Does anyone like westerns? Specifically, the ones made in Italy after the success of Sergio Leone's landmark Clint Eadtwood's Man With No Name, but actually, Sergio Corbucci's very violent masterpiece, Django, really caused it to emerge.
I'm in love with the genre, Italian or American. Leone's opus, Once Upon a Time in the West is my all time third favorite western, and film. Robert Altman's depressing McCabe & Mrs. Miller is second, and Corbucci's own opus, The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio) is at the top, with being the best and most disturbingly dark western (or should I say, anti-western) ever made. It's beautiful, hauntingly poetic, yet heavily nihilistic and brutal, with the most harshest ending of any wester, or film, that I have ever seen.
The films would not be as amazing without Ennio Morricone, who is quite literally, the God of Music. His scores are amazing, masterpieces. OUaTitW is beautiful, elegant, yet gritty, representing an ironic tone when the era of the old west is coming to an end. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the best original score ever recorded, period.
The Great Silence is more mournful, brutal, panicking, yet hauntingly poetic. The theme is stunning, like "West" with it's beauty and care, yet, unlike West,sad, stripped of romanticism.

If Leone's art film was the love poem to the endof the west in a beautiful fashion, Corbucci's dark masterpiece is it's blackened opposite, choosing instead a much more depressing and realistic tone with an ending so horrible, a new one had to be shot.
These films are the best ever made,,with a beautiful care and aesthetic not matched.

Is anyone a fan?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is my all time favorite Western. I must have seen it at least 50 times over the last 48 years of my life.

The scene where the colonel is happy about the bridge blowing up has always had a place in my heart. And the scene with Tuco running in the cemetery was awesome.

Yes! However grand Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was clearly the most human. This film had the most effect on me, before The Great Silence came. It was human, tragic, funny, the essence of the soul itself. I feel it unfair to rank this film, because it just cannot be. It's something more, something bigger that touches your heart, mind, and soul in ways I didn't get even know possible.. This is the greatest movie EVER made and I wouldn't have it any different. Tuco and his brother, amazingly played by Luigi Pistilli, his torture scene, the bridge, the battle, everything is... just so beautifully and humanly done with tragedy to the point where I just want to cry. The perfect film.

Although I like the Leone films The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is my favourite Western. Lee Van Cleef has a bit part as one of Lee Marvin's sidekicks. Sam Peckinpah was a great director of grim, bloody Westerns too.

Although the Western is not a film genre I am normally drawn to, a good film is a good film. There are a number of Westerns (or films set in the American west during its colorful past) I greatly enjoy and/or admire. Yes, "Once Upon a Time in the West" makes that list. Not quite so sure about "The Good, The Bady, and The Ugly", though at worst it's a contender. Amazon Queen's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is another fine western, though I've not watched it in so long it's probably due reassessment. Push come to shove, I would give top position to "High Noon", which I consider not only a fine Western but a truly great film.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly had a divine effect on me. Never have I looked at film, at characters at art, the same ever again.
Ah, that was a great story. Great story.
Have you seen Andre do Toth's 1959 bleak snow bound western, Day of the Outlaw? Pretty bleak and depressing film.

The Man with No Name series is my favorite.... I always think of Unforgiven as the unofficial ending to that series, though I dont think they technically match up like that.

Does Blazing Saddles count ?

To be totally honest, Unforgiven struck a negative chord with me. Not because it's dark and realistic, The Great Silence was far, far worse and did stuff no western would attempt. That's the thing, Clint tries too hard with in to bash us over the head with the anti-violence message with questionable acting that hinges on lousy and beats us over the head with it with corny dialogue instead of actually showing us how it is and the consequences of it.
Overall, it tries to create a dark atmosphere but is still trying to be careful with Eastwood's image and the politics with Hollywood by making an unrealistic ending. I think him dying would have really been a eulogy, a literal one as well as metaphorical, but... it never really happened that way.

Blazing Saddles!

My favorite as well. I like many of the Sergio Leone's works and have fun watching them. I'm not familiar with the other ones mentioned.

While not "Spaghetti Westerns", I also really like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (Redford and Newman), the Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday version of "Tombstone", and the brother heavy "The Long Riders" (The Carradine, Keach, and Quaid brothers).

Ooh, Tombstone was great, and so was Butch Cassidy!
Italy or America, westerns are westerns.
You should watch The Great Silence. Or, maybe Day of the Outlaw, to pave the way for something unusual with Outlaw, to downright disturbing and extreme, yet poetic and lyrical with "Silence."