Four films directed by Sergio Leone — his  Dollars trilogy with Clint Eastwood and his epic, Once upon a Time in the West. There is the rest of the Italian western sub-genere, which may include as many as 500 films. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, every European producer must have at least one western on the runway. Most of these were all-Italian, shot in the studios just outside Rome. Some were big scale with international casts, outdoors in Spain, finance from Germany and shot in American studios. The themes were treasure hunt, revenge stories. The cheaper Italian westerns seemed more original and far more bizarre. Spaghetti westerns very visually extremely striking, aurraly distinctive, wonderfully acted, violent, mystifying, perversely inspirational. The surreal Spanish desert is the hovel of cowboys.