Presentation Schedule
A Few Dollars More? The Influence of Spaghetti Westerns on Hollywood (110053)
Session Chair: Joel Campbell
This presentation will be live-streamed via Zoom (Online Access)
Friday, 13 November 2026 16:50
Session: Session 4
Room: Live-Stream Room 2
Presentation Type:Live-Stream Presentation
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The Italian Western movies, commonly called Spaghetti Westerns, were a hallmark in 1960s-1970s film making. They took the Western genre, which had been infused with U.S. notions of honor and morality, and created a gritty sub-genre that included morally ambiguous characters, antiheroes of various hues, extreme violence that often was directed toward women, children, and innocent men, politically-related themes, and sordid settings and squalor. The quick success of these movies impressed Hollywood studios, which were still turning out a high quotient of conventional Westerns. They began to produce Westerns and eventually film in other genres that were influenced by these Italian films. This started in the mid-1960s with such mild movie departures as The Professionals, then grungier fare such as Hang ‘Em High and The Wild Bunch. Mainstream offerings like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, art-house films McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Bad Company followed suit, along with trippier phenomena such as High Plains Drifter followed. The influence extended to other genres in the 1980s and 1990s, with Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead, and the films of Quentin Tarantino. This paper uses constructivism theory to sketch out a framework and timeline for the Spaghetti Westerns’ continuing influence on the films of the past sixty years.
Authors:
Joel Campbell, Troy University, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Joel Campbell is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Troy University in Japan
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