I’m not a fan at all of the restored version of GOOD, BAD, UGLY that premiered on AMC a few years ago. Not having seen the film since then, I got a hankering for some Leone this past weekend and put on my older, “unrestored” DVD of GBU and enjoyed it immensely.

Now, I never felt that any of the “missing” scenes were necessary (in fact I thought they were detrimental once they were put back in), but this time I noticed something missing and it really struck me. When Tuco (Wallach) and Blondie (Eastwood) are in the Union Army’s prison camp, and Wallace (Mario Brega), the head guard, calls out for prisoner “Bill Carson,” Angel Eyes (Van Cleef), in Union uniform, turns to see who answers. Tuco and Blondie immediately recognize him and Tuco nudges Blondie, and asks, “Hey, Blondie, isn’t that Angel Eyes?”

Now, I know that Angel Eyes knows who THEY are and has seen them both before—in the second of two scenes where Tuco is about to be hanged and about to have the rope shot through by Blondie, the one where Tuco’s offenses, as read by the judge, include “raping a virgin of the white race,” “statutory rape of a minor of the black race,” using marked cards and loaded dice, and abandoning a wagon train in the hunting grounds of the Sioux Indians after he’d been paid to guide it. (The rundowns of the various charges against him/crimes committed are among the film's comic highlights.) Angel Eyes notices Tuco in the noose and Blondie waiting in the wings and remarks to a lady stage passenger that “even a filthy beggar” like Tuco has a “golden-haired angel watching over him.”

But how do Tuco and Blondie know Angel Eyes? They never encounter him in any other scene in the film before they’re prisoners. And I don’t recall any of the restored scenes addressing that. And when I went on the web to look up a tally of the restored scenes I didn’t note any that addressed this. Unless I simply forgot that one and the web tally I found forgot it, too.

Can anyone answer how Tuco and Blondie knew Angel Eyes? And how Tuco knew Blondie knew Angel Eyes?

Thanks.

I always figured that Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes knew each other through both reputation and a fleeting encounter or two in the past, and didn't mind so much that no more information was provided.

Since we're discussing unexplained elements...how did Angel Eyes manage to land that fairly high ranking position in the Union army? We know why he's in the prison camp (to rob the captured Southern prisoners and find Bill Carson), but how did he (seemingly all of a sudden) get there?

I'm not a fan of the longer version either and I really don't like the stereo re-mix on it. Thankfully, the new DVDs of the first two films and DUCK, YOU SUCKER include the original mono. By contrast, I do like the re-mix on ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and never watch the film any other way now.

I agree. I figured this three as rougher versions of the Maverick brothers and Dandy Jim Buckley and Gentleman Jack Darby and all those other con artists that roamed through MAVERICK, donning different guises and ripping each other off. Not saying that GBU swiped anything from MAVERICK, just that my assumption was that Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie all knew each other from their "careers" as bounty hunters and con men.

Joe Millard's novelisation of the film:

(a) has a scene in which Angel Eyes finds the corpse of a dead sergeant who has been assigned to the prison

(B) has extra dialogue between Tuco and Blondie explaining that Tuco has met Angel Eyes (Setenza in the novelisation) before.


In the extended version Angel Eyes has the conversation in the ruined fort at which he is told that Bill Carson is either dead or likely to be in a POW camp. This gives him the info he needs and presumably Leone thought this was sufficient for the audience rather than get into a whole additional sub-plot.

In the dialogue exchange over the meal (before the torture) its explicit from the conversation that Tuco and Angel Eyes have met before and I don't really think anything else is needed. It serves to eliminate the need for any tiresome exposition in which Tuco/Blondie discover who Angel eyes is.

In answer to John Charles' question.

When the one armed bounty hunter interrupts Tuco's bath, he says he's been looking for Tuco for eight months. That means since the beginning of the movie. And in a movie where the sun rarely sets, it's hard to tell how much time passes between scenes but if we take the late Al Mullock at his word, then certainly enough time could have passed between Angel Eyes's visit to Maria and his revelation at the camp for him to have set himself up as a sergeant (presumably dishonestly) and volunteer to keep an eye on the prisioners. Really, who would want that job?

Agreed. I certainly wouldn't want another "explanatory" scene inserted. It's just that for the first time, after umpteen viewings of the film since I first saw it in a Times Square theater as a high school kid back in 1970, I noticed that Tuco and Blondie actually recognized Angel Eyes and I was curious as to why that was.

Which brings up another question. For the first umpteen viewings of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE in theaters and then on broadcast TV, I'd always assumed that Eastwood's character was "the Man with No Name" because, in fact, he was never named. Then, at some point, watching it on VHS tape and then on DVD, in the scene where Van Cleef is asking about a wanted man, Red Cavanaugh, and the sheriff tells him that another man had come in asking about Cavanaugh, I noticed for the first time that the sheriff adds a line naming the other man (Eastwood) as "Manco."

Was that naming bit added to the film at some point prior to its VHS release or did I just never notice it before because I was subconsciously blocking out any "naming" of "the Man with No Name"? Until I saw that I would have sworn he was never named in the film.

Anyone?

Thanks.

The line "His name is Manco" was actually cut out of the US original cinema release of the film in order to preserve The Man With No Name personna for US audiences which is probably why you didn't remember it. It has since been restored and is in the DVD.

There's also a later scene in the film in which Indio says to Nino (just before he kills Cuchillo) "How long have you known Manco was a bounty killer?".

In each of the three films Eastwood's character is called something different by other characters - Joe, Manco, Blondie - although he never calls himself anything or introduces himself by any name to other characters and doesn't register a name when he checks into the hotel in For A Few.