GERMAN AND ITALIAN WESTERNS...

Well, what makes a movie a "German" movie? People have asked the same question about Polanski's "The pianist"... (However, if "the pianist" IS a "German" film, then "Valkyrie" and "Inglorious basterds" would be, too. It is a question of what defines a "German" movie, and there may be no simple answer to it.)

Germany's most successful 60's-producer Horst Wendland spent a lot of money both on "Il mio nome è nessuno" and "Un genio, due compari, un pollo", though the credits of imdb.com have chosen to ignore it. He is credited in the German version, though. (His own son is even credited as Second Unit director of "Il mio nome è nessuno"! imdb.com has chosen to ignore this, too...)

Point is: though "Il mio nome è nessuno" is widely considered a failure in the USA, it was extremely successful in Germany. Since Horst Wendland had earned A FORTUNE on the German distribution rights of "Il mio nome è nessuno", it may have very well been HIS money in the first place which set the next Sergio-Leone-Terence-Hill-project in motion. It turned out to be this film, also a great success for Horst Wendland, if only a financial one.

However, with the exception of three German actors - Klaus Kinski, Raimund Harmstorf and Friedrich von Ledebur (by the way, I adore him as the priest) the crew was almost purely Italian. The film was shot in Almeria, I believe, but included also a number of scenes shot on location in the USA (Colorado, I think).

The favourite "European" cowboys should be either:
Terence Hill and Bud Spencer (because their films were easily accessible and very successful throughout Europe),
or:
the second best Tarzan Lex Barker. His believable performance as Karl May's noble larger-than-life-character "Old Shatterhand" caused the success of the German "Winnetou"-movies and thus set the whole wave of European Westerns in motion. Without the unexpectedly great success of "Winnetou" and "The treasure of the silver lake" (well, in Germany and Europe) no one might have even cared about ever producing "A fistful of dollars".

If you are American, you may find "Rampage at Apache wells" the most accessible film of the German Winnetou-series. The original novellist Karl May was a lot more accurate than this adaption would ever make you believe. Also, he was a lot more critical about the American pioneer myth. However, since via the Western, the American pioneer myth had become a reality of his own, the German producers decided to compromise between Karl May's original noble-savage-fantasies and the American pioneer myth. Despite its obvious inaccuracies, "Rampage at Apache Wells" is the film in which this compromise works best: you have Stewart Granger and Walter Barnes representing the American pioneer, Pierre Brice representing the noble savage Winnetou, and a very young Terence Hill representing the Italian Western that would come soon. It's almost as naive as a Marshall Cheyenne-Western with Lash LaRue and Al "Fuzzy" St. John, but if you are open to this kind of naivety, it can be a lot of fun.