The Good Bad And The Ugly (DVD 2000)

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, written by Age Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Leone is the third and last western in Clint Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy. Director Sergio Leone substitutes for the upright puritan Protestant ethos, so familiar in Hollywood westerns, a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and mortality, as a team of brutal bandits battle to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked grave. Joining Clint, clearly "The Good", is the irredeemably "Bad" Lee and the resolutely "Ugly" Eli Wallach. The complete plot of bloodshed and betrayal winds its way through the American Civil War, filmed to resemble the French battlefields of World War One, to end in the climatic Dance Of Death. Arguably the quintessential Italian Western, this 1966 film boasts a fine Ennio Morricone score featuring a main theme that reached No. 1 in the world's pop charts. This special edition DVD has been restored to its full length with the addition of three missing scenes from the original Italian version.