The Western Quentin Tarantino Called "The Best-Directed Movie of All Time" Officially Loses Free Streaming Home

Image via Produzioni Europee Associati Published Nov 2, 2026, 2:00 PM EST Maggie Lovitt is the Deputy News Editor at Collider. In addition to reporting on the latest entertainment news, she is also an actor and member of the Screen Actors Guild based out of the Mid-Atlantic Region. Lovitt is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Critics Choice Association and National Press Club. While she spends her time writing and editing articles about the entertainment industry, Maggie’s background is actually in history and anthropology. She loves it whenever she can bring those two facets of her life together, such as with reviews for series like We Were the Lucky Ones and The New Look, and engaging interviews with talent like Ben Mendelsohn, Liev Schreiber, or Jonas Nay. Sign in to your Collider account With Taylor Sheridan having contributed to the rebound of the Western genre, which was thought to have become obsolete over the last few decades, a new generation of audiences can experience the joy of watching classics for the first time. This month presents them with the opportunity of checking out perhaps the greatest movie that belongs to the genre's sub-category, known as spaghetti Westerns. This term was used exclusively for Westerns produced in Italy; as you'd imagine, they were soupier and saucier compared to the American Westerns of that era. Sergio Leone, who was widely regarded as the greatest spaghetti Western director of them all, made a groundbreaking trilogy starring Clint Eastwood. The most acclaimed installment of that trilogy is streaming on a variety of streaming sites, including Prime Video and MGM+ — however, the privilege of your viewership comes with a fee. That wasn't always the case. Up until recently, the film was available to stream for free on Tubi, but it has since been removed. It was also removed from YouTube's free movie catalog, leaving Western fans in a major lurch. Released in 1966, the movie remains the benchmark for the genre even six decades later. Quentin Tarantino was hugely inspired by it, calling it "the best-directed film of all time" and "the greatest achievement in the history of cinema." He paid homage to the movie in his own work, going back to his debut feature, Reservoir Dogs. The film also inspired numerous homages across the world, and inspired Stephen King to write his magnum opus, The Dark Tower series. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Detective Should Solve Your Case? Columbo · Benoit Blanc · Jessica Fletcher · Marlowe Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you who should be assigned to your murder. Four of the most famous detectives ever put on screen, and four completely different ways of getting somebody to admit what they did. 🕵Columbo(Columbo) 🧣Benoit Blanc(Knives Out) 🖨Jessica Fletcher(Murder, She Wrote) 🚬Philip Marlowe(The Big Sleep) FIND YOUR DETECTIVE → 01 What do people assume about you when they meet you? Pick the one that sounds most like you. AThat I am a bit of a mess. BThat I am putting it on. CThat I am completely harmless. DThat I gave up a while ago. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Pick a coat. No wrong answers here. AA beige raincoat I never take off. BSomething loud and very well cut. CSomething practical in a nice colour. DA trench coat with the collar up. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you get information out of people? One answer only. AKeep asking one more question. BLet them perform and watch closely. CJust be genuinely lovely to them. DWait until they slip. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How would your friends describe you? Be honest. AScruffy and oddly brilliant. BTheatrical, in a good way. CWarm, and a little bit nosy. DCynical, and loyal underneath. NEXT QUESTION → 05 Pick a drink. Pick the closest answer. ACoffee, from whatever is nearest. BSomething fancy with a garnish. CTea, with somebody who needs it. DWhisky, no ice, on my own. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Where do you do your best thinking? Pick the closest answer. AHalfway out of the door. BOut loud, in front of everybody. COver the garden fence. DIn the car at two in the morning. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What is your car like? Think about the one on your drive. AOld, battered, and still going. BSomething nobody expected. CSensible, and I would rather walk. DIt has seen some things. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What makes you good at reading people? Last one. This is the one that decides it. AI never stop asking questions. BI enjoy the performance of it. CPeople simply tell me things. DI expect everybody to lie. REVEAL MY DETECTIVE → The Case Is Assigned Your Detective Is…A great detective is really just a personality with a method attached, which is why we keep remaking the same four of them. Here is yours, what it says about you, and the case for them being the best in the business. ColumboYou let people think you are not a threat and then you simply never go away. Columbo is the only major detective show that tells you who did it in the first ten minutes, because the pleasure was never the puzzle, it was watching a rich man slowly realise he is in trouble. You are underestimated constantly, and you have stopped minding because it keeps working. The show invented the inverted detective format for television and nobody has bettered it since. Peter Falk won four Emmys for the part and played him across five decades. Your flaw is that one more question is rarely one more question. Benoit BlancYou are the most interesting person in the room and you know exactly how to use it. Rian Johnson built Blanc as a gentleman detective who is also an outsider everywhere he goes, which lets him be charming at people who would never otherwise talk to him. You read a room in seconds and you are not above performing a little to speed things up. Rian Johnson was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Knives Out in 2020. Wake Up Dead Man arrived on Netflix in December, making three Blanc films in six years. Your risk is enjoying the performance so much that people stop taking the point seriously. Jessica FletcherEverybody tells you everything, and you have never once asked them to. Jessica Fletcher is a crime novelist from a small town in Maine who is so warm and so obviously trustworthy that suspects confess to her essentially as a social courtesy. You are the person friends call first, and you have a frankly alarming amount of information about everybody. Angela Lansbury was nominated for the Emmy twelve times for this role and never won once. The show ran twelve seasons, and Jamie Lee Curtis is now bringing the character back. Your flaw is that being told everything is only a gift if you know what to do with it. Philip MarloweYou expect to be lied to and you are almost never disappointed. Chandler wrote Marlowe as a man with a rigid private code in a city that has none, which is why he takes the case, solves it, gets nothing out of it and takes the next one. You are the most cynical person your friends know and the one they would call at four in the morning. Bogart played him in The Big Sleep in 1946 and the plot is famously impossible to follow, which matters not at all. Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum and Liam Neeson have all taken the part, and every version says something about its decade. Your weakness is a code so strict that it mostly punishes the person holding it. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ The Greatest Spaghetti Western Ever Is Still Just One Click Away Image by Nimesh Niyomal Perera By now you've probably guessed that we're talking about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Along with For a Few Dollars More and A Fistful of Dollars, it was part of Leone's landmark Dollars Trilogy. The movie now holds a "Certified Fresh" 97% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "Arguably the greatest of the spaghetti Westerns, this epic features a compelling story, memorable performances, breathtaking landscapes, and a haunting score." The film also features Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef, and has a memorable original score composed by Ennio Morricone. Tarantino, who has famously avoided scores throughout his career, broke the trend when he had Morricone compose the music for his own spaghetti Western-inspired feature, The Hateful Eight. You can watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on a variety of subscription-based streaming platforms for a few more dollars than you could when it was streaming for free on Tubi. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates on must-see westerns. Release Date December 22, 1966 Runtime 161 minutes Director Sergio Leone Cast Writers Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone, Mickey Knox Producers Alberto Grimaldi