BS: Your favourite western film

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 03:50 PM

An endless chase scene, eh? Sort of like Bob Dylan's famous "never-ending tour"?

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 May 10 - 03:07 PM

That looks like a real (reel?) doozy! But--

I can't remember the name of the worst Western ever made, but I saw it—at least a chunk of it—actually, too large a chunk of it—sometime back in the early 1940s.

The scene is the neighborhood theater near where I lived back then. I was in my very early 'teens at the time. Saturday afternoon matinee, double-feature, complete with "Prevues of Coming Attractions," newsreel, cartoon, and an episode of a fifteen chapter serial (such as "The Perils of Nyoka," "The Mysterious Dr. Satan," a somewhat pot-bellied "Batman," "Don Winslow of the Navy vs. The Scorpion"—Great Stuff!!), and my sisters and I used to go every week. [Great for our parents. It got us out of the house for a few hours, and it only cost 25¢ apiece. Cheaper than baby-sitting.]

Anyway, my little sister, Pat, was off doing something else that afternoon, so my older sister (by two years), Mary, and I went. Don't remember what the first movie was, but the second was a Western. It was like every really bad Western we had ever seen, as if it had been pieced together with clips from a whole bunch of other bad Westerns. Then, there was a chase scene, in which the cameras kept switching back and forth between the bank robbers galloping to beat hell, followed by the sheriff's posse galloping to beat hell after them. It went on . . . and on . . . and on . . . and on. . . .    The robbers . . . the posse . . . the robbers . . . the posse . . . the robbers. . . .

I checked my wrist watch, which had "glow in the dark" hands and numbers. The chase had been going on for at least fifteen minutes, which is an eternity in movie time. You could hear bored sighs from all over the theater. And the audience was composed of kids like us, whose aesthetic and dramatic tolerances are generally very open and flexibile, and able to absorb incredible amounts of pure crap, just for an opportunity to watch a good punch-out, shoot-out, or chase scene. But this had gone on so long that, by now, the entire audience had lost interest. Eye-rolling time!

My sister said, "This is stupid! Let's get out of here!"

"But we haven't seen the next chapter of 'The Scarlet Avenger' yet!"

"C'mon. I have an idea."

The theater manager, who generally hung out in the lobby, was a nice lady, and since we were regulars, she knew us pretty well. So Mary said to her, "This movie is really boring! Could we leave now, and come back in time to see the serial without having to pay again?" As I say, she was a nice lady and we were reasonably well-behaved regulars, so she said, "Sure. But be sure to be back before 5:15, because that's when it's scheduled." And she scribbled us a quick note to give to the fellow taking tickets at the door.

So we went to the drug store (complete with soda fountain) next door, had milk shakes, and returned in time for the next episode of "The Scarlet Avenger."

Relative to Westerns in general, this movie—whose name I have undoubtedly repressed—was not quite up to the cinematic standards set by such classic films as science fiction's ""Plan 9 from Outer Space," said by some to be the worst movie ever made.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: alanabit
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:39 PM

Little Hawk was serious!

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:25 PM

"The Alamo" is a Southwestern. ;-) It's one of my favorites too. Billy Bob Thornton plays Davy Crockett like no one ever did before...couldn't be better.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Lighter
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:21 PM

Bad Company (1972).

The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972).

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).

High Noon (1952).

Ride the High Country (1962).

Will Penny (1968).

True Grit (1969).

The Fastest Gun Alive (1956).

The Alamo (2004) with Billy Bob Thornton is great, but I don't think of it as a "Western."

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:20 PM

Hey, man, I am not joking. It's a real movie. It was filmed in English, but I think it was produced by some German movie company for the European market. They must have figured they'd hit gold when they hired Shatner for the starring role. It sure never got seen much in North America. I have seen clips from it on Youtube, and that's the only place I ever heard about it, but I can't recall the name of it. A Youtube search for "William Shatner + western" might turn something up.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: alanabit
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:09 PM

Little Hawk, I worry about you sometimes. Not even Spaw could imagine a film quite as gruesome as that!

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 12:56 PM

The worst western ever made, by the way, might have been the one where William Shatner played BOTH male leads! He played 2 identical twin brothers in the Wild West. One had been raised by the Indians and had grown up to be a white Indian warrior. The other had been raised by white folks and had grown up to be a gunfighter. They looked identical...even their haircuts were the same, and the "Indian" one didn't even seem to have a tan...but the "Indian" Shatner wore a headband and a loincloth and mocassins so you could tell them apart, while the white Shatner wore regular cowboy gear. The two finally faced off against each other in a duel to the death on the streets of some empty ghost town.

You simply have to see every minute of this film for yourself to understand how truly...umm...extraordinary it is. One of a kind. No words I could write could fully convey its unique qualities. The sheer brilliance of managing to film 2 William Shatners fighting each other to the death without resorting to any CGI effects tells you just how great an accomplishment this movie was for its time.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Beer
Date: 10 May 10 - 12:50 PM

Crazy Eddie, thanks for bring up Solider Blue. I was thinking of this one but could not remember the title. What a powerful movie. It had such a peaceful and loving start but what a shocker that hits you from nowhere.
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Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 12:02 PM

Heaven's Gate had possibilities...but they somehow just paced it all wrong, and it became sort of interminable. I always enjoy seeing Christopher Walken, though, no matter what movie he's in.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 10 May 10 - 11:49 AM

I agree with many already listed, especially the more light-hearted films like "Support Your Local Sheriff", "Cat Ballou" and "Cheyenne Social Club" (Stewart and Fonda play off each other brilliantly). I recently saw "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and was quite impressed with Casey Affleck. I also agree with "One-eyed Jacks", "Hombre" and "The Oxbow Incident". And I don't know why David E disparages "Little Big Man". I liked it. Here's some that haven't been mentioned: "Missouri Breaks" with Nicholson and a totally outrageous performance by Brando; an earlier version of the life of Roy Bean called "The Westerner" starring Walter Brennan and Gary cooper; I have to admit to liking Michael Cimino's notorious "Heaven's Gate", the movie that brought down a studio with it's directorial excesses and poor reception by the public. Rated as the 6th worst movie of all time I still like it. Maybe because it's based in the true story of the Johnson County War between powerful cattlemen and homesteaders, the archetype of a story repeated time and again in movies and literature and real life, class struggle in the old west.
   But lastly I have to mention "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. It's a fine movie with personal
significance because it introduced me to the music of Leonard Cohen.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 10 - 11:44 AM

This thread has got me wondering what might be the worst western ever made? I realize it would be tough to pick a winner. There's a lot of competition for the spot.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 May 10 - 10:04 AM

How about 1903's smash hit "The Great Train Robbery", directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter - a former Thomas Edison cameraman? It was the first of the narrative films and ends with a perfectly gratuitous scene of a bandit firing a revolver right at the audience.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 10 May 10 - 08:55 AM

Try this clip

http://oldfortyfives.com/thoseoldwesterns.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 10 May 10 - 08:41 AM

I can't believe that no-one has mentioned "Soldier Blue"

Not exactly your typical westeern I admit, but a bit of an eye-opener for a lot of people when it was first released.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 May 10 - 08:40 AM

McClintock (talk about having all of the cliches!) and just about anything from a Louis L'Amour book.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 May 10 - 08:28 AM

alanabit - You just beat me too it! I was going to suggest support your local sheriff too!

Must have been mentioned above - one with the drunken sheriff having to sober up to fight the bad guys. Which is that? Or is there a few similar ones?

I'd also go for the Eastwood spagetti westerns, High Noon and OK Corall.

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: alanabit
Date: 10 May 10 - 08:01 AM

I can watch anything with James Stewart. Doesn't anybody else rate "Broken Arrow"? "Destry Rides Again" is smashing entertainment. My favourite spoof western will always be "Support Your Local Sheriff", with James Garner's unsurpassably laconic sheriff.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: mrdux
Date: 10 May 10 - 02:33 AM

John Ford's cavalry trilogy -- Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande -- and My Darling Clementine should be mentioned.

Red River, Ride the High Country (an early Peckinpah film with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea), Destry Rides Again (James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich) and Winchester 73 are other favorites.

michael

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Beer
Date: 09 May 10 - 11:37 PM

Was there ever a movie made about "Sacajawea"?
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Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 May 10 - 11:28 PM

Electric Horseman

Cat Ballou

Heartland

and one that I haven't seen in years, but always loved, was

Westward the Women

And, along with Cat Ballou, on a politically incorrect note, there is always the rather funny Hallelujah Trail.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Beer
Date: 09 May 10 - 11:19 PM

Now there is one I completely forgot about. Great great movie thanks Rap.
By the way if anyone wants to view any of these great flicks or any other you have been thinking about, here is a site that you can have an enjoyable evening with. Type in the title in the search bar then figure it out from then on. I have been watching some great past memories and new ones as well.
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http://www.movies-links.tv/

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 May 10 - 10:56 PM

The Cheyenne Social Club.

Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, and funny as heck.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Riginslinger
Date: 09 May 10 - 10:03 PM

I thought I'd nominated "SHANE" a while back, but I don't see it now.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 May 10 - 09:55 PM

I was wondering when someone would mention The Oxbow Incident. It is way up there on my list.

Also, though not as high, no one has said Shane, yet, have they?

Legends of the Fall and Dances With Wolves....I know, I know, maybe not strictly Westerns, but still damn good, imo, esp. Legends AND the music!

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Beer
Date: 09 May 10 - 09:35 PM

Maybe it was taken off the song by Bruce Murdoch "Last Man Standing".
Just kiddin of course.
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Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: ichMael
Date: 09 May 10 - 09:20 PM

The Westerner, Wm. Wyler. With Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan.

The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah.

The Ox-Bow Incident, Wm. Wellman. Henry Fonda was hard to top in westerns.

Rio Grande, John Ford. Sons of the Pioneers do a lot of singing in that one.

A Bruce Willis movie called Last Man Standing is kind of a western. Takeoff on A Fistful of Dollars, which was a takeoff on Yojimbo.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Ed T
Date: 09 May 10 - 09:18 PM

Well, if it's comedy movies, how about the life and times of Judge Roy Bean?
Whorehouse Lucky Jim: You call that justice?
Judge Roy Bean: Justice is the handmaiden of law.
Nick the Grub: You said law was the handmaiden of justice.
Judge Roy Bean: Works both ways.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Beer
Date: 09 May 10 - 09:04 PM

Especially the camp fire scene. Great movie Alice/Rapaire
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Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 May 10 - 08:57 PM

You got it, Alice. Blazing Saddles. I was just going to add that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 May 10 - 07:31 PM

The Big Country.

It has everything. Every cliché that was ever in any Western movie is in this movie. Two ranchers in an on-and-off dispute over water rights. A fist fight between the misfit newcomer, a former sea captain (Gregory Peck) and the ranch foreman (Charleton Heston) over the rich rancher's lovely, spoiled daughter (Carol Bakker). A pretty schoolmarm (Jean Simmons), who just happens to own a piece of land that both the rich rancher and the poor rancher (Burl Ives) want. The disputed water source runs through her property. A face to face shoot-out between Peck and Ives's lecherous, ne'er-do-well son (Chuck Connors), but not like any "fast-draw" shoot-out that you've ever seen in any Western. The range war between the two ranchers soon turns into a real shooting war—and it, too, ends in an unpredictable way.

Stock Western characters. But each one is a bit skewed, and play beautifully by very good actors. And it was this role (not "Big Daddy" in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," as everyone seems to think) that earned the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Burl Ives. He was absolutely brilliant in this role.

Gotta see it!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Fergie
Date: 09 May 10 - 07:06 PM

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. For me it had everything BLONDDIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE......................

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 May 10 - 06:24 PM

Texas Across the River

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 May 10 - 06:20 PM

Hombre

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Alice
Date: 09 May 10 - 06:11 PM

I don't really care for western movies,
but I do enjoy

Blazing Saddles
and
Ruggles of Red Gap.




Alice in Montana

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: jacqui.c
Date: 09 May 10 - 04:39 PM

High Noon

Lonesome Dove

How The West Was Won

Magnificent Seven

The Alamo - latest version, although the original had good theme music

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: HuwG
Date: 09 May 10 - 04:22 PM

The Long Riders; has to have the best soundtrack.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 May 10 - 04:18 PM

Serenity. Or does that count? :-)

Of course it (along with the preceding tv series, Firefly) counts!

When did a few spaceships and zap guns keep a good western from being a western?

Reminds me of my intro when we sing "Brisbane Ladies:"

"Here's a cowboy song. All the best cowboy songs come from the soutwest, and this is a good one, because it comes from about as far southwest as you can get..."

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 09 May 10 - 04:15 PM

Lonesome Dove
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Rio Lobo

(And a special thank you to everyone for not saying Little Big Man.)

David E.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 May 10 - 03:19 PM

Sorry, McGrath, not the western brand of humor.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 May 10 - 03:15 PM

Carry on Cowboy ?

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 May 10 - 03:13 PM

One not yet made
Billy the Kid and Governor Lew Wallace. A great story, neither man so far presented accurately.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: frogprince
Date: 09 May 10 - 02:49 PM

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Lonesome Dove

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: bobad
Date: 09 May 10 - 02:49 PM

Dead Man, El Topo

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 09 May 10 - 02:34 PM

There are two prequels to Lonesome Dove: Deadman's Walk and Comache Moon. And two sequels: Return to Lonesome Dove - although as that was not written by Larry McMurtry some say it doesn't count - and Streets of Laredo. Different actors play Gus and Woodrow in this series. Also they were not written in sequential order.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Wesley S
Date: 09 May 10 - 02:20 PM

Yes - "Lonesome Dove" is a favorite of mine too. It shouldn't be missed. Possibly the best western ever filmed.Luckly it's been rereleased in a widescreen version about a year ago.

I also loved The Magnificent Seven { aka The Seven Samuri } and Gunfight at OK Corral.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 May 10 - 02:00 PM

Lonesome Dove was orginally a superb western adventure/tragedy novel written by Larry McMurtry. Like some of his other books, it was eventually made into a film. It was released as a lengthy TV movie in 2 or more parts, and was quite faithful to the book.

The book is great, although it ultimately becomes quite depressing, like most of McMurtry's tales seem to. His protagonists always come to a miserable end of some kind after you've invested several hundred pages in getting to know them very well.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 May 10 - 01:37 PM

There are so many-

Stagecoach
The spaghetti and other westerns, which influenced the Japanese samurai films.

And not strictly a western but similar themes- Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: open mike
Date: 09 May 10 - 01:34 PM

many of us re-live those cowboy days
and keep the cowboy tradition alive
thru music and poetry of today's
cowboys....at festivals.

some of the best ones i know of are:

www.montereycowboy.org/ (in Calif. in Dec.)
http://www.westernfolklife.org/ (in Elko, Nev. in Jan.)

there is a list of these events & festivals here www.cowboypoetry.com

Subject: RE: BS: Your favourite western film
From: alanabit
Date: 09 May 10 - 01:28 PM

There are loads of my favourites here. I am surprised that "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" has not been mentioned. That is one of the most complex and subtle westerns - but still very distinctively a western - that I have ever seen. I don't know "Lonesome Dove" Kendall. Can you tell me a bit about it?