The Clint Eastwood Star Collection (Fistful of Dollars / For A Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad and The Ugly / Hang 'em High)

A Fistfull Of Dollars
Clint Eastwood’s legendary “Man With No Name” makes his powerful debut in this thrilling, action-packed classic in which he manipulates two rival bands of smugglers and sets in motion a plan to destroy both in a series of brilliantly orchestrated setups, showdowns and deadly confrontations.

For A Few Dollars More
Oscar® Winner Clint Eastwood continues his trademark role in this second installment of the trilogy, this time squaring off with Indio, the territory’s most treacherous bandit. But his ruthless rival, Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, High Noon), is determined to bring Indio in first...dead or alive!

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
The invincible “Man With No Name” (Eastwood) aligns himself with two gunslingers (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) to pursue a fortune in stolen gold. But teamwork doesn’t come naturally to such strong-willed outlaws, and they soon discover that their greatest challenge may be to stay focused – and stay alive – in a country ravaged by war.

Hang 'Em High
They riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes: they hanged the wrong man...and they didn't finish the job. In his first American-made western, Clint Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guycool-headed, iron-willed and unrelenting in his pursuit of revenge. Oklahoma, 1873. Jed Cooper (Eastwood), mistaken for a rustler and killer, is lynched on the spot by crooked lawman Captain Wilson (Ed Begley) and a rampaging band of vigilantes. But as Wilson and his gang flee the scene, there's one very important detail they've overlooked: Cooper is still alive! Out for justiceand vengeanceCooper takes on the job of deputy marshal...and, one by one, tracks down the nine men who "done him wrong." Review for A Fistful of Dollars:
A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children. Instead it's every man for himself. Striking, too, was a new emphasis on violence, with stylized, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armored breastplate. The Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western--for example, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch--but their most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself. --Edward Buscombe

Review for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
If you think of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More as the tasty appetizers in Sergio Leone's celebrated "Dollars" trilogy of Italian "Spaghetti" Westerns, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a lavish full-course feast. Readily identified by the popular themes of its innovative score by Ennio Morricone (one of the bestselling soundtracks of all time), this cinematic milestone eclipsed its influential predecessors with a $1.2 million budget (considered extravagant in the mid-1960s), greater production values to accommodate Leone's epic vision of greed and betrayal, and a three-hour running time for its wide-ranging plot about the titular trio of mercenaries ("Good" Blondie played by rising star Clint Eastwood, "Bad" Angel Eyes played by Lee Van Cleef, and "Ugly" Tuco played by Eli Wallach) in a ruthless Civil War-era quest for $200,000 worth of buried Confederate gold. Virtually all of Leone's stylistic attributes can be found here in full fruition, from the constant inclusion of Roman Catholic iconography to a climactic circular shoot-out, along with Leone's trademark use of surreal landscapes, brilliant widescreen compositions and extreme close-ups of actors so intimate that they burn into the viewer's memory. And while some Leone fans may favor the more scaled-down action of For a Few Dollars More or the masterful grandiosity of Once Upon a Time in the West, it was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that cemented Leone's reputation as a world-class director with a singular vision. --Jeff Shannon

Review for Hang 'Em High
After starring in the now-legendary trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-'em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, L.Q. Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr. Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. --Jeff Shannon