FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

The Stranger, Clint Eastwood; Colonel Mortimer, Lee Van Cleef; Indio, Gian Maria Volonte; Colonel's sister, Rosemary Dexter; Hotel manager's wife, Mara Krup; Hunchback, Klaus Kinski; First man, Mario Brega; Second man, Aldo Sambrel

CREDITS

Producer, Alberto Grimaldi. Director, Sergio Leone. Screenplay, Luciano Vincenzoni. Music, Ennio Morricone. Director of photography, Jack Dalmas. Screenplay by Sergio Leone. Color by Technicolor. Running time: 125 minutes. Released by United Artists.

If the success of A Fistful of Dollars caught its creators and the world at large by surprise, For a Few Dollars More did not. Leone was fully aware that he had stumbled onto a good thing, which moviegoing audiences were quite enthusiastic about. This sequel was given a budget of six hundred thousand dollars, three times the budget of its predecessor. Eastwood's salary increased accordingly. For his second appearance as the Man with No Name, he received fifty thousand dollars, a modest sum by his standards today but thirty-five thousand dollars more than he received for A Fistful of Dollars.

Like the former film, For a Few Dollars More was filmed in Spain, one year after Eastwood had finished his first spaghetti western. Upon release, it, too, was greeted with horrendous critical notices, but reassuringly, it accumulated the same astronomical grosses around the world.

SYNOPSIS

In the Southwest, shortly after the Civil War, two bounty hunters find themselves on the track of the same criminal. Both men, a steely-eyed young man called the Stranger (Clint Eastwood) and his older peer, a former Confederate officer known as Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), decide to band together and hunt their quarry, agreeing to split any rewards.

The quarry is a criminal named Indio (Gian Maria Volonte), a vicious bankrobber who has been convicted of killing Mortimer's sister. They track down Indio, and the Stranger gains his confidence by helping one of his henchmen escape from jail, an action that results in his becoming a member of Indio's gang. Along with three other men, the Stranger is assigned the job of creating a distraction large enough to enable Indio and his other conspirators to rob the town bank.

Once alone with his "partners," the Stranger kills them all, but he cannot move quickly enough to prevent the robbery from taking place. While the colonel waits for the Stranger to lead Indio into a planned ambush, the Stranger talks Indio into traveling in a direction opposite from that which he and the colonel had agreed upon. The Stranger's plan to enact a double-cross at the colonel's expense is prevented when the colonel, not a man to be taken so easily, suspects the deception and confronts the Stranger when he arrives at his destination. The two men decide to rejoin forces and continue with the quest to collect the bounty money.

The bounty hunters talk Indio into helping them rob a safe, then attempt to steal it from him. The plan backfires, however, when Indio captures them, but not before they have hidden the gold. When torture fails to make the men reveal where they have hidden the money, Indio pretends to release them, only to have them followed. A violent battle ensues, during which the Stranger and the colonel annihilate Indio's army. The climax comes when the colonel confronts Indio and kills him in revenge for his sister's death. Satisfied with vengeance, the colonel allows the Stranger to keep the reward money. The Stranger quickly agrees and leaves town with a gruesome cargo, the bodies of dozens of wanted men, on the back of his wagon.

REVIEWS

The gunman of Mr. Eastwood is a fearless killing machine. . . . Mr. Leone piles violence upon violence and charges the screen with hideous fantasies of sudden death.

Bosley Crowther, New York Times

A treat for necrophiliacs. The rest of us can get our kicks for free at the butcher store.

Juidth Crist, NBC Today Show

[The] script generally manages to avoid the cliche pitfalls traditional to the western and the dialogue is literate and satisfying to the ear. But it is thanks to Leone's bigger-than-Iife style, which combines upfront and closeup details in a hard hitting pace reminiscent of the Bond pix, that his acquires it's credible and impactful diversion. Clint Eastwood is fine in a tailor-made role for the squint-eyed opportunist.

"Hawk./' Variety

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