gay version of John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – where the explicit homosexual relation between two of its male main characters and some gay cueing scenes are embedded with other forms of man-to-man relations through the story. Reception In the 1960s, critics recognized that the American genres were rapidly changing. The genre most identifiably American, the Western, seemed to be evolving into a new, rougher form. For many critics, Sergio Leone's films were part of the problem. Leone's Dollars Trilogy (1964–1966) was not the beginning of the "Spaghetti Western" cycle in Italy, but for some Americans Leone's films represented the true beginning of the Italian invasion of an American genre. Christopher Frayling, in his noted book on the Italian Western, describes American critical reception of the Spaghetti Western cycle as, to "a large extent, confined to a sterile debate about the 'cultural roots' of the American/Hollywood Western." He remarks that few critics dared admit that they were, in fact, "bored with an exhausted Hollywood genre." Pauline Kael, Frayling notes, was willing to acknowledge this critical ennui and thus appreciate how a film such as Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) "could exploit the conventions of the Western genre, while debunking its morality." Frayling and other film scholars such as Bondanella argue that this revisionism was the key to Leone's success and, to some degree, to that of the Spaghetti Western genre as a whole. Legacy Spaghetti Westerns have left their mark on popular culture, strongly influencing numerous works produced in and outside of Italy. In later years there were "return of stories" Django Strikes Again with Franco Nero and Troublemakers with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Clint Eastwood's first American Western film, Hang 'Em High (1968), incorporates elements of Spaghetti Westerns. American director Quentin Tarantino has utilized elements of Spaghetti Westerns in his films Kill Bill (combined with kung fu movies), Inglourious Basterds (set in Nazi-occupied France), Django Unchained (set in the American South during the time of slavery), The Hateful Eight (set in Wyoming post-US Civil War), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (about fictional American actor Rick Dalton sometimes working in Spaghetti Westerns). The Back to the Future trilogy pays homage to Spaghetti Westerns (especially Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy) on a variety of occasions, most notably in the third film. The American animated film Rango incorporates elements of Spaghetti Westerns, including a character (the mystical "Spirit