The Man with No Name Trilogy: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)

Well I certainly didn't expect that we'd have so many western films already, but today I choose to stick to my pattern of a Man with No Name trilogy movie every other day and finish off the set with the extended 3 hour version of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. This is easily the most famous of the trilogy, and has a lot of hype surrounding it. There's a lot to live up to, especially after an ever increasing level of quality in the first two movies. So without further ado, let's just jump straight into it shall we? My thoughts after the jump.

The first thing you'll notice about this movie is the music. The score to this movie has to be the most famous western movie scores of all time. I instantly recognized it and knew exactly how the music went. So right off the bat, that was great.

Another thing that I haven't mentioned yet about this series is the unique animated intro sequences. I'm not sure if this was common during that era of film, but it was certainly unique to me. It reminds you how before all the fancy computer graphics, they still had ways of getting around what we might now see as technical limitations, and it doesn't hamper the quality of the movie in any way.

So finally we get into the movie, and we find that our hero, now given the nickname of Blondie, has figured out an even more profitable way to use the bounty system. A bit of a scheme you might say with the help of the titular ugly bandit. There's also a money greedy killer who's after a treasure. I won't get much more into the plot than that, cause it goes all over the place and a lot of events happen. Needless to say, that even though this movie doesn't have it in the title, it's still all about the dollars.

Where's the poncho?

A few things did end up bothering me about this movie. First and most noticeable, is the reuse of actor Lee Van Cleef. He was in For a Few Dollars More as the intelligent and helpful Col. Douglas Mortimer. He appears again in this movie, but as a different character! This time he's the bad guy named in the title, and goes by the name of Angel Eyes. Also since Clint Eastwood appears in a different costume, while in the previous two movies he wore the same awesome poncho to hide his gun, I started wondering if this movie was really a sequel to the Dollars movies. Without trying to spoil anything, by the end of the movie I was now wondering if this was a prequel that led up to the others. Nevertheless they shouldn't have used the same actor, as great as he is, in this movie for a different character.

The English dubbing is back to a slightly distracting level, but pretty much everything else about the movie is really good. The story has plenty of turns and we follow our characters all over the west. The American Civil War has started up and we see its influence many times throughout the movie. Locations are very good and you get a great sense that they're traveling all over the country in search of revenge and, more often, treasure. The dialog is really good, the acting is genuine and overall this is just a really great western movie.

To wrap this up, I'd like to say that yes this movie is great, yes in many ways it's better than the movies before it, but I have to be honest that having just watched the others so recently, I actually preferred "For a Few Dollars More". There was more action and shootouts in that movie it seemed like, and I really liked the character of Col. Mortimer and the interactions The Man with No Name had with him. The fact that they used the same actor in this movie, just didn't work for me. Now some may claim that it's the same character even though he has a different name now because The Man with No Name has a new name in every movie, first Joe, then Manco, and now Blondie. But he just acted so differently than how he's set up as a good human being in For a Few Dollars More that I just can't believe it's the same man. Really disappointing in the end. Perhaps if I had seen this movie first, I wouldn't have that bad taste left in my mouth after this one. It's still a good recommendable movie however. It's a classic for a reason after all.