I remember Crist's dislike of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE in particular. She had a done a spot-on body count, bug(s) included, and brought it up during a debate about movie violence with former MPAA chief Jack Valenti, conducted on The Mike Douglas Show. He countered her dislike of FAFDM's violence by citing her favorable review of THE DIRTY DOZEN,
and asking how she differentiated between the two. She responded that FAFDM was exploitation, while DOZEN was a serious depiction of violence during war.
Her silliest exaggeration of the violence in a Leone movie was, of all titles, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, in which her TV Guide capsule review warned potential viewers that they "risked being turned off ketchup" forever.
Of her generation of mainstream U.S. critics, was there even one that liked a Leone western, much less any of the other Italian Westerns? Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice is the closest to mainstream I can recall, and I don't remember if that was post-60s, when a reevaluation of Leone's movies began in the mid-70s, most likely prompted by the reception given to him in Europe.
One of my favorite negative reactions of a typical '60s' critic to an Italian Western, was an incensed writer who hated A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL, and thought El Chuncho's fondling of the much-needed machine gun the height of sickness depicted in these imported westerns.