CLASSIC FILM CHOICE

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

(1966) 15 ◆

Saturday, 9.20pm, Ch5 ★★★★

A day of Clint Eastwood films starts at 1.35pm with the 1978 comedy Every Which Way But Loose – plus a new profile at 7.55pm – and culminates with this, the third in director Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns. Here, Eastwood’s ‘man with no name’ character (above) is a ‘good’ bounty hunter who reluctantly teams up with Eli Wallach’s bandit to track down stolen Confederate gold – and also on its trail is Lee Van Cleef’s mercenary, a man who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the loot. All of the Dollars films were released in the US in 1967, and it was the American distributor, United Artists, that came up with the ‘man with no name’ concept as a way to link the three for marketing purposes.