Enzo Castellari began his career in cinema as an actor; he later became a stunt co-ordinator and editor, before co-directing the spaghetti western A Few Dollars for Django with Leon Klimovsky in 1966. Enzo Castellari’s first major success was Any Gun Can Play in 1967 and he pursued with such films as Kill them All and Come Back Alone, One Dollar Too Many (1968) and Tedeum (1972). In the 1970s, he turned to action thrillers and made the cult films High Crime and Street Law in 1974, but returned to the spaghettis with another cult film, Keoma in 1976, considered to be the best and last of the great spaghetti westerns.
Other cult films to his credit include The Big Racket (1976), The Last Shark (1981) Eagles Over London (1969) and The Inglorious Bastards (1978). Quentin Tarantino was so impressed by the later that he named his own war film – Inglourious Basterds – after it, purposely misspelling the title, offering Castellari a cameo role.
His foray into the fantastic genre includes such films as Warriors of the Wasteland (1983), Escape from the Bronx (1983) and Canon’s Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989). His slow-motion shoot out scenes, particularly intense earned him the nickname the Sam Peckinpah of Europe. His filmography as rich as it is varied, and his name will forever be associated with the masters of spaghetti westerns and Italian crime films.