Category Archives: westerns

“Get Off Our Land, White Man” (The Rest of You Too): Classic Film Images Photo Quiz, November 2016 Edition, Vol. 1620

“Get Off Our Land, White Man” (The Rest of You Too): Classic Film Images Photo Quiz, November 2016 Edition, Vol. 1620    This year, the season of Thanksgiving finds greater than normal reasons to give thanks, not the least of … Continue reading

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Chandler’s Trailers: “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957)

      John Sturges’ rousing “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” could never be confused with an historical study aid; the film is structured as an illustrative compliment to the ballad form, here colorfully vocalized by Frankie Laine, and commensurate with the said form, the … Continue reading

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Cowboys Will Be Boys: “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965)

           “The Sons of Katie Elder”  (1965)      If the challenge for any film is for that movie to deliver an original and memorable experience, then that challenge may become doubly daunting in the case … Continue reading

Posted in Drive-In Movies, Film, Film Reviews, John Wayne, movie reviews, Movies, Reviews, westerns, westerns, writing | Tagged | 1 Comment

Happy Hostage: “Bandolero!” (1968)

      “Bandolero!”   (1968)      A most peculiar entry in the western genre is Andrew V. McLagen’s “Bandolero!”, a film which gives a fresh-  though unpersuasive -perspective to the notion of the Stockholm Syndrome, is also a vehicle … Continue reading

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Make Him Dance, Boys: “Pale Rider” (1985)

     In “Pale Rider”, director Clint Eastwood has fashioned not so much a remake of “Shane” as a reinterpretation of the story’s key elements mixed with a retooling of the basic supernal retributive conventions of his own 1973 “High … Continue reading

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Stacking the Deck: “Posse” (1975)

        When a commercial western advances an ambitious thematic agenda within the inevitable genre tropes, it is perhaps an occasion to pay greater attention to the work at hand, while concurrently such increased scrutiny might also lay bare … Continue reading

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Treading Water in a Desert: “The Train Robbers” (1973)

     If one considers the staggering volume of western stories related on both the big screen and  television (this latter sausage grinder of ideas devoured such an incomprehensible amount of scripts that even the occasional trace of originality would be … Continue reading

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Chandler’s Trailers: “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969)

        Marshal Sam Mackenna (Gregory Peck) is kidnapped by long-time nemesis John Colorado (Omar Sharif) and his gang who believe the lawman is privy to the location of a spectacularly rich lode of gold in J. Lee Thompson’s … Continue reading

Posted in 1960's movies, Eli Wallach, Film, Film Reviews, Gregory Peck, History, movie reviews, Movies, Reviews, westerns | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Out to Pasture: “Rio Lobo” (1970)

     “Rio Lobo” reeks of exhaustion. The final film in the lengthy and often illustrious career of director Howard Hawks, this western is a continuation of a pattern of laconic narrative drifting that has increasingly characterized the greater number … Continue reading

Posted in 1970's movies, Film, Film Criticism, Film Reviews, John Wayne, movie reviews, Movies, Reviews, westerns, writing | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

The Riding Wounded: “Hang ’em High” (1968)

      With the successful American release of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, the time was right for Clint Eastwood to re-emerge on the domestic movie front with this western tale of vigilantism/revenge, which more than any other work up to this … Continue reading

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The Western’s Last Stand: “True Grit” (1969)

      By 1969, the Western as a film genre had begun to be officially- but prematurely  -declared dead, in no small part due to the overabundant proliferation of western programs on television. Yet, that same year found the … Continue reading

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Breaking Badly: “The Missouri Breaks” (1976)

A BRIEF NOTE:  The recently posted You Can’t Go Homestead Again: Notes on Western Revisionism was actually the introductory portion of this very review, which was not only running a bit lengthy, but also threatened to dilute the attention away … Continue reading

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You Can’t Go Homestead Again: Notes on Western Revisionism

     The dirty little secret about revisionism is that it rarely provides the intended setting for demythologizing without creating, not a revealing truth, but a substitute mythology.       The move toward revisionism in the western film genre is generally … Continue reading

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Shots in the Dark: “The Quick and the Dead” (1995)

            The spaghetti western differs importantly from its American western inspiration in that while the American tradition is based upon genuine historical experience (however mythologized), the Italian western is based upon the cinematic form of … Continue reading

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MONTHLY PHOTO QUIZ VOL. 1620

SINCE YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT, YOU MUST  HAVE HAD A LOVE AFFAIR WITH BOLOGNA: NOVEMBER 2013 CLASSIC FILM IMAGES QUIZ, VOL. 1620     Here we are, boys and girls, with another exciting edition of America’s favorite duty free brain … Continue reading

Posted in clint eastwood, Film, food, humor, Movies, Musicals, Mystery, Puzzles, science fiction, Thanksgiving, westerns | 2 Comments

The 2013 Annual Critical Establishment Readers Survey

________________________________________________________________ All readers, bloggers and film enthusiasts are encouraged to participate in the following 59 question  survey. ________________________________________________________________________________ 01.  Who/what do you feel is the most overrated actor, actress, director and film?   02.  Who/what do you feel is the … Continue reading

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Hand-Me-Downs: “True Grit” (2010)

    Typical laconic Coen brothers film with as equal a derivation from Portis’ enjoyable but vastly overrated novel as the 1969 Henry Hathaway original. Although the Coens extract a more pronouncedly acute sense of accuracy in their mise-en-scene, the … Continue reading

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Below the Border: “100 Rifles” (1969)

________________________________________________________________    “100 Rifles” is a fast-paced western adventure unfolding amid the chaos of the Mexican Revolution, completely unlike Tom Gries’ earlier film- the overlooked masterwork “Will Penny” -this film suffers from a perpetual  inconsistency of tone; veering wildly from … Continue reading

Posted in 1960's cinema, 1960's movies, drive-in cinema, Drive-In Movies, Film, Film Reviews, Jim Brown, movie reviews, Movies, Raquel Welch, Reviews, westerns | Tagged | 1 Comment

MONTHLY PHOTO QUIZ VOL. 684

  PORTRAIT OF A PHOTO AS A TRIVIALITY: JUNE CLASSIC FILM IMAGES QUIZ June is the month of Joyce. James Joyce. Actually, any month is a time for good reading, but the pressure of coming up with new and interesting … Continue reading

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The Dark at the Edge of the Light: “Hour of the Gun” (1967)

BULLETS OF THE MIND: In John Sturges’ challenging “Hour of the Gun”, the most violent confrontations are not among the film’s many gunfights, but are psychological, especially in the heated, knowing exchanges between friend Doc Holliday (Jason Robards) and Wyatt … Continue reading

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Changing Times: “There Was a Crooked Man…” (1970)

    If there were ever a film which demonstrates the confusion of veteran Hollywood studio directors in adapting to the then-newly found freedom afforded filmmakers with the abolition of the Production Code, it’s Joesph L. Mankiewicz’ 1970 serio-comic western, “There Was … Continue reading

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With Extreme Prejudice: “El Condor” (1970)

  John Guillerman’s “El Condor” is a noisy, violent, preposterous western of the variety that became extremely popular with studios in the Sixties (Richard Brooks’ “The Professionals” being the most accomplished example) often blending elements with the fading noir genre … Continue reading

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The Hole in the Head Gang: “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969)

The year 1969 was a particularly interesting one for the American Western, as the three most commercially notable examples of the genre demonstrate a grand variance in the dramatic shift into the revisionism movement which would all but consume this … Continue reading

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