There’s really no understating the stardom of actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood beginning in the mid-’60s. After a tenure on the long-running TV series Rawhide and a few notable Hollywood movies, it took a stint in Italy to turn him into a megastar. Three films under director Sergio Leone changed his career forever; the films he made in the wake of his sudden stardom prove an interesting case study.

A trio of his early ’70s westerns have just received new HD transfers and Blu-ray releases from Kino Lorber, and with them we can see the interesting ways Italian westerns influenced American productions. Italians and other Europeans made American-style westerns since the 1950s, but it was Leone’s landmark 1964 film A Fistful of Dollars that ushered in a specifically Italian take on the genre.