Sergio Leone singlehandedly created the spaghetti western with his 1964 hit A Fistful of Dollars. While the term “spaghetti western” is loosely used to describe any western directed by an Italian filmmaker, Leone made it a subgenre of its own with a bloodier, grittier vision of the Wild West.
After the success of Fistful, Leone continued to build on his uniquely violent and operatic vision of the West with two sequels, rounding out one of the greatest trilogies of all time, and a couple of other standalone masterpieces. These are the most memorable scenes from Leone’s westerns.
The First Shootout - A Fistful Of Dollars
Widely regarded to be the first spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars transferred the basic plot of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo – a lone warrior drifts into a town and liberates it from two warring gangs – into a Wild West setting.
The Man with No Name establishes himself as a threat to both gangs early on with the movie’s first shootout. He’s one of the fastest guns in the West and he knows it, so he confronts the bandits with well-earned confidence.
Mortimer Kills El Indio - For A Few Dollars More
When Manco and Mortimer go out looking for El Indio in For a Few Dollars More, they manage to take out his gang members without much of a problem. However, Indio manages to disarm Mortimer, then plays a tune from his pocketwatch and encourages Mortimer to take up his weapon and kill him when the song ends.
However, at the end of the song, it starts playing again from an identical pocketwatch that Manco stole from Mortimer. Manco gives Mortimer his own gun belt and says, “Now, we start.” As soon as the song ends a second time, Mortimer fires first, killing Indio.
Frank’s Introduction - Once Upon A Time In The West
Hired gun Frank is one of the most sadistic villains in the history of the western genre. In his haunting introduction in Once Upon a Time in the West, he’s hired by railroad tycoon Morton to intimidate McBain to get him off his land, but Frank just murders McBain and his three small children in cold blood, then plants evidence that will pin the crimes on somebody else.
The most shocking thing about Frank is purely that he’s played by Henry Fonda. Fonda had built up an on-screen image as a noble hero, so audiences were stunned to see him playing against type as the black-clad baddie killing children for fun.
John Saves Juan From A Firing Squad - Duck, You Sucker!
Leone’s final western, the underappreciated Duck, You Sucker!, falls into the Zapata subcategory of the spaghetti western, meaning it concerns a Mexican revolutionary teaming up with an American gunslinger.
In arguably the movie’s most thrilling sequence, the Mexican character Juan is about to be killed by a firing squad when the American character John triumphantly arrives to save him. He blows up the wall with dynamite, allowing the pair to escape on John’s motorcycle.
Blowing Up The Bridge - The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
When Blondie and Tuco find a Civil War battle standing between themselves and the cemetery where the hidden gold is stashed in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, they decide to blow up a bridge to get the two armies to disperse.
So, they wire the bridge with explosives and pull the trigger. To pull off this sequence, Leone mounted one of the biggest explosions in the history of cinema.
Harmonica Kills Frank - Once Upon A Time In The West
Leone finally tells the audience why Harmonica is so desperate to kill Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West when the climactic duel rolls around. When Harmonica was a kid, Frank puts his older brother’s neck in a noose and forced Harmonica to support him on his shoulders. Frank stuffed a harmonica into his mouth, explaining where his signature free reed wind instrument came from.
After the backstory is revealed, it’s even more satisfying to see Harmonica draw first and shoot Frank dead. He stuffs the harmonica into Frank’s mouth to remind him who he is as he dies painfully.
The Hat Duel - For A Few Dollars More
The sequel to A Fistful of Dollars gave the Man with No Name a partner. Clint Eastwood’s iconic antihero teams up with Lee Van Cleef’s Colonel Douglas Mortimer to go after a dangerous bounty that neither of them could take on alone.
While Manco is reluctantly to join Mortimer, he changes his mind when Mortimer impresses him with his sharpshooting skills. Not only does he manage to shoot the hat off of Manco’s head; he shoots it a bunch more times as it soars through the air.
The Final Shootout - A Fistful Of Dollars
Ahead of the climactic shootout in A Fistful of Dollars, the Man with No Name slips a steel plate underneath his poncho. He taunts gang leader Ramón to “aim for the heart.” The bullets keep bouncing off the steel and eventually, Ramón’s Winchester rifle is out of ammo. At this point, the Man with No Name seizes the opportunity to mow down all the bad guys.
Biff can be seen watching this scene in the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future Part II, and Marty ends up applying the Man with No Name’s steel plate method to protect himself in his duel against Biff’s gun-toting ancestor when he goes back to the Old West in Back to the Future Part III.
The Climactic Standoff - The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
The eponymous trio spends the majority of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly tracking down a stash of gold that’s been buried in a graveyard. In the glorious finale, scored with one of Ennio Morricone’s most mind-blowing compositions (“Ecstasy of Gold”), all three of them arrive in the cemetery for a tense standoff.
Leone edited this sequence perfectly, gradually increasing the speed of the cuts as the shots get closer and closer to the gunslingers’ faces before they finally draw their weapons and open fire.
The Opening Scene Of Once Upon A Time In The West
Clocking in at just under 10 minutes, the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West brilliantly sets the stage for the spaghetti western epic to follow. Three gunslingers arrive at a railway station and wait around for the arrival of a train.
Leone ratchets up the tension throughout the sequence, which pays off when the hitmen’s target shows up. Charles Bronson’s mysterious gunfighter, dubbed “Harmonica,” steps off his train, plays his harmonica, and shoots the three guys sent to kill him in quick succession.