He was one of the main exponents of the Spaghetti Western genre during the 1960s and 1970s,[1][2] with his most notable works including the original Django, Navajo Joe, The Great Silence, The Mercenary, and Compañeros.

In 1963, he directed the ensemble war comedy The Shortest Day, which was produced as a benefit film for the studio Titanus.

A parody of the Hollywood epic The Longest Day, the film featured an all-star cast of dozens of well-known performers, many of them in brief cameo appearances.

His biggest commercial success was with the cult spaghetti Western Django, starring Franco Nero, the leading man in many of his movies.

[5] He would later collaborate with Nero on two other spaghetti Westerns, The Mercenary (1968) — where Nero played Sergei Kowalski, a Polish mercenary and the film also starring Tony Musante, Jack Palance and Giovanna Ralli — as well as Compañeros (1970) — which also starred Tomas Milian and Jack Palance.

[6] His most famous of these pictures was The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio), a dark and gruesome Western starring a mute action hero and a psychopathic bad guy.

Corbucci also directed Navajo Joe (1966), starring Burt Reynolds as the title character, a Navajo Indian opposing a group of bandits that killed his tribe, as well as The Hellbenders (1967), and Johnny Oro (1966) starring Mark Damon.

Corbucci's Westerns were rarely taken seriously by contemporary critics[13][14] and he was considered an exploitation director, but he has managed to attain a cult reputation.

[17] In 2022 German thrash metal band Kreator released the instrumental song "Sergio Corbucci is Dead" as an intro to their album Hate Über Alles.