Synopsis:

The Ugly West is a fanedit project by TMBTM and CBB. Both faneditors tackle one legendary Sergio Leone western to present them in much shorter, modernized and very different to the original versions.

Intentions:

Tmbtm and CBB wanted to do a project together and decided to take the most famous Spaghetti westerns of all time, not to make them better, but to present them in much shorter, modernized versions and give them the true fanedit treatment of turning them upside down. What started as a fun idea, ended up in 2 drastically altered versions, both serious, yet highly entertaining for both fans of the originals and western fans in general.

Change List:

HARMONICA “Harmonica” is a 1h11 version of Once Upon a Time in the West. Now when TMBTM started to work on this edit, he planned to make it fun, but in the end it turned as a serious version. The first version of the fanedit he made still included the character of Cheyenne, played by Jason Robards and he added an Iggy Pop song as his main music theme, but in the end it was the only “fun” thing about the edit and it was a bit jarring. So he decided to completely removed his character (adding one more common thing between CBB’s edit and his). Removing Cheyenne was not easy at all, and it turned a “quick made” edit into something way more difficult. It turned what was just a shorter version into something way more different. Forcing the relations of the characters into a new direction through the removal of a key character was a super difficult task. Cheyenne had no real purpose in TMBTM’s shorter workprint and that’s why in the end, he had to be removed entirely. The fanedit also has various new music tracks, replacing some of the famous Morricone score and giving these scenes an entirely new atmosphere. TWO GLORIOUS BASTARDS: It all started with the German title of the original THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, which is 2 GLORREICHE HALUNKEN (translation: Two Glorious Bastards). Now why the German distributors decided for such an odd title change is unknown, but it inspired CBB to drop THE BAD from his edit and to make things more fun, he also decided to try to remove every bit of the famous and awesome Morricone soundtrack and replace it with Johnny Cash. While the removal of THE BAD was not that hard, even though it required to drop some of the most famous scenes in Western history (e.G.the cemetery duel), replacing the score was a close to impossible task, because the music is deeply woven into the original sound and cannot be just separated. Using various complicated techniques and spending months on the audio recreation, CBB managed to give the fanedit an entirely new atmosphere, not better than the original, but highly entertaining and very different from the original. Each Johnny Cash song was carefully chosen to fit to both the atmosphere and the contents of the scene, in which it was used. Every song was filtered to better represent the 1960s audio quality of the original sound. In the end almost 50% of the new audio is a replacement of the original audio, using bits and pieces from the original, some other movies and sound effect collections.

Additional Notes:

Harmonica - Cheyenne was removed from the movie. - Some scenes are reorganized, and/or merged. Example: the scene where Claudia Cardinale is searching for something in the house is two scenes from the original movie merged into one - New musics. But All from Morricone (or musicians playing covers of Morricones music). Two Glorious Bastards - Angel Eyes (The Bad) was completely removed from the movie. - Tuco’s brother was removed, because the score could not be removed from his scenes. - The bridge scene is heavily shortened. - Tuco and Blondie are not caught by the Blues and imprisoned. - Some of the scenes from the extended edition were removed, because they were boring.

Other Sources:

Special Thanks:

Thanks to Blueyoda for his bonus feature video and the making of the trailer.