For a Few Dollars More [DVD] [1965]

This pulse-pounding follow-up to Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars brings back Clint Eastwood as the serape-clad, cigar-chewing "Man With No Name." Engaged in an ongoing battle with bounty hunter Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), the Man joins forces with his enemy to capture homicidal bandit Indio (Gian Maria Volontè). Both the Eastwood and Van Cleef characters are given understandable motivations for their bloodletting tendencies, something that was lacking in A Fistful of Dollars. In both films, however, the violence is raw and uninhibited -- and in many ways, curiously poetic. Leone's tense, tight close-ups, pregnant pauses, and significant silences have since been absorbed into the standard spaghetti Western lexicon; likewise, Ennio Morricone's haunting musical score has been endlessly imitated and parodied. For a Few Dollars More was originally titled Per Qualche Dollaro in Più; it would be followed by the last and best of the Man with No Name trilogy, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.~Hal Erickson