For a Few Dollars More, often called the best western sequel ever made, is free on YouTube
Sergio Leone’s 1965 western with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonté is streaming for nothing on YouTube.
Not every genre is quite as allergic to sequels as the classic Western. If you look back, most legendary Westerns tie up their stories so tightly—usually with a fair-sized pile of bodies on either side—that there really isn’t much breathing space for a sensible follow-up. In a way, that’s what makes a proper Western tick: strong characters, a beginning, a decisive end, move on.
And yet, weirdly, what many consider the single best sequel in Western cinema is also hailed as one of the greatest Westerns full stop. For a Few Dollars More, still part of TV and film lore even in 2026, sits at the heart of Sergio Leone’s iconic ‘Dollars trilogy’—the series that made Clint Eastwood’s face almost as famous as the genre itself. What’s nice is, if you fancy revisiting it or are curious what the fuss is about, For a Few Dollars More is currently streaming for nothing over on YouTube.
For a Few Dollars More is available to stream for free on YouTube.
The Movie That Defined a Subgenre
The spaghetti Western—we really have Leone to thank (or blame) for that term—properly took shape after the first film in his series, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), made its mark as a clever update on the lone-stranger formula. But it’s the 1965 sequel, For a Few Dollars More, that cemented the style: not your grandad's dusty black-and-white, but something grittier, full of cross-purpose motives and characters who are anything but clean-cut.
You’ve got Eastwood’s not-exactly-hero taking up with Lee Van Cleef’s Colonel Mortimer—both bounty hunters, not partners. They’re drawn together out of necessity, more mercenary than mates, which wasn’t that common at the time. The villain is a step up too: Gian Maria Volonté’s El Indio, who is far from some moustache-twirler. He’s tortured, twitchy, wily—a proper tragic bad guy, not just a moving target. This pushed the series into the territory of antiheroes uniting against an even nastier sort, rather than good vs evil in neat hats and boots.
The Dollars Trilogy Timeline Is All Over the Place
Now here’s something film nerds love to argue: in what order do these films actually play out? On paper, they came out like this:
- A Fistful of Dollars - 1964
- For a Few Dollars More - 1965
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - 1966
Easy enough, except the internal timeline is a bit of a mess. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is set during the American Civil War, neatly anchoring it somewhere in the 1860s. For a Few Dollars More is supposedly a decade later, with Van Cleef’s character as a Civil War vet. A Fistful of Dollars lands after that, according to a few cemetery dates that die-hards have pored over. But since these films are essentially standalone stories—same lead, different details—it genuinely makes more sense to just watch them in the order they hit cinemas, so you can see Leone's directing style evolve right alongside Eastwood’s squint.