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One of the best westerns ever made. Boasts an unforgettable Morricone score, a typically charismatic performance from Clint Eastwood and stately direction from the master of the genre, Sergio Leone With A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone gave birth to the spaghetti western. So it is appropriate that he should take the helm for the quintessential example of the genre with this, the best and last of the Dollars trilogy (after 1965's For A Few Dollars More).

Anti-epic, brutal and displaying an often overlooked gallows humour, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly centres on the aptly described protagonists. Eastwood (The Man With No Name - other than 'Blondie', or the Good), Van Cleef (Angel Eyes, or the Bad) and Wallach (Tuco, or the Ugly) are the three degrees of moral ambiguity searching Civil War-torn America for a buried payroll.

In truth, however, the plot is incidental to the film's appeal. The spectacularly bleak landscapes, Morricone's cheekily melodramatic score, and the physical interplay between the leading men all contribute to the film's (and Eastwood's) iconic status.

The finale's showdown is an inspired set-piece of sweaty tension and invention that has been blatantly lifted by directors all over the world from Woo to Tarantino. As cool as a cheroot in a heatwave.

Verdict Sergio Leone's masterpiece is as enduring as the scorched desert in which it is filmed. Also receives props for most effective use of whistling ever.

The Man With No Name joins forces with Van Cleef's fellow bounty hunter in this sequel, to take on a psychotic bandit and his gang (including a hunchback Klaus Kinski) The second spaghetti western in Leone's trilogy that includes A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Rival bounty hunters (Eastwood and Van Cleef) compete for the scalp of vicious bandit El Indio (Volonte) before striking an uneasy alliance to catch their man.

Leone's trademark motifs are all present and correct: taciturn, sweat-drenched men of dubious morals scurry through panoramic landscapes to Morricone's artful, twanging score. The film also includes social concerns of Church and family that were absent in 'A Fistful..'. Clint is Clint, but Lee Van Cleef's black-hearted Colonel Mortimer is memorably sinister. Psychopathic though the main characters are, the film is also charged with a mordant sense of humour that refreshes its gun-slinging machismo. Look out for Klaus Kinski, unexpectedly cast as a grovelling hunchback.

Leone's first spaghetti western founded a legendary sub-genre. Clint Eastwood (who else?) is the super-cool, amoral gunslinger who seeks to profit from the bloody struggle between two frontier families This massively influential film was where Clint Eastwood gave birth to his legendary Man With No Name, a grizzled, sharp-shooting loner who here profits from a small-town feud. He's the sort of guy who'll strike a match on your stubble, save your boy from a burning barn and steal your woman without a glance.

This was the first spaghetti western, shot mainly on location in Spain's dusty landscapes by an international crew and cast. Whereas the traditional western had clear moral boundaries, between the good and the bad, the cowboys and the indians, director Leone chose a more ambiguous world and, in doing so, opened up the frontiers of a new and vibrant genre. Values are blurred, violence is stylised, the story is a steal from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and the score comes, of course, from Ennio Morricone.