BOUNTYHUNTERS

   Acommon character in cinema Westerns is the independent gunman making his living by hunting wanted outlaws and other desperados. The posters picturing criminals commonly said, “Wanted, Dead or Alive,” giving bounty hunters the right to kill without fear of legal consequences. The character rarely appears before the 1950s when Anthony Mann uses one in The Naked Spur (1953). It was the Italian spaghetti Westernsof the 1960s and 1970s, however, that developed the character more fully. “For a Few Dollars More begins with the words ‘Where life had no value, death, sometimes had its price. That is why the bounty hunters appeared’” (Frayling 1981, 127).