The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

There are two kinds of people, my friends: those who love Sergio Leone's sunbaked, savage spaghetti Westerns and those who resist the machismo, the mercenary morality and the gallows humor of his defining (and redefining) genre blasts. When "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964) rode into American theaters, caked in dust and sweat and stubble, critics dismissed it as a cheap Western -- and a European knockoff at that. Audiences, however, embraced the crude violence, the primeval austerity and the morally relative world. It launched small-screen Western heartthrob Clint Eastwood as a terse, lean big-screen icon and changed the face of the American Western for better, for worse and forever. The lavish eight-disc box set "The Sergio Leone Anthology" gives Leone's groundbreaking Westerns their DVD due. A newly restored master of "For a Few Dollars More" (1965), which launched Lee Van Cleef as a spaghetti Western icon, and the recently restored and extended three-hour version "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966) complete the Eastwood "Man With No Name" trilogy. Making its DVD debut is the first English-language release of "Duck, You Sucker" (aka "A Fistful of Dynamite") (1972), starring James Coburn as an IRA revolutionary with a penchant for dynamite who teams up with bandito Rod Steiger (in a role written for Eli Wallach). Leone's drama of the Mexican Revolution is a portrait in disillusion, and the restored scenes add even more ambiguity to the characters and layers to the eccentric friendship at the heart of the film.

"The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" features the same supplements as its previous DVD release, including commentary by film historian Richard Schickel and a slew of featurettes. Film historian Sir Christopher Frayling dominates the critical voice on the other discs with commentary and interview featurettes. Though other perspectives are conspicuously absent (how about American Leone historian and critic Robert Cumbow?), Frayling is an articulate and entertaining guide through the films, full of production stories and acute observations. Interviews with Clint Eastwood (from 2003), producer Alberto Grimaldi and screenwriter Sergio Donati (among others) fill out the Leone portrait. In an informative featurette, DVD producer and critic Glenn Erikson explores the differences in the numerous versions of "Duck, You Sucker." The buried treasure of the set is a five-minute prologue to "A Fistful of Dollars" (preserved in a collector's betamax copy recorded from the original TV telecast), shot by Monte Hellman for the American network premiere. "To the best of my knowledge, it only played once," remembers Hellman in the accompanying featurette.