The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) on Netflix
In the Civil War Southwest, three men chase a buried fortune in Confederate gold. Blondie knows the name on the grave, Tuco the cemetery, and Angel Eyes wants what they know.
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- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tuco, a Mexican bandit wanted across the territory, is the captive of a drifter named Blondie, who turns him in for bounty money and then shoots the rope at his hanging so the pair can collect again in the next town. When Blondie leaves him stranded in the desert, Tuco comes after him, and the two stumble on a dying soldier who speaks of two hundred thousand dollars in gold buried at Sad Hill Cemetery. Tuco learns the name of the cemetery; Blondie learns the name on the grave. Neither can reach the money alone. A third man, the mercenary Angel Eyes, is looking for a thief known by the alias Bill Carson.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Eli Wallach was almost poisoned while filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a technician had set next to his soda bottle; he later complained that Sergio Leone was lax about actor safety during dangerous scenes.
- In Tuco's hanging scene, the horse beneath Eli Wallach was meant to bolt after the pistol shot; it was startled so well that it galloped about a mile with Wallach still mounted and his hands bound behind his back.
- Sergio Leone travelled to California to persuade Clint Eastwood to play Blondie; Eastwood agreed for $250,000 and 10 percent of the profits from the North American markets, a deal Leone was not happy with.
- The scene where the bridge is blown up had to be filmed twice because the first explosion destroyed all three of the production's cameras.
- For the film's climax, several hundred Spanish soldiers were employed to build the Sad Hill cemetery, using several thousand gravestones and wooden crosses arranged to resemble an ancient Roman circus.
- Leone wanted Enrico Maria Salerno, who had dubbed Eastwood's voice for the Italian versions of the Dollars films, or Charles Bronson for Angel Eyes, but Bronson was already committed to The Dirty Dozen (1967).
- For the final Mexican stand-off in the cemetery, Sergio Leone asked Ennio Morricone to compose music that felt like "the corpses were laughing from inside their tombs".
- The film's title has entered the English language as an idiomatic expression, used to describe the good, the bad and the parts that could or should have been done better.
