Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name spawned imitations, variations and shameless rip-offs keen to emulate his success at the box office. Within months of A Fistful of Dollars release, Giuliano Gemma was playing Ringo, who was then followed by Franco Nero's Django, Tony Anthony's The Stranger and Gianni Garko's Sartana each providing their own twist on the Eastwood antihero, and each of them then subject to their own spate of unofficial sequels, spoofs and cash-ins. Sartana tapped into more than just his Spaghetti Western predecessors a mysterious figure, he has a spectral quality, aided by his Count Dracula-like cloak which also nods towards comic strip figure Mandrake the Magician, with whom he shares a penchant for card tricks. He takes pride in his appearance unlike the Eastwood s dusty wanderer or Nero's mud-caked drifter. And there's a dose of James Bond too in his fondness for gadgetry and the droll sense of humor.
