Mmm... Spaghetti!

We'll probably feature this again in tomorrow's CinePhillyist column, but we wanted to give it a quick mention today because it starts tonight: it's the International House's three-day double feature program, Beyond Leone – Lost Spaghetti Western Classics! "Spaghetti Western" is a term used to describe the series of low-budget Westerns shot in other countries - usually Italy - during the '60s and '70s. The most popular and well known entries in the genre are probably the Man with No Name Trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone (that's A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, all excellent films). But the I-House's program is something really special: a double feature each night, tonight through Saturday night, of really rare, hard-to-find Spaghetti Westerns. Tonight's screening, for instance, includes Quentin Tarantino's personal print of Day of Anger, which stars genre veterans Lee Van Cleef and Guiliano Gemma as an experienced gunfighter and an outcast orphan, respectively. Friday, meanwhile, features two films with the famous Spaghetti Western character Sartana as the main character, including the original Sartana film, If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death, as well as a cross-over film where Sartana meets another famous genre character: Django Challenges Sartana (like most superhero cross-over stories, this one starts with the legendary gunmen at each other's throats, but ends with them working together to beat the real bad guys). Finally, Saturday will see a screening of a Magnificent Seven rip-off called Five Man Army, co-written by infamous horror director Dario Argento, with a score by the great Ennio Morricone, and starring Peter Graves, Tetsuro Tamba and Bud Spencer. The last film is screening under the name They Call Me Hallelujah, but we don't know why, because its alternate title is one of the best movie titles we've ever heard: Heads You Die, Tails I Kill You.

We wish we had the time and the energy to sit through all three of these double features; as it is we'll probably only make it out to one screening. If you manage to make it out to any yourself, let us know how they were!

Beyond Leone – Lost Spaghetti Western Classics
The International House (3701 Chestnut Street)
Thu - Sat, 7/26/07-7/28/07, 7PM
$7 each night ($5 for students, members, or seniors)
Get Tickets

Image via SpaghettiWesternWares.com