A Fistful of Dollars

Whoa there tvtropes, stop distracting me, I'm trying to catch up on blog posts!

I've wanted to watch this Man With No Name Trilogy for a while, and have finally seen the first installment. And it's mega cool.

Eastwood as the eponymous man, though he does get called Joe by the undertaker (or possibly the bartender). It's my understanding that he's called something else random in the other films... also, these movies weren't necessarily about the same person. But come on. All star Eastwood, and they all wear the same outfit.... it's the same guy.

So Eastwood drifts into a junky town inhabited by two rival gangs. He proceeds to take out three gang members ("my mistake... four"), then go to the other gang for a job based on his killing credentials. He secretly goes back and forth between the gangs, essentially getting both groups to pay HIM to take them apart. It's awesome.

He eventually decides to help this one terrorized family out, sneaking them away from the gangs and giving them a huge chunk of his money (if not all he had at the time) so they could escape. This act ended up getting him caught, and he gets beat near to death by the gang. Until they leave him alone for a SECOND and he sets up a trap for them and crawls away from the compound (literally crawls).

He gets the coffin-maker to sneak him out of town in a coffin (of course), where he holes up in an abandoned cave to heal up before he heads back in to town to finish cleaning the place out.

... but not before fashioning a bit of protection. "A bullet proof vest! Great flic! Great flic!"

I had to watch this one! Big time referenced in Back to the Future III

Looking forward to the other two.