Following his contribution to Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name movies, one of the films’ stars got a chance to lead his own Spaghetti Western series. In the 1970s, Lee Van Cleef played the lead character in Sabata, a Western that prompted a trilogy of films. Sabata can be seen as one of many positive repercussions of Lee Van Cleef’s involvement in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy.
In the 1960s, Lee Van Cleef was cast in not one – but two – of Leone’s critically-acclaimed Clint Eastwood Westerns. The first was For a Few Dollars More, which saw Van Cleef play the revenge-seeking Mortimer who teams up with the Man with No Name. Next, he played Angel Eyes, or the тιтular “Bad” guy ” in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Both movies – particularly the latter – naturally led to new levels of success for Eastwood, but were also to the benefit of other actors in the Dollars Trilogy cast as well, including Lee Van Cleef, who enjoyed a string of Western roles in the 1960s and 1970s. Among them was Sabata.
2 Years After The Dollars Trilogy, Lee Van Cleef Got His Own Western Anti-Hero Role
Lee Van Cleef’s Sabata Has A Lot In Common With The Man With No Name
Whereas Clint Eastwood was quick to move on from Spaghetti Westerns after The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Lee Van Cleef had other plans. He remained in Italy, using his time there to star in a slew of Spaghetti Westerns. In 1969, he was cast in director Gianfranco Parolini’s Sabata, a Western about a renowned gunfighter-for-hire who gets himself involved in a fight over loot between gangs of outlaws.
Over the course of the film, Sabata finds a colorful ᴀssortment of allies who help him in obtaining riches and taking down the villains. He also has to navigate a difficult partnership with William Berger’s Banjo, an unscrupulous, untrustworthy person who may draw comparisons to Eli Wallach’s Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Gianfranco Parolini didn’t direct Sabata’s sequels. But his working relationship with Van Cleef didn’t end with the 1969 movie, as Parolini directed him again in another Spaghetti Western, God’s Gun, in 1974.
Similar to Eastwood’s Man with No Name, Sabata is portrayed as an incredibly confident and seemingly unbeatable gunslinger. And like Eastwood’s character in Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Sabata isn’t averse to a little treachery, taking advantage of the villains to maximize his financial profits.
Sabata Turned Into A Spaghetti Western Trilogy
But Van Cleef Was Only In 2 Of The 3 Films
Although Sabata never became an icon in the same vein as the Man With No Name, the anti-hero did wind up with multiple big-screen movies under his belt. The studio behind Sabata responded to its success with a sequel, Adios, Sabata. However, Lee Van Cleef had to be temporarily replaced for the first Sabata follow-up, with Yul Brynner filling in as the gunslinger in the 1970 film. Two of the other cast members, though, did return, with Gianni Rizzo and Ignazio Spalla once again playing his sidekicks. Apparently, Van Cleef was busy with another Spaghetti Western and wasn’t available at the time.
In a reversal of Yul Brynner standing in for Van Cleef in Adios, Sabata, Van Cleef played a Yul Brynner character in The Magnificent Seven Ride!, the third installment in the Magnificent Seven franchise.
That wasn’t the case for the third and final Sabata film. The original Sabata actor reprised his role as the character in the appropriately тιтled 1971 sequel, Return of Sabata. This time around, Sabata was joined by both Rizzo and Spalla, as well as his co-stars from the first movie, Aldo Canti and Franco Fantasia. By maintaining a mostly consistent cast, Sabata functions as more of a traditional movie trilogy, as opposed to The Man With No Name movies, which are only loosely connected to one another. The Sabata series, on the other hand, feels more like a true Western saga that follows the exploits of a handful of characters.
