The Hills Run Red: Italian Westerns, Leone, and Beyond

1/10/13 to 1/27/13

Join us for six classic Spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Damiani Damiano, and others, many featuring music by the maestro of the genre, Ennio Morricone. Filmed in the rugged landscapes of Italy and Spain and starring rising (or fading) American actors such as Lee Van Cleef, Burt Reynolds, James Coburn, and Jack Palance, these films have had a lasting impact on movie-making-Quentin Tarantino's new Django Unchained being the latest example.

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  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Sabata

    • Sunday, January 27 5 pm

    Gianfranco Parolini (Italy/Spain, 1969). Spaghetti Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef glares his way across a town of “upstanding citizens”-and takes them all on-in this brutal Western. A character's concealed “banjo gun” was later lifted by El Mariachi. (107 mins)

  • Navajo Joe

    • Friday, January 25 9:10 pm

    Sergio Corbucci (Italy/Spain, 1966). Score by Ennio Morricone! A pre-stardom Burt Reynolds is Navajo Joe, who's on the warpath after his wife is killed. Part of Ennio Morricone's score, complete with embedded screams, was lifted for Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2. (92 mins)

  • China 9, Liberty 37

    • Saturday, January 19 8:45 pm

    Monte Hellman (Italy/Spain, 1978). The director of such acid oaters as The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind samples the spicy red concoction of Spaghetti for this latter-day Western, starring Warren Oates and Fabio Testi as two gunslingers setting their sights on railroading moguls and their freight car full of hired thugs. (102 mins)

  • A Bullet for the General

    • Thursday, January 17 7 pm

    Damiano Damiani (Italy, 1966). Gian-Maria Volontè plays El Chucho, a badass bandit bent on exploiting the revolution, whose brother is the demented priest El Santo (the feral one, Klaus Kinski). The action is packed in this compressed concentrate about deceitful perversion and political conversion. (118 mins)

  • The Mercenary

    • Saturday, January 12 8:10 pm

    Sergio Corbucci (Italy/Spain, 1968). Score by Ennio Morricone! The revolution will not be narcotized in Corbucci's rabble-rousing rebellion, which follows a Mexican peasant leader Paco Roman (Tony Musante), a taciturn mercenary (Franco Nero), and oppressed silver miners as they battle businessman and a psychotic thug (Jack Palance).(105 mins)

  • Duck, You Sucker

    • Thursday, January 10 7 pm

    Sergio Leone (Italy/Spain, 1971). Score by Ennio Morricone! In torrid Mexico, just in time for the undoing of Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship, the bandito Juan (Rod Steiger, sputtering in Spanglish) teams with nitroglycerin expert Sean Mallory (James Coburn) to make a few holes with the “holy water.” Leone's strangest concoction-a mix of high camp, booming ordnance, and radical zeal.(158 mins)