"In his own way he is, perhaps, the most dangerous man who ever lived."

Nessuni Dollari

Bah. My purchase of an Italian Blu-Ray of A Fistful of Dollars from eBay fell through. Trying times. There's a problem with some nebulous 'consignment' or other. I'm refunded, and the chap got on to me sharpish, so I can't complain. It's a shame though. It would have said Per un pugno di dollari on screen, and everything! The disc also had Italian and English Mono tracks, I coulda enjoyed gleaming scrub-up picture without the garish re-mixed sound effects MGM have recently stunk up the place with. I can't bare to watch the extended The Good, The Bad and The Ugly for precisely that reason: rotten multi-track sound augments fucking with Leone's soundscape. I don't need 'em. It ain't right.

In this whizz-bang hyper-age of DTS-HD Master Audio tweaks, studios have got it right in their heads there's no place for soundtracks as originally issued. While it's nice to have the option to blow your roof off, it's also nice to have the track the director originally signed-off on. Technology shouldn't trump artistry. I don't really need to know what a 60s exploitation western would sound like with contemporary foley. It'd sound stupid, and it does. I also have a profound distaste for Extended / Director's Cuts superseding Theatrical Cuts for re-issues. Both please or not at all.

A Fistful of Context

When preparing A Fistful of Dollars for its first television screening in the late 1970s, the ABC Network discerned that something was lacking from Leone's grubby little masterpiece: moral context. "Why, that no-good Eastwood stranger just wandered into town and had himself some murder. Why did he do it? He's too unkempt for altruism!" perhaps crossed their minds. This pop New Wave western amorality was simply too vague for mainstream televising sensibilities, so the network had Two-Lane Blacktop director Monte Hellman shoot a piecemeal introduction sequence. Presented below, this dreadful little addition recasts Eastwood's most iconic character as a collaborating fink, prepared to work for Harry Dean Stanton's shady government lawman to save his neck.



Designed to answer a question no-one was asking, this prologue raises an even more mind-bending predicament: who in hell caught The Man With No Name?

The only good to come out of this sorry mess is that the clip further aligns the Dollars hero with that other stalwart of 60s pulp punishment: James Bond. Both are in-pocket G-Man murderers with cruel streaks a mile wide.