An Eastwood classic has scenes restored

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” gets better, badder and uglier with 14 minutes of newly restored footage.

As part of a Clint Eastwood marathon, the uncut three-hour version of Sergio Leone’s revisionist western is airing for the first time on AMC, without commercials, at 8 tonight.

Restoring scenes from the seminal 1966 film required Eastwood to redub the voice of his quick-shooting, soft-spoken character, the Man With No Name.

“It was odd looping someone 37 years younger. It was kind of like looping my son.... That was a long time ago,” Eastwood, 72, said in a phone interview Friday. “It’s hard to remember the plot line of the whole movie, much less those scenes. I haven’t seen that in so many years.”

Several of the deleted scenes already appear on the DVD as an extra feature -- in Italian, with English subtitles. But with the help of AMC, MGM and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, this is the first time they’ve been edited back into the film in English.