In a new video from Insider, Civil War expert Garry Adelman offered an assessment of Clint Eastwood’s classic 1966 Western, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and ultimately gave the film a fairly low rating in terms of its historical accuracy. Sergio Leone directed movie marks the third and final film in Dollars Trilogy, which began with 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars and was followed up with 1965’s For a Few Dollars More.
The third film takes place in the Southwest during the Civil War and follows three gunslingers, Eastwood’s Blondie (aka The Man with No Name), Angel Eyes (played by Lee Van Cleef), and Tuco (played by Eli Wallach) all attempting to uncover Confederate gold buried in the desert.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly takes its share of creative liberties when it comes to historical accuracy and is typically regarded as a spaghetti Western. While judging the historical accuracy in Eastwood’s iconic Western, Adelman quickly called out the film’s use of weaponry. Adelman said:
“Right away, what stands out is the Gatling gun. The Gatling gun was around during the Civil War, but it was not used in 1862. It was also not used in New Mexico where this is really set. You can count on two hands the number of Gatling guns that were actually used in the Civil War and those used would have been barely at Petersburg and occasionally on Union Navel vessels. The idea that these positions are prepared in a battle that in reality happened with nobody expecting it. They’ve got revetted walls and mortar guns and all this. That stood out right away as something a little crazy.”
Still, the Civil War expert did note that some elements of the movie appeared to be accurate.
Garry Adelman Noted That the Scene With “A Lot of Artillery Fire” Is Actually “Pretty Realistic”
Adelman stated, “It’s pretty realistic in that scene that you see a lot of artillery fire. Not exactly the artillery fire I would expect. They certainly weren’t lugging those heavy mortar guns with high arches all the way through the New Mexico desert in order to get to this place, but it’s pretty realistic that they’re shooting with artillery at first because they’re really outside of the 250-350 yard range that is the effective range of the shoulder carried rifled muskets. The idea of both sides charging as a melee into one another. There weren’t 800 soldiers on each side at the Battle of Glorietta Pass going over a 300 yard sort of meeting in the middle. That sounds more like medieval days than the Civil War.”
The expert continued, “We actually have solid accounts of how Civil War soldiers wired bridges. This was often done by engineer soldiers, soldiers who understood explosives and where to place them so that they could use as little as possible to get the job done there. They seem to be doing a pretty good job in the movie wiring it along where the peers and the main supports were in order to make this particular bridge collapse.
Adelman added, “I’m not aware of soldiers on either side blowing up bridges during the Battle of Glorietta Pass to affect some sort of a victory. Battles were often fought over transportation facilities. It was so important to control rivers and roads and railroads that bridges were natural targets of both armies during the Civil War.” The Civil War expert wrapped up his assessment, giving the film a pretty low rating in terms of historical accuracy. Adelman said, “I would give this clip a two out of ten. The fact is that this is so wrong that it’s hard to attribute to any one battle in this campaign.”