Tag Archives: clint eastwood

Dashiell Hammet? Akira Kurosawa?  Are these among the progenitors of the spaghetti western?! Yep. Hammet’s Red Harvest informed Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which was transformed into the first Sergio Leone Dollars blockbuster that took the world by storm (although it was not the first example of the form). Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name was treated by US distributor United Artists as a western James Bond and marketed accordingly. All three Dollars films were released in the US in 1967, although the first was shot in 1964. As was the custom, this original Italian trailer Americanizes the names of the cast and crew: Leone becomes Bob Roberts, Gian Maria Volonte becomes John Wells, etc.