Any thoughts on this book by the Italo-western experts here? I used a free Amazon.com gift certificate to pick up several McFarland books I wouldn't shell out full price for, and this was one of them. So far, I've read just a few pages, still in the As (yes, I'm one of those dudes who actually reads encyclopedic reference books). The writing is pretty simple, and I wish some entries were longer, but I doubt Weisser saw a lot of these films, and he did have 558 titles to cover.

Is this the final authority on Italian westerns (actually, it covers German and Spanish westerns too), or is there an even better book out there?

When I -- an admitted novice on the subject, moreso than I am now -- reviewed this book favorably for VW some years ago, I got a number of letters from hardcore Italian Western buffs who told me that most of the book had clearly been written without first-hand knowledge of the films themselves, that many of the synopses were wrong, that films were not listed under their proper titles, and so forth.

The best book on the subject is still Christopher Frayling's SPAGHETTI WESTERNS FROM KARL MAY TO SERGIO LEONE. The recent ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE ITALIAN WEST by Howard Hughes is good too, though it perversely omits Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST from discussion -- bound to be a deal-killer for many.

I agree with Tim's suggestions and add the Western All 'italiana books. If you've not read this series, all three volumes have dozens of reviews, are FULL of poster art, and have examples of nearly every other promo tie-in to these films you can imagine. I like the reviews are structured in such a way as to be easy to skip the plots and just read the reviews of the movies too. The books start off with volume one on great directors, then two and three are on great films in general. I've not seen a better series on Spag. Westerns and HIGHLY reccommend picking these up.

As for the book, I hope you didn't pay much for it. It's the same thing Weisser did with his Asian Cult Cinema book where he saw perhaps 23 of the 200 or so films featured. Add that to the posts, complete with titles and page scans, seen on Mobius a couple of years ago that revealed Weisser copied much of his more recent (more well thought of) work from Japanese books and magazines, and I personally wouldn't give the man my money. And there's no excuse other than lazyness, as you know he had access to all the films through his bootleg company Video Search of Miami.

The biggest tragedy of all is Weisser's book on Japanese sex films. This remains a truly invaluable reference book, and no one could ever complain about a few errors that inevitably creep into such undertakings but, and it's a big but, instead of simply sticking to facts, the author attempts to review and rate the films (99% of which he has not seen), and thus makes what could have been a major work of research seem like a con. I don't know what made him do this; some suggested the highly-rated films were those carried by VSoM, but I never checked their inventory so cannot comment on this.

Just in case you didn't know it, for no frills pure data of Spaghetti Western casts and staff there is probably no better place than http://www.fatmandan.de/. You'd better know the films' original title, though.

Weiser's books on Hong Kong cinema were the same - lots of reviews for movies he obivously had not seen, and some which did not even exist (e.g. ONCE A THIEF 2). I always assumed they were basically just advertisement for Video Search of Miami's bootleg stock.

Personally, there is a crying need for a new comprehensive book on spaghetti westerns by someone who has actually seen the films. In the last 5 years many of these films, including virtually all of the "important" ones, have been released on DVD in decent uncut widescreen prints. I have a collection of over 50 of them and I think the overall releases must be close to 100 by now (I'm unclear how many German releases there are as many of them don't have an English track).

That surely is enough for someone to write a proper history of these movies - I'd do it myself if I didn't have a full time job.

The problem with Weisser's book, as noted above, is that you get one of two meagre paragraphs on over 500 films and its obvious he hasn't seen most of them.

The book Once Upon a Time in the Italian West is good in its limited way but only covers about 20 films and despite coming out in 2003 seems to have missed all the old Anchor Bay releases (eg: the uncut Django Kill) and is written from a heavily UK centric point of view based on seemingly watching only those films available in the UK.

Agreed. I have the first edition of Frayling's book from (I think) 1981 and it's still a fascinating, well-researched and insightful read.

Also check out Alex Cox's website where you can download (for free) the filmmaker's unpublished book on Spaghetti Westerns.

Alex Cox's website