REVIEW: SAD HILL UNEARTHED

By Elena Anele (*)

Sad Hill Unearthed is a documentary on the locations where The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was shot, showing the reconstruction of the cemetery in which Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach had their showdown.

It is directed and written by Guillermo de Oliveira and it contains interviews from amazing stars and crew as Ennio Morricone, James Hetfield, Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone and many others. It was nominated for Goya Awards for Best Documentary Film and released on 31 October 2017  at Tokyo International Film Festival.

It is full of interesting facts on the Italian movie as for example the one concerning the extras on the movie and part of the crew and it is great to see how fans rebuilt the 5000 graves in Burgos with the help of volunteers from around the world. Also, some of the interviewers’ anecdotes are priceless.

As it happens in several other documentaries it is similar to thousands seen before, it abuses of interviews, not giving anything new to the narrative, the creativeness it is on the digging for Sad Hill but not in the telling.

It can know be seen on Netflix and if you are a Leone fan I am sure you will enjoy and look forward to visiting.

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Elena Anele is the woman in charge of SPANISHFEAR.COM, Horror Rises from Spain  and Un Fan de Paul Naschy . A literature and cinema researcher, finishing her postgraduate studies with a thesis about the mystic filmmaker José Val del Omar. She has published in different media and books as Fangoria or Hidden Horror. She has also been in charge of several translations including Javier Trujillo’s complete works, La Mano Film Fest, The Man who Saw Frankenstein Cry and many more.