10 Criminally Underrated Westerns You Must See Before You Die

9. The Great Silence

The Great Silence, much like Death Rides a Horse, is a seminal western of the 1960s. Like that film it's also overlooked, despite the influence its had on the genre since its release, including on Quentin Tarantino's snowcapped thriller, The Hateful Eight.

Set during the Great Blizzard of 1899, Sergio Corbucci's film is violent, ruthless and stunning in equal measure, and features Jean-Louis Trintigant in the eponymous role of 'Silence', a man left mute following his parents' assassination and one determined to exact his revenge. To claim this story was typical of the genre would be to ignore the film's unique qualities though, with the snowy Utah climate juxtaposing nicely with the arid settings most westerns tend to feature.

There's more to Corbucci's classic than its winter setting though, because it actually reverses one of the genre's biggest tropes. This time around, the bounty hunters are the villains, and it's up to Silence and his Mauser (a unique weapon for the time) to set the record straight.