In the mid-60s, during the twilight of the cinematic golden era of American Westerns, it seemed audiences were finally growing tired of cowboys and shootouts. However, just as the saloon doors were almost closed on the genre, a wave of Italian filmmakers kicked them back open, like a vigilante gunslinger prepared to save a town.

Filmed mostly throughout Spain and Italy, spaghetti Westerns, as they were called, redefined Western tropes with a gritty, sweaty and morally ambiguous filter. The sub-genre meshed perfectly with the subversive counter-culture and evolving sensibilities of moviegoers at the time. The following are the best showcases of horse chases, bank robberies and epic stare-downs the genre has to offer, with some excellent musical scores for good measure.

15 'Face to Face' (1967)

Directed by Sergio Sollima

One of his favorite of his own films, Sergio Sollima opted not to glorify or exaggerate violence in his meditative spaghetti Western, but to explore its dark allure. Face to Face follows Brad Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonté), a university professor who nurses a wounded outlaw back to health before becoming a member, and eventually leader, of his gang.

The second of three Westerns the Italian director made, it is a highlight of his career for Face to Face's meshing of the genre’s coarse aesthetic with a more sensitive and grounded story of morality and gradual corruption. It was a hit in Europe upon release and has received lasting recognition for its performances and the metaphoric lens it cast on the rise of European fascism which stemmed from Sollima’s own wartime experiences.

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14 'A Bullet for the General' (1967)

Directed by Damiano Damiani

Set amid the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s, A Bullet for the General was an intriguing and underrated spaghetti Western or Zapata Western focusing on themes of loyalty, political turmoil, and betrayal. It follows two Mexican bandit brothers who befriend an American mercenary and bring him in on their revolutionary plot, only for the partnership to be complicated by the mercenary's mission to assassinate the revolution's general.

A Bullet for the General is able to generate frequent and heart-pounding thrills throughout its 115-minute runtime, with every intense beat of its winding plot being beautifully accentuated by a characteristically brilliant soundtrack from Ennio Morricone and Luis Bacalov. It also finds an arresting quality in its performances, with the enigmatic and ever-complicated Klaus Kinski truly captivating as one of the bandit brothers.

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13 'Death Rides a Horse' (1967)

Directed by Giulio Petroni

An old-fashioned dose of revenge and Western brooding, Death Rides a Horse made excellent use of Lee Van Cleef in a heroic role to be an entertaining if not unpredictable story that finds resonance with ease. It follows a young man who, having witnessed a gang of outlaws murder his family when he was just a child, sets out for some long overdue revenge while being accompanied by a former bandit who has his own score to settle with the same crew.

After his appearances in two installments of Sergio Leone's acclaimed "Dollars" trilogy, Van Cleef embraced his career's second wind as an elder statesman of the Wild West, shepherding the fool-hardy youngster. While the plot is basic genre fare, the film elevates itself with precise direction, Ennio Morricone's chanty score, and a final shootout that takes place in the middle of a sandstorm.

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12 'The Big Gundown' (1966)

Directed by Sergio Solima

Lee Van Cleef is one of the great stars of the spaghetti Western genre, where he is best remembered for his villainous role in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Arguably the most underrated performance from him though came in The Big Gundown, where he portrays retiring bounty hunter Jonathan Corbett who agrees to hunt down an accused rapist for a railroad tycoon and soon-to-be political ally.

However, the pursuit isn’t as simple as it first appears, and the truth of the matter is buried beneath a web of corruption and lies. Van Cleef’s magnetic screen presence remains entirely intact even as he occupies a more dimensional character than usual. Also imbued with a soundtrack from Ennio Morricone, The Big Gundown excels as an undervalued gem of the genre.

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11 '... If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death' (1968)

Directed Gianfranco Parolini

... If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death is a campy action-packed romp that lives up to its gloriously over-the-top title in spades. It follows bounty hunter Lasky (William Berger) gets involved in an insurance fraud plot, working for corrupt officials. However, his plan falls apart when he finds himself in the cross-hairs of vigilante Sartana (Gianni Garko), who plans to put a stop to his schemes.

While much of the film's framework is cribbed from Sergio Leone's filmography, director Gianfranco Parolini provides a fast-paced and pulpy alternative to Leone's work. The menacingly cool Sartana is akin to a Wild West version of John Wick, racking up a higher body count in the first 30 minutes than that of most Spaghetti Westerns in their entirety.

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10 'Day of Anger' (1967)

Directed by Tonino Valerii

Yet another spaghetti Western classic that utilized the grizzled worldliness of Lee Van Cleef with compelling results, Day of Anger ran with an interesting story about the cost of violence. When outlaw Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef) arrives in the small town of Clifton, street-sweeper Scott Mary (Giuliano Gemma) immediately takes notice. An aspiring gunslinger himself, Scott eventually convinces Talby to teach him his ways, unaware of the outlaw's sinister motives.

Van Cleef and Gemma have a wonderful rapport, one which defines the film as their complicated trainee-mentor relationship builds and evolves. However, their close bond is fractured when Talby sets his sights on the small community Mary once called home. Dramatic and contemplative right up until its final moments, Day of Anger excelled as both an enthralling example of spaghetti Western cinema and a thoughtful deconstruction of the violence it sometimes glamorized.

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9 'Duck, You Sucker!' (or 'A Fistful of Dynamite') (1971)

Directed by Sergio Leone

While it isn't Sergio Leone's masterpiece, Duck, You Sucker! (also known as A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time... The Revolution) still exhibits the director's penchant for style and epic storytelling in fine fashion. It follows ex-revolutionary Irishman Sean Mallory (James Coburn) as he has a run-in with Mexican outlaw Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) who attempts to recruit him to his crew for a bank robbery.

Built off the two leads' electric chemistry which secures one of the great spaghetti Western "bromances," the tale of the nuanced outlaws' tumultuous partnership remains engaging right up until they finally, conclusively team up to fight for a greater cause. As the last spaghetti Western that Leone ever made, Duck, You Sucker! has an erratic lunacy to it which is truly captivating, but it also has an ability to pack an almighty dramatic punch as well.

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8 'The Mercenary' (1968)

Directed by Sergio Corbucci

Undercutting the notion of staunch stoicism in the Western genre with a healthy dose of comedic zest, The Mercenary was as confident as it was ambitious. An amalgamation of a wide range of genre influences, it follows greedy Polish mercenary Sergei Kowalski (Franco Nero) as he works with Paco Román (Tony Musante), an idealistic peasant-turned-revolutionary standing against the Mexican army who is being pursued by a vengeful American gunslinger.

A daring film from Sergio Corbucci, the film was comfortable as a flashy, violent buddy comedy flick, but also endeavored to explore complex political ideas with more punch than one might expect. The end result is a delightfully rewarding and subversive spaghetti Western that all lovers of the genre can appreciate and enjoy.

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7 'Compañeros' (1970)

Directed by Sergio Corbucci

Running as a buddy comedy wrapped up within the political turmoil of revolution in Mexico, Compañeros was as fun as a spaghetti Western could be, serving as Corbucci's spiritual successor to the aforementioned The Mercenary. It follows the uneasy partnership between a Swedish arms dealer and a Mexican peon, with the unlikely duo being assigned the task of venturing into America to break an intellectual leader of the revolution out of prison, with the pair finding plenty of trouble along the way.

Like many of the films of the spaghetti Western surge, Compañeros excelled at bringing an amoral sense of grit and lawlessness to the screen with no small amount of excitement and style. Combining that with lovably flawed heroes and a brilliant array of supporting characters to make for a Western road comedy, complete with yet another sublime score from Ennio Morricone, made for a wonderfully fun masterstroke of the Western subgenre.

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6 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964)

Directed by Sergio Leone

The first of Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy". A Fistful of Dollars served as Clint Eastwood's introduction to the genre which he helped make an international cinematic icon. He stars as a nameless wanderer who arrives in the quiet, run-down town of San Miguel where he finds himself caught between two warring gangs and proceeds to play both sides against each other in an effort to rid the innocent townsfolk of their oppression while trying to make some money on the side.

A remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo, this Western classic catapulted both Eastwood and the spaghetti Western genre into mainstream consciousness with Leone's keen eye, Eastwood's prickly lead performance, and one of the first of many brilliant scores Ennio Morricone would produce in the genre proving to be a sure recipe for success. While later films, including some of Leone's own, would go on to improve upon the formula, A Fistful of Dollars paved the way for a brand-new genre to take the world by storm.

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5 'The Great Silence' (1968)

Directed by Sergio Corbucci

In the aptly-named town of Snow Hill, Utah, mute gunman Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) roams the region, protecting innocents from the corrupt bounty killers that occupy the area. When bounty killer Loco (Klaus Kinski) begins terrorizing the town, he and Silence soon find themselves in a battle of wits and bullets for the future of Snow Hill.

Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence stands apart from other Spaghetti Westerns in its subversion of many of the genre's signature tropes. The film's snow-covered setting, melancholic tone, and literal silent protagonist complement its revisionist themes and refusal to be a simple story of good conquering evil. Instead, the hero's quest for peace is an uphill trek, making for a uniquely engrossing, if occasionally bleak, take on the genre.

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4 'For a Few Dollars More' (1965)

Directed by Sergio Leone

The follow-up to A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More saw Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone get closer to perfecting their execution of the spaghetti Western while adding a few integral actors of the genre to the cast as well. It sees Eastwood's nameless bounty hunter tracking down El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté), a vicious bank robber, murderer, and rapist. Complications arise when Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) arrives to collect the same bounty and settle a personal grudge.

While the film boasts the style, intensity, and grit consistent in all the great spaghetti Westerns, one thing which set it apart from many other entries in the genre was its characters. Mortimer's underlying quest for revenge gave the film a strong emotional core, and his bond with Eastwood's lead was sublime, while Volonté's volatile yet nuanced villain remains one of the best the genre has seen, as does the film's climactic standoff.

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3 'Django' (1966)

Directed by Sergio Corbucci

After rescuing a prostitute, loner Django (Franco Nero) escorts her back to town, dragging a coffin with mysterious contents inside. When they arrive, Django finds himself caught between a Mexican gang and the radical Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo), with whom he has a grudge to settle.

Upon Django's release, the titular hero immediately earned a spot alongside Clint Eastwood's nameless gunslinger as an icon of the genre. Nero brings a grounded thoughtfulness to the character that sets him apart, all while getting to show off his action-hero chops. Despite the short runtime, director Sergio Corbucci treats fans to multiple shootouts, a fort raid, and a show-stopping sequence where viewers finally get to see what Django's got in that coffin of his.

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2 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' (1966)

Directed by Sergio Leone

One of the most iconic films in the history of the medium, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is arguably the defining achievement of spaghetti Western cinema. It focuses on two gunslingers who share an uneasy alliance as each one learns half of a secret as to the whereabouts of a sum of buried Confederate gold, venturing across a war-torn America in the process. All the while, a cruel and cunning mercenary pursues the duo to take the prize for himself.

A masterpiece of mythic proportions, it is impossible to overstate its popularity, longevity, and influence with everything from its score to its characters, its cinematography, and its magnificent three-way standoff conclusion ingrained in the fabric of the genre as it stands today. The final entry in the Dollars trilogy, the Western classic is widely regarded as one of the best films ever made and stands as a quintessential viewing experience for all movie lovers.

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1 'Once Upon a Time in The West' (1968)

Directed by Sergio Leone

While the "Dollars" trilogy will always stand as Leone's flagship creation, a strong argument could be made that Once Upon a Time in the West is his magnum opus. It follows Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), a New Orleans prostitute who travels to marry a rancher only to find he has been murdered by Frank (Henry Fonda), a merciless henchman for the expanding railroad with designs on the land that McBain inherits. With Frank aspiring to kill her, McBain finds two allies in Cheyenne (Jason Robards), the man framed for her husband's murder, and Harmonica (Charles Bronson), a drifter with his own secret agenda.

Packed with all the suspense, majesty, and craft of ten Spaghetti Westerns, Once Upon a Time in the West is an operatic epic that's both sprawling in its scope and singular in its storytelling. Bronson fills out the Eastwood role nicely and Fonda plays against type as a villain almost too comfortably, rounding out a spectacular ensemble. Add in Morricone's explosive score, and you have a Spaghetti Western masterpiece that will likely continue to be rediscovered and beloved by generations to come.

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NEXT: The Greatest Westerns of All Time, Ranked