About This Quiz
Sergio Leone's famous Dollars Trilogy is sometimes called the Blood Money Trilogy or the Man With No Name Trilogy. Weirdly enough, they were never really meant to be a trilogy and actors from one movie will appear in another as a totally different character. What linked them together? Sergio Leone's distinct style and the fact that Clint Eastwood looks exactly the same in each film. Leone was just making movies, but the American distributor saw an opportunity to market them as a trilogy off the strength of Eastwood, who was a rising star on TV but hadn't really broken into film yet.
The result was a series of movies that were not fully appreciated at the time, but have grown into classics of the genre. Remember, back in the late 1960s, many considered the Spaghetti Western something of an unimpressive film genre. They were considered cheap knockoffs of American movies and, in fact, "A Fistful of Dollars" only had a budget of around $200,000. Clint Eastwood basically supplied his own costume and had to correct all kinds of aspects of the film because Leone and his crew really had no idea what the West was like. The original script had them in coonskin caps.
The result of Leone and Eastwood's collaboration is one of the great trilogies in Western history. But how well do you know them? Take the quiz and we'll find out!
The link between these three movies is a little tenuous and, as such, Clint Eastwood appears in all three but with three different names. He's Blondie in "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," Manco in "For a Few Dollars More" and Joe in "A Fistful of Dollars." Ironically he's often called "The Man With No Name" despite having a name in each movie.
Clint Eastwood's Blondie tossed out this grim-sounding line in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" directed at Tuco, who he then makes dig on account of the gun he has in his hand. Tuco had a line earlier about the two kinds of spurs in the world.
Clint Eastwood's poncho was almost a character unto itself in these movies. It was the same garment in all three movies that was never washed once, though it did have to be mended a bit between films. Eastwood famously came up with his own costume for these movies.
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Actor Lee Van Cleef pops up in two of Sergio Leone's three films, "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly." Oddly enough, he doesn't actually pay the same character in both movies.
Clint Eastwood's The Man with No Name, whose name is actually Manco in "For a Few Dollars More" is the character who says this line. Depending on your source, some places list his name as Monco in this film as well.
The movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" takes place during the Civil War which makes it the first movie in the trilogy, even though it was the third movie released. The other films clearly take place later based on dates shown and things said, so this was a prequel.
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Lee Van Cleef plays Colonel Douglas Mortimer in "For a Few Dollars More." Eastwood's character refers to him as Old Man while he calls Eastwood's character boy. The two actors were only 5 years apart in age.
Unlike a lot of the actors across the three films, Eli Wallach didn't appear in the other two movies. His role in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" was a prominent one but he was not in the previous two films of the trilogy.
The conflict between the Rojo brothers and Sheriff John Baxter is the central feud of "A Fistful of Dollars." Clint Eastwood's character comes into the middle, playing both sides to make a few bucks in the process.
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This line comes courtesy of The Good, also known as Blondie from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." In the gun shop scene from this movie, all of the things Eli Wallach does with the gun were unscripted, as the actor knew little of guns and was told to just do whatever he wanted.
Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa actually sued the filmmakers because "A Fistful of Dollars" was an unofficial remake of "Yojimbo." They won their case and 15% of the profits went to Kurosawa and his fellow "Yojimbo" screenwriter.
Angel Eyes slaps a woman named Maria in the film but in real life that was not actor Lee Van Cleef doing it. Van Cleef refused to slap the actress during filming stating "There are very few principles I have in life. One of them is I don't kick dogs, and the other one is I don't slap women in movies."
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El Indio is played by Gian Maria Volonte in the movie "For a Few Dollars More." The character is only in that movie but Volonte did have a role in the first movie "A Fistful of Dollars" as Ramon Rojo.
Sergio Leone directed all three films in the trilogy. Leone did not speak English and star Clint Eastwood spoke no Italian, so they had to use a stuntman as an intermediary. This was common across all three films. Eli Wallach didn't speak Italian but did speak French, so he and Leone used that language on set.
Ennio Morricone scored dozens of films in his career including Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight." He scored all three of Leone's films in the Dollars Trilogy. In the second film "For a Few Dollars More," Leone had him score the movie before filming even began so he could shoot to the score as it was made.
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There's a buried stash of Confederate gold in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" said to be worth $200,000, which is what everyone is on the hunt for. Eli Wallach was poisoned on set after accidentally drinking acid that had been used to weaken the bags of gold coins he breaks open with a shovel.
The stash of gold is buried in Sad Hill Cemetery. The Spanish Army helped build the cemetery in 1966 and you can still go on tours to visit it today. Even weirder, you can follow the cemetery on Twitter if you want to at @acsadhill
The town that Clint Eastwood's character finds himself in is called San Miguel. In real life, the locations they shot in were pretty rough. As Clint Eastwood has said, they didn't even have working bathrooms, they just went behind rocks.
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Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name has a sneaky secret beneath his poncho in the form of a steel plate. When Ramon shoots him, the bullets hit the plate and do nothing. He empties his entire gun to no avail.
Clint Eastwood's character makes use of a coffin as a tool to escape the town with the help of the coffin-maker. He leaves town long enough to recover from his injuries then heads back to finish off the Rojos.
Blondie reads the word "idiot" in specific from the letter that Tuco was having trouble reading. He then says "It's for you" before handing it back to Tuco in one of the film's more humorous exchanges between the two characters.
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Mario Brega is one of only a handful of actors who appeared in all three films. In "A Fistful of Dollars" he plays a character named Chico. A big and intimidating man, he often played rough characters and was sometimes credited as Richard Stuyvesant.
German actor Klaus Kinski plays Wild the Hunchback. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, there's no dialogue whatsoever as Lee Van Cleef approaches him from behind and uses his hunch to light a match,
The Man with No Name says this line to the villain Ramon Rojo in "A Fistful of Dollars." Not only is it some cool hero-type stuff to say to a guy to make Eastwood sound like a badass, but it's also pretty tricky since Eastwood's heart is covered by armor plating.
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The grave that everyone is searching for where the gold is said to be buried is under a marker that reads Arch Stanton. Or at least that's what Blondie tells people. It's actually in the unmarked grave next to Arch Stanton.
The three-way standoff at the end of the movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is one of the film's most famous scenes. Good shoots Bad while Ugly finds out too late that his gun isn't even loaded.
Despite having a serious run of bad luck, Tuco the Ugly manages to survive the entire movie. He avoids being shot in the final shootout and even though Blondie puts a noose around his neck to hang him; he shoots the rope later to free him.
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When the alliance between the Good, the Bad and the Ugly starts breaking down, Blondie writes the name of the grave where the gold is hidden on a rock and places it face down on the ground. He then suggests a three-way duel for them to decide who gets the gold.
Mortimer is the one who shoots and kills Indio at the end of the movie. After he dies, Mortimer takes the man's watch. This is when we find out the twist that Mortimer is the brother of the woman in the photograph and killing Indio was his revenge for what happened to his sister.
Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name confronts an entire gang of men in the town and explains that they've upset his mule. They laugh about it and he wants them to apologize in the movie "A Fistful of Dollars."
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After Mortimer draws down and shoots Indio, proving he's the faster gun, Clint Eastwood's Manco simply gives him an appreciative "Bravo." Word is Sergio Leone wanted a number of different actors to play Mortimer including Jack Palance, Henry Fonda, Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson.
Just as Tuco is about to kill Blondie, they run across a stagecoach on which Carson is dying of dehydration. Tuco goes to get him water but when he returns the man has perished, but not before telling Blondie where to look for the gold.
Lorenzo Robledo played Clem in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and he played Tomaso in "For a Few Dollars More." He was even in "A Fistful of Dollars" as a gang member, but he didn't really have a name in that one.
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The term "rat" gets thrown out more than a few times throughout the script for "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" but Blondie does toss it out in reference to Tuco. At one point he switches it up and calls him a greasy rat.
That line doesn't come from any of the Dollars trilogy movies, it's from "Tombstone" and Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday says it. In "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" you will hear Tuco the Ugly say "I'm innocent" a couple of times, however.