A striking design on this poster printed for the Japanese release of For a Few Dollars More (opens in a new tab), the second in legendary director Sergio Leone (opens in a new tab)‘s unofficial ‘Dollars trilogy’, all three of which starred Clint Eastwood (opens in a new tab) and helped put him and the sub-genre of the so-called Spaghetti Western (opens in a new tab) firmly on the cinematic map. Although not conceived by Leone to be a series, The ‘Man with No Name’ concept was coined by the studio United Artists as an angle to sell the films, particularly since Eastwood plays the three different characters with similar mannerisms and dressed in the same attire. Despite the ‘n0 name’ label, Eastwood’s characters have a different nickname in each of the films.

In For a Few Dollars More he plays Manco (Spanish for ‘one-armed man’), a bounty hunter who is on the trail of the ruthless outlaw El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté (opens in a new tab)) and his gang. Whilst on the hunt Manco meets Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef (opens in a new tab), who would also appear in the next film in the trilogy) another bounty hunter who is also after the same man, and the two agree to team up and eventually split the reward. As the bullets begin to fly it soon becomes clear that the bounty hunters have different motivations for wanting to kill El Indio.

This Japanese poster is actually for the 1972 re-release, although it’s almost identical to the one printed for the original 1967 Japanese release (opens in a new tab). The only really notable difference is the alternate studio logo in the bottom right corner and a different number on the Eirin stamp (opens in a new tab).