Western
Rod Lott
Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.

Western
Rod Lott
Perhaps to horn in on the expected Django Unchained action, Warner Archive has dug into its vaults to give a spaghetti Western a second helping of viewers. It found a unlikely offering in Dollar for the Dead, a 1988, made-for-cable effort starring Emilio Estevez. You could look at it like a Young Guns spin-off if you wish.

Western
Rod Lott
Before Django gets Unchanged this Christmas via Quentin Tarantino, get schooled on the spaghetti-Western bounty hunter through a pair of double-feature discs from Timeless Media Group. (Spoiler: He's neither a slave nor African-American.) That's four films total for those of you who can't do math, and all but one are hitting DVD officially for the first time.

Western
Rod Lott
What a kick it is to see Robert Mitchum biting into a stogie and laying waste to a room with a machine gun. Because, really, how often does a man of the cloth do that? No wonder the 1972 quasi-Western is titled The Wrath of God. The film takes place in a South American town so brutal and dismal that, as one character reasons, "If God had wanted to give the world an enema, he'd've stuck the nozzle in here."

Western
Rod Lott
Before he became Itay’s master of horror, Dario Argento knocked out a few screenplays, including one of Sergio Leone's legendary Western epics, Once Upon a Time in the West. Lesser-known is 1969's The Five Man Army. That's too bad, because it brings an “international all-star team” approach to the spaghetti Western, and doesn’t forget the all-aces Ennio Morricone score!

Western
Rod Lott
Anyone who believes public-domain DVD box sets don't contain any good movies, take note: You're dead wrong.

Western
Rod Lott
Two Westerns from the days when Hollywood relied on them pull into the DVD-R outpost from Warner Archive. Neither is essential, but its wide landscapes and reliable tropes make for comfortable-enough watching.

Western
Rod Lott
Is there a title more intriguing yet baffling than the punctuation-heavy Django, Kill! (If You Live Shoot!)? Don't answer that. The important thing is just that the 1967 Italian cult favorite now has been unleashed uncensored on Blu-ray from Blue Underground.

Western
Rod Lott
Mill Creek Entertainment offers another "Spaghetti Western Double Feature" by pairing 1972's Grand Duel and 1976's Keoma on one Blu-ray. Although both already are available on the company's Ten Thousand Ways to Die: The Spaghetti Western Collection on DVD — not to mention a dozen other labels' public-domain discs — the prints here are so clear that fans of the genre should consider the small investment.

Western
Rod Lott
Set right smack in the Mexican Revolution, A Bullet for the General unloads roughly several thousand rounds of ammo for one explosive epic of a spaghetti Western starring two of the genre's faves, Gian Maria Volonté and Klaus Kinski, both graduates of Sergio Leone's classic For a Few Dollars More.

Western
Rod Lott
Say “Western” in terms of movies, and one of three subgenres come to mind:

Western
Rod Lott
Not a fan of Westerns? Or are you just not sure?

Western
Rod Lott
Sergio Leone's groundbreaking trilogy that made an international star of Clint Eastwood — 1964's "A Fistful of Dollars," 1965's "For a Few Dollars More" and 1966's true epic "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" — are the films by which all other spaghetti Westerns are measured, if not all Westerns in general.

Western
Rod Lott
Two otherwise unrelated Westerns from 20th Century Fox bump spurs on a two-for-one entry in Shout! Factory’s new “Wild West Collection.”

Western
Rod Lott
Spaghetti Western fans are bound to be disappointed by this double feature, no matter how appealing the packaging for the Mill Creek Entertainment Blu-ray is, which is a lot.