BUY

General		Extras
Category	Western	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 2.35:1 (Non-16x9), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1966	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	156:04 Minutes (Not 161 Minutes as per packaging)	Other Extras	Booklet Deleted Scenes (7) Main Menu Audio and Animation
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (97:39)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Sergio Leone
Studio Distributor	Fox Home Entertainment	Starring	Clint Eastwood  Lee Van Cleef  Aldo Giuffre  Mario Brega  Eli Wallach
Case	Brackleyised Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Ennio Morricone

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, 192Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Dutch	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The bad: the manner in which MGM have treated this trilogy's transfer to our beloved media.

    The ugly: those damned cases.

    The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is the final instalment in the classic Dollars trilogy, a series of films that forever changed the way Westerns were made due to its frank and deglamourised handling of characters from Colonial America. In each instalment, the story gets a little longer, the plot gets a little more complex, and the quality of the acting, particularly from the support cast, improves a touch. Exactly what makes this particular instalment an indispensable classic varies from viewer to viewer, but my assessment is that the presence of a story that portrays the Wild West as it more than likely really was, and the score music of Ennio Morricone make this film an absolute must-have for anyone who wants an insight into a transitional time in filmmaking. The Internet Movie Database ranks this as being one of the fifty best films ever made, and after a couple of viewings I can certainly understand that assessment. This film's magic slowly works its way into your pores over time, slowly working its way into your senses, taking hold of them after a couple of viewings, and not letting go for the whole two and a half hours.

    The film begins with what the titling refers to as the Ugly, a man named Tuco Ramirez (Eli Wallach), who starts the proceedings by shooting his way out of a bar in a small town. We are then introduced to the Bad, "Angel Eyes" Setenza (Lee Van Cleef), a hired gun who is not averse to making extra money by playing both sides of the argument, a similar role to what Clint Eastwood played in A Fistful Of Dollars. Lastly, we are introduced to the Good, a man known only as Blondie (Clint Eastwood), who just happens to be partners with the Ugly, constantly rescuing him from the rope that he so often finds himself dangling from, the idea being that the Good turns the Bad in repeatedly for ever-increasing rewards. Director Sergio Leone takes his time in introducing the three main characters, before they set off in search of the obligatory pot of gold. In this case, the pot of gold is a large sum of money, two hundred thousand dollars to be precise, buried in one man's grave. Being that the action takes place during the Civil War, the one man who knows the name of the man whose grave contains the money is a Confederate soldier by the name of Bill Carson. As things happen, Tuco happens across Carson while dragging Blondie across the desert in an effort to kill him as payback for ditching him in the desert earlier. Through a string of unlucky events, Carson tells each man one half of his secret, with Tuco knowing where the pot of gold is hidden, and Blondie knowing the name of the man whose grave it is hidden in. As Tuco forgoes killing Blondie in order to learn the exact location of the gold, they cross into enemy territory, and find themselves the unlucky guests of the Union at a POW camp. This, of course, is where they run into Angel Eyes, who beats the location of the grave out of Tuco, but doesn't try the same trick with Blondie. The three paths to the gold cross, and the allegiances switch back and forth faster than the focus in an Oliver Stone film.

    The plot may sound simple, and I doubt that you'll find another film of this length that has been made with so little dialogue, but the stark simplicity is where a lot of the film's appeal is drawn from. The film proclaims itself to be about three characters, a good one, a bad one, and an ugly one, and it gives you just that, without any of the unnecessary elaboration common to so many films. Having never seen this film in any other format, I am glad that the first viewing I experienced was in its proper aspect ratio, as it is obvious that Sergio Leone had a widescreen ratio in mind when putting the film together. Quite why the film is still rated R is beyond me, but if you enjoyed such films as The Quick And The Dead, then you definitely cannot go wrong here.

Video

    The transfer is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and unlike the other two episodes in the trilogy, is 16x9 enhanced. Whilst this is not exactly a crisp transfer, it is a surprisingly sharp one with a surprising amount of definition, and I doubt that this film has looked this good in terms of sharpness or clarity in at least thirty of those years. The shadow detail is somewhat on the ordinary side, with the main subject of night-time shots being clear and easy to make out whilst the rest of the shot is murky and indistinct. The biggest example of this problem is from 29:10 - 30:50, during Setenza's meeting with Maria about the enigmatic Bill Carson. Low-level noise is mildly problematic during the darker portions of the transfer, but it is never a serious distraction at any time.

    The colour saturation is, in a word, dull, although this seems to be more the result of the subjects in any given shot rather than any specific fault of the shooting or transfer process. Although the colours themselves are well-rendered, there simply isn't anything in the way of vibrancy in the subject material for either the camera to capture or the transfer to retain. The limitations of photographic techniques from thirty-four years ago do not help matters any, but the important thing here is that the transfer is an accurate reflection of the film.

    MPEG artefacts weren't especially noticeable, but they seemed to be mildly present in some backgrounds from time to time, with some blockiness apparent in the backgrounds. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some small amounts of equally hard-to-notice aliasing, in such places as wooden doors and the edges of hats. This is where the 16x9 enhancement afforded to this film really makes a difference, as the previous two volumes of the trilogy were riddled by excessive amounts of aliasing that can be fairly and squarely blamed on the lack of such enhancement. This makes it all the more frustrating that A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More smack so heavily of merely being recycled laserdisc transfers. Film artefacts made themselves apparent from time to time, with all sorts of black and white flecks making their presence known. How distracting they are depends on how much of an allowance for the film's age you make. Personally, I found them to provide something of an atmosphere that reminded me that I was looking at a film from a time period I wish I could have seen for myself, but your opinion may vary.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change coming at 97:39, just before a train rolls over the chain on Tuco's arm. Whilst this is in the middle of a scene, it is a well-handled layer change that is not too noticeable.

Audio

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times due to it being mixed at a higher volume, and audio sync is only a problem because of the usual dubbing anomalies that one expects. Unlike most other dubs created for these films, however, the English dub we are presented with here has the feature of the voices of the lead actors actually coming from the lead actors.

    The music in this film was composed by Ennio Morricone, and this film is generally considered to be his masterpiece. It is certainly one of his most enduring works, although, as I have probably stated before, I prefer his work on such films as The Thing and Escape From New York. In many ways, the score acts as a proxy for the dialogue, with the film's main theme being frequently reprised throughout the action for dramatic purposes. It is a pity that we have not received an Isolated Score with this DVD. The piece of music that begins at 134:38, as Eli Wallach begins running through the graveyard in search of the marker that indicates where the proverbial pot of got is hidden, is truly a masterwork without which the film's imagery would be nothing. The combination of haunting music and powerful imagery in this scene more than passes the ultimate film scoring test, that of making the viewer forget that either the music or the film existed before one another. If you can find this film's music on CD anywhere, then don't hesitate to run out and grab it.

    Being that this is a a mono soundtrack, there is no surround presence to speak of in this film. Although the sounds of battle and explosions are reasonably fat and filled with life, by mono standards at least, they are severely underwhelming at the worst possible times. The fact that the sound effects are restricted to what is essentially a single channel does not help matters any, and the slight distortion in the voices of the choir during the previously mentioned graveyard scene is symptomatic of this problem. My subwoofer occasionally took some redirected signal from the amplifier, but only during explosions, and the subwoofer usage could hardly be called spectacular.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Deleted Scenes (7, 14:33 in total)

Booklet

• Production Notes
• Trivia

    The video transfer is good for a film of this age.

    The audio transfer is passable.

    The extras are limited in quantity, but their quality is good enough.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
July 2, 2000