.
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.
