Grayeagle (1977, Charles B. Pierce)
A variation on The Searchers, starring Ben Johson as a farmer whose daughter is kidnapped by the Indian from the title. It turns out that this Grayeagle has special reasons to abduct the girl. Some nice twists in this well-intentioned but not overly compelling (occasionally amateurish) Injuns movie. The tactical cameo by Jack Elam doesn’t pay off, his scenes belong to the worst of the entire movie.
The girl is played by Lana Wood, sister of Natalie.
Probably the best directed western by the director for me, but that amateurish feel also runs through his other 70’s westerns.
[size=12pt]WINTERHAWK[/size] (1976, Charles B. Pierce)
Don’t know if it’s a better movie than Grayeagle, the Pierce movie I watched last week, but I enjoyed it more. The film is set at the beginning of the 19th century (a thing I always like), when the West still belonged to the Indians and the mountain men seeking after a modus vivendi.
The arrival of the first settlers has also brought smallpox to the frontier, a disease the red man had not been exposed to before. Therefore they had not build up any immunity to it, nor developed medicines to fight the disease. The story is about an Indian chief who wants to trade furs in exchange for medicine, in order to save his tribe from annihilation. When he’s double-crossed he kidnaps a white girl and her younger brother and takes them into the mountains.
The story’s quite predictable (the girl of course falls for her abductor) but it has a natural fluency, giving us the feeling that this was bound to happen, and the cameos (and there are quite a lot) are very well integrated into the story-line. Woody Strode has a few great scenes and L.Q. Jones is fun to watch as a particularly nasty piece of vermin of a trapper.
Doc - Not as good as I remembered, very slow in the 2nd half, wasn’t very impressed with Faye Dunaway and Harris Yulin but Stacy Keach was great
The Violent Men - Probably the best Glenn Ford i’ve seen so far, nice to see Edward G. Robinson in a good western role at last
[size=12pt]SHOWDOWN[/size] (1973, George Seaton)
A western telling the familiar story of two friends ending up on different sides of the law. It was the last western for both Dean Martin and Rock Hudson and the only time they appeared together in a movie.
Read more here:
[size=12pt]http://westernsontheblog.blogspot.be/2015/02/showdown-1973.html[/size]
Well, yes, Showdown is a quite ok little western which comes along a bit old fashioned for a 70s western, but in a nice way. 6/10
True Grit (2010)
-I’m not a fan of Coen brothers but I liked this one quite a lot. One of the best westerns from the last 10-15 years. Very good cast, especially Jeff Bridges is great. He’s no John Wayne but then again no-one is, so it’s better not to compare it with original film version.
No Name on the Bullet - Pretty hilarious at times, the characters reactions to John Gant being in town, tense and unpredictable through the whole running time. Thought Audie Murphy was very good, probably would have been completely different with someone else in the role.
Ambush At Tomahawk Gap, 1953…
Four outlaws rob the US Cavalry’s payroll… Three are captured, along with John Hodiak; an innocent wanderer, who’s framed to be one of the robbers so the 4th one can sneak-away and guard the stolen-money till the gang is released from prison. The film starts as the gang is released, and Hodiak embarks on a revenge-plan to steal the money for himself. -Which is in a ghost-town surrounded by warring Apaches, where they learn the 4th outlaw is long dead.
John Derek was reaching his peak as an audience-draw for young females, so his character becomes the center of the drama-and-action. The final shootout in the ghost-town, versus rampaging Indians, is surprisingly appealing. It doesn’t have the ‘studio’ feeling of the town-shootout in Sinatra & Martin’s ‘Sergeants 3’.
[quote=“kit saginaw, post:11649, topic:141”]Ambush At Tomahawk Gap, 1953…
Four outlaws rob the US Cavalry’s payroll… Three are captured, along with John Hodiak; an innocent wanderer, who’s framed to be one of the robbers so the 4th one can sneak-away and guard the stolen-money till the gang is released from prison. The film starts as the gang is released, and Hodiak embarks on a revenge-plan to steal the money for himself. -Which is in a ghost-town surrounded by warring Apaches, where they learn the 4th outlaw is long dead.
John Derek was reaching his peak as an audience-draw for young females, so his character becomes the center of the drama-and-action. The final shootout in the ghost-town, versus rampaging Indians, is surprisingly appealing. It doesn’t have the ‘studio’ feeling of the town-shootout in Sinatra & Martin’s ‘Sergeants 3’.[/quote]
Almost sounds like a spaghetti western premise (apart from the Indians)
I see it’s available on You Tube, so I might give it a try when I’m back home (I’m having a not so good connection where i’m staying at the moment), it’s sounds interesting
[quote=“scherpschutter, post:11650, topic:141”]Almost sounds like a spaghetti western premise (apart from the Indians)
I see it’s available on You Tube, so I might give it a try when I’m back home (I’m having a not so good connection where i’m staying at the moment), it’s sounds interesting[/quote]
Yep. YouTube is where I watched it. High-quality color and sound. Watch-out for the cantankerous old grave-keeper in the film. A spaghetti-depiction would have treated him as less whiny and preposterous.
Five card stud. I rarely watch american westerns but picked this because story sounded interesting and mitchum&martin are solid actors.
Good movie, murder mystery worked well enough.
Showdown At Abilene, 1956… starring Jock Mahoney. There isn’t one. -An actual showdown. Mahoney leaps out of a doorway, grabs a gun that’s lying in the dirt, and fires… THE END. The movie is all talk, just about. There’s a few lovely wide-open grassland scenes… and another patented Mahoney-leap scene (he jumped from the grand-staircase, as Errol Flynn’s stunt-double, onto Robert Douglas, in The Adventures Of Don Juan), jumping laterally across a railing onto a trio of loudmothed outlaws. Mahoney spends most of the time broodingly imitating Peter Cushing.
Just watched Beyond the Law starring Lee Van Cleef, Bud Spencer, Gordon Mitchell etc. I haven’t seen it in over 5 years I think and there was a lot I didn’t remember about it. Could never forget the big shootout at the silver mine, though. It’s not one of the greatest spaghetti westerns, but it is entertaining. It is a unique type of character for Van Cleef to play. “Saddle Tramp” I believe is the phrase used in the film.
Red Coat/Giubbe rosse-(1975) Joe D’Amato
Passable snowy western with a decent Fabio Testi in the lead. The plot/storyline was good enough to keep the pace going with somewhat sporadic action here and there.
Good use of the snowy locations, it was really nice to see and the rest of the cast was ok in this. But the theme song was rather annoying for me though.
Yesterday I watched A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die and Forgotten Pistolero. I’ve been watching a lot of spags since I got home from the hospital. It helps me relax. 
Me too! Do you have the alternative ending?
No, I didn’t even know there was one.
There is the real ending of the Italian, and the wrong ending of the MGM version. The integral version has of course the real ending.
Fort Apache (1948)
I liked it. Fantastic outdoor scenes, impressive action scenes (even without the color) and rich story with great ending. I was surprised that for the first hour John Wayne was relegated to just one of the side characters, but in the end he became the most important, cathartic character. On the minus side, I thought that Shirley Temple’s role was too juvenile, more 12-year than 22-year old, only thing missing was a lollipop. But minor complaints can be overlooked as it is one of the most thoughtful and powerful Ford movies.