For a certain generation the cowboy film was the very best of cinema entertainment
and there were two or three decades in the film making business when every other film was a cowboy and Indian epic.
Sometime in the seventies something very strange happened with the first of the so called Spaghetti Westerns appeared. They were called spaghetti westerns because they were produced and filmed in Italy or more likely in Spain.
They were unlike any western before but the soundtrack and the almost cartoon like characters provided a new and sometimes brilliant piece of entertainment.
An important part of any good western is that it must have at least one good guy and one very evil guy. Its just a metaphor for life with the opposing forces of good and evil with plenty of innocent people caught in the middle.
The spaghetti western was in other respects no different from earlier westerns and that was the attention to detail in the dress code where the bad guy is always in black and the good guy in lighter colours. Both wear the ubiquitous Cowboy boots.
These boots in the films should ideally have spurs on them for dramatic effect whenever the villain or the good guy is walking down the street or sidewalk towards a gunfight. The sound of clinking spurs is an essential part of any good spaghetti western.
Maybe it is the continuing romantic notion of the Wild West which many Americans particularly in southern States like Texas retain to this day which manifests itself in grown up business men in modern suits wearing cowboy boots.
It is not uncommon for people in the States to pay up to twelve thousand dollars for a pair of bespoke hand engraved boots. These boots may have the owners own monogram on them and quite likely will have taken a couple of months to make and yet most of the boot is never seen as the trousers overhang them.
Of course it is not necessary to buy individually made boots at whopping prices like that and there are some great looking boots for sale at a fraction of the price.
They are one of the few truly fashion statements that work well for either sex although it has to be said at the risk of being sexist that a good looking slim woman in tight jeans and boots is always going to attract a great deal more glances than a man in similar attire.
The cowboys had their boots and the Indians had their moccasins and in the old nineteen thirties black and white movies there was always the scene where the Indian crept up slowly and silently on the unaware white man.
This always seemed a bit unsporting and yet here we are centuries after the Indians were over-run and robbed of their land and yet sales of moccasins around the world far exceed that of boots for cowboys.