The film is known for Leone's use of long shots and close-up cinematography, as well as his distinctive use of violence, tension, and highly stylised gunfights.

A runaway ambulance arrives with several dead Confederate soldiers and a near-death Bill Carson, who asks Tuco for help, offering $200,000 in gold (equivalent to $6,000,000 in 2024), buried in a grave in Sad Hill Cemetery.

With his hands bound, Tuco is forced to stand atop an unsteady grave marker while Blondie takes half of the gold and rides away.

Producer Alberto Grimaldi, Sergio Leone and he had no plans, but with their blessing, Vincenzoni pitched an idea about "a film about three rogues who are looking for some treasure at the time of the American Civil War".

"[31] Film director Alex Cox suggests that the cemetery-buried gold hunted by the protagonists may have been inspired by rumours surrounding the anti-Communist Gladio organisation, who hid many of their 138 weapons caches in cemeteries.

[18] Production began at the Cinecittà studio in Rome again in mid-May 1966, including the opening scene between Eastwood and Wallach when Blondie captures Tuco for the first time and sends him to jail.

[34] This time, the production required more elaborate sets, including a town under cannon fire, an extensive prison camp, and an American Civil War battlefield; and for the climax, several hundred Spanish soldiers were employed to build a cemetery with several thousand gravestones and wooden crosses to resemble an ancient Roman circus.

Wallach mentioned this in his autobiography[41] and complained that while Leone was a brilliant director, he was very lax about ensuring the safety of his actors during dangerous scenes.

The jumping part went as planned, but Wallach's life was endangered when his character attempts to sever the chain binding him to the (now dead) soldier.

On the first occasion, an Italian camera operator signalled that he was ready to shoot, which was misconstrued by an army captain as the similar-sounding Spanish word meaning "start".

[40] Leone, who was obese, prompted amusement through his excesses, and Eastwood found a way to deal with the stresses of being directed by him by making jokes about him and nicknamed him "Yosemite Sam" for his bad temper.

By doing so, Leone managed to stage epic sequences punctuated by extreme eyes and face shots, or hands slowly reaching for a holstered gun.

Critic Drew Marton describes it as a "baroque manipulation" that criticises the American Ideology of the Western,[53] by replacing the heroic cowboy popularised by John Wayne with morally complex antiheroes.

Richard Aquila writes "The violent antiheroes of Italian westerns also fit into a folk tradition in southern Italy that honored mafioso and vigilante who used any means to combat corrupt government or church officials who threatened the peasants of the Mezzogiorno".

[55] Greed is shown in the film through its main core plotline of the three characters wanting to find the $200,000 (equivalent to $6,000,000 in 2024) that Bill Carson has said is buried in a grave in Sad Hill Cemetery.

[62][63][64][65] The score complements the film's American Civil War setting, containing the ballad, "The Story of a Soldier", which is sung by prisoners as Tuco is being tortured by Angel Eyes.

[11] The film's climax, a three-way Mexican stand-off, begins with the melody of "The Ecstasy of Gold" and is followed by "The Trio" (which contains a musical allusion to Morricone's previous work on For a Few Dollars More).

American heavy metal band Metallica has run "The Ecstasy of Gold" as prelude music at their concerts since 1985 (except 1996–1998), and in 2007 recorded a version of the instrumental for a compilation tribute to Morricone.

British electronica act Bomb the Bass used the main theme as one of several samples on their 1988 single "Beat Dis", and used sections of dialogue from Tuco's hanging on "Throughout The Entire World", the opening track from their 1991 album Unknown Territory.

Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach were brought back in to dub their characters' lines more than 35 years after the film's original release.

[80] On 27 April 2021, Kino released an Ultra HD Blu-ray version of the theatrical cut, using the same scan from the 2014 remaster, but with extensive colour correction.

The following scenes were originally deleted by distributors from the British and American theatrical versions of the film but were restored after the release of the 2004 Special Edition DVD.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Arguably the greatest of the spaghetti westerns, this epic features a compelling story, memorable performances, breathtaking landscapes, and a haunting score.

In a negative review in The New York Times, a critic Renata Adler said that the film "must be the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre.

[114][115] The outdoor scenes of many Spaghetti Westerns, especially those with a relatively higher budget, were shot in Spain, in particular the Tabernas desert of Almería and Colmenar Viejo and Hoyo de Manzanares.

[116][117][118] The genre expanded and became an international sensation with the success of Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's samurai film Yojimbo.

With grandiose wide shots and close-ups that peered into the eyes and souls of the characters, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, had the defining cinematographic techniques of the Spaghetti Western.

This was Leone's signature technique, using long drawn shots interspersed with extreme close-ups that build tension, as well as develop characters.

As Quentin Tarantino notes: There was also realism to them: those shitty Mexican towns, the little shacks — a bit bigger to accommodate the camera — all the plates they put the beans on, the big wooden spoons.

[123] In 2024, the Sabinares del Arlanza Natural Park announced a plan to rebuild the Betterville prisoner camp at its filmed location about 6 km from Sad Hill.