Any Gun Can Play: The Essential Guide to Euro-Westerns

THE EURO-WESTERN BEYOND LEONE

The full, vibrant history of the Euro-Western, offering everything any fan of Euro-Westerns could ever want to know. The success of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy in the 60s sparked a gold rush, as a legion of European film-makers, many of them sharing the get-rich-quick mentality of Leone's mercenary anti-heroes followed the master's lead to create some of the wildest Westerns ever made.

Cynical and stylish, bloody and baroque, Euro-Westerns replaced straight-shooting sheriffs and courageous cowboys with amoral adventurers, whose murderous methods would shock the heroes of Hollywood Westerns. Any Gun Can Play explores the films' wider reaches, their recurrent themes, characters, quirks and motifs. It examines the American models and explores the mechanics of the Italian film industry.

- Features the genre's leading lights, including Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma and Gianni Garko, writer Sergio Donati, and directors Sergio Sollima and Giuliano Carnimeo

- Foreword by Euro-Western legend Franco Nero

This stunningly illustrated reference guide demonstrates why these films became box-office sensations around the world, and their influence can still be felt today.

Author: Kevin Grant
Publisher: FAB Press
Published: 04/01/2022
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 5.25lbs
Size: 11.20h x 8.60w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781913051143

About the Author
Grant, Kevin: - Kevin Grant is a freelance journalist and film writer with a passion for exploitation movies. A fan of Westerns since childhood, he has contributed to a range of publications including Flesh & Blood, Delirium, Blood, Money and Vengeance, Hotdog and European Trash Cinema. This is his first book.Nero, Franco: - As the alter ego of Django and Keoma, Franco Nero's iconic status among Euro-western aficionados is second to none. He gave vigorous performances in more than a dozen westerns, and he remains an impassioned ambassador for the genre. One of relatively few Italian actors to make an impact on a global scale, he has appeared in more than 120 films since his breakthrough in the mid-Sixties, alternating starring roles in popular movies with character turns in more prestigious productions. A frequent collaborator of Sergio Corbucci and Enzo Castellari, he has also worked with Luis Bunuel.