Spaghetti westerns are just westerns from a certain movement from Italy. Plenty of great westerns like Django and The Dollars Trilogy are spaghetti westerns.

The early one can definitely be a bit cheaper but The Good the Bad and the Ugly has great production values big set pieces and battles and what not so they became a huge thing of their own and some truly great films and filmmakers came out of that time.

Like I said they were considered very gritty at the time and also very violent although not by modern standards. That totally changed the course of westerns as a whole and is what inspired plenty of movies like Django Unchained which owes a lot to those films, even it’s name.

Pretty much every Eastwood western like Josey Wales or Pale Rider was made using the knowledge he gained while doing the spaghetti westerns and they are extremely inspired by Leones work.

Unforgiven is my favourite Eastwood western outside of The Good the Bad and the Ugly.