Clint Eastwood: King of the West

Tabernas, Spain, Sept. 21 (Reuters): Clint Eastwood shot a man free from a noose here, survived a three-way shoot-out with The Bad and The Ugly, then rode off into the sunset.

Steve McQueen was charging through dusty barren hills in The Magnificent Seven around here the same time,.

For all its Tex-Mex feel, this is southeast Spain, Europe?s only desert, where Italian director Sergio Leone filmed some of his spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s, including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

John Sturges chose the Almeria desert to film The Magnificent Seven and Tony Valeri also shot For the Taste of Killing here, in the barren wastes some 400 km from Madrid but only half as far to the coast of Algeria.

The days of the spaghetti Western may have waned but a film set still operates and the owner says he has a waiting list of producers who want to film at his faux Western town and in the surrounding scrub and cacti-covered hills.

Soccer star David Beckham strode through the saloon doors here in a Pepsi commercial two years ago and several adverts, including one for BMW?s Mini, have followed.

Commercials are a good money-earner between movies, but co-owner Rafael Molina says he has to be careful to avoid overexposing the recently renamed Cinema Studios Fort Bravo.

?With studios the same thing happens as with actors, if they are exposed a lot...With small things, it damages you for the big things,? he said.

Recently the ?big things? have included Blueberry, a Franco-US Western starring Vincent Cassell and Juliet Lewis, and a new Western is set to start in the coming months. The set includes a sheriff?s office with ?wanted? posters outside, a saloon, a Mexican cantina and a livestock market.

An undertaker displays empty coffins outside. In the graveyard, rows of thin white crosses point to the cloudless sky. The location is not only used for Westerns. Parts of the desert classic Lawrence of Arabia were filmed here and camels are still kept at Fort Bravo.

Molina, a former stunt man, and his partner Francisco Ardura, a Western fan who rented out horses and carriages for movies, bought the studios about 20 years ago.

They hoped they could offer film makers a bargain by including their services with the use of the set.