Re Lawman:
Not a Western I’m familiar with, but highly rated by some people in the community when we did the US Westerns list (joint 16rh place with Jeremiah Johnson ).
- What are we gonna do with this one, Frank?
- Now that you’ve called me by name…
I just can’t get tired of watching it.
I’m going to try a Spag Western Marathon this weekend. Nine Spags in two days. All fairly high quality and all big favourites of mine, to keep the enthusiasm/energy levels up.
===SATURDAY===
10.30am: Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die (Cervi, 1968)
12pm: Django Kill (Questi, 1967)
2pm: Death Rides a Horse (Petroni, 1968)
Approx. 4.45pm, following the Grand National: Duel in the Eclipse (Merino, 1968)
(this is a pretty early finish, but getting mrs.caress to agree to my taking up the weekend watching Italian westerns was contingent upon us retaining a free Saturday evening)
===SUNDAY===
1pm: El Puro (Mulargia, 1969)
3pm: Requiescant (Lizzani, 1967)
5pm: Death Sentence (Lanfranchi, 1968)
6.30pm: Mannaja (Martino, 1977)
8pm: Cemetery Without Crosses (Hossein, 1969)
There are some other big favourites that I was going to use (TG,tB&tU, FaFDM, Keoma, The Big Gundown, Day of Anger), but I’m saving those for a far larger twenty-eight day challenge - LCTV (last.caress Television) - that I’ll be doing in another couple of weeks.
Pretty decent line up there! I just watched a double feature myself: Some Dollars for Django and White Comanche. Some Dollars is a good one. Sadly, as much as I wanted to like it, White Comanche is not a good one. Not enough to be so bad its good either.Just enough to be bad 
I can’t tell you how much mrs.caress is NOT looking forward to this Spag marathon! ;D Still; bollocks. I bought her a kitten last weekend and I am really NOT a “cat” guy, and I’m stuck with that f*cking thing for the forseeable future, so I’m having my weekender, dammit. AND I’m having my “last.caress Television” 4-week challenge too (I’ve basically downloaded a bunch of movies and TV shows plus a bunch of music videos, infomercials, cinema idents and classic adverts, and I’m going to stream them off of my hard drive onto my telly all evening, EVERY evening - and all day Saturday/Sunday too - like a proper TV channel, customized for me. Heaven!).
I’ve got Some Dollars For Django on one of those Echo Bridge 8-Movie packs but I’ve never gotten around to watching it. I think I was vaguely put off by Anthony STIFF-'un being in it but, in the interim, I’ve come to rather appreciate “The Steff” so I really should give it a go. White Comanche - heh, I dislike it intensely as a western but I’m strangely fond of it as a “shit” movie, if that makes sense (I enjoy a “shit” movie: Robot Monster, Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, The Creeping Terror et cetera). You should try Apache Blood if you haven’t already - now THAT’S a movie you can’t enjoy on any level whatsoever. Truly f*cking dreadful; makes White Comanche look like The Big Gundown. 
Yellow Mountain, 1954… starring Lex Barker and Howard Duff as ‘friends’ who’re constantly backstabbing each-other over romance and the gold-mining business. The story’s good, but like many John Wayne efforts, the script wanders aimlessly from predictability-to-predictability. The actual action-sequences are top-notch however. The ending fistfight results in Barker and Duff simultaneously knocking themselves out, and the woman walks away with a ‘men and their silly foibles’ smile. Not bad. 6-out-of-10.
How’s it going last.caress ?
I’m worry about you! hehehe! 
[quote=“amigo.vulnerable, post:11727, topic:141”]How’s it going last.caress ?
I’m worry about you! hehehe! :D[/quote]
We’re about forty minutes or so into Mannaja right now, and spirits are quite a bit higher than I thought they would be at this point. It’s probably something of a withering comment on the general fuckawful state of British television on a Sunday that my small family are still quite happy going into their eighth spaghetti western in the last 33 hours. The lowest points were probably during Django Kill yesterday and El Puro this afternoon. Neither wife nor son were into those, and the atmosphere and energy in the room was flat while they were on. But apart from that, they’ve either watched along with me or gone about their own bits and pieces quite happily. If they were really getting annoyed with it I would have abandoned my Spag Marathon but, with only a film-and-a-half left to go, I think I’m going to make it.
I hope so!
Well, good luck
Zabalza: Adios Cjamango[url]http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Rebeldes_de_Arizona,_Los[/url]
-It’s been a while since I saw a new sw, too bad I’m now scraping the bottom of the barrel with the most crappiest entries in the genre left. Adios Cjamango is a weird film which doesn’t really have a plot. First it seems like a traditional plot as greedy banker wants to buy Cjamango’s wife’s ranch where railroad is supposed to be built. But after the villains burn down their house (while people keep happily dancing to a music by invisible band) they just start to wander around and we are never returned to the original plot. Badly directed and edited film, beautiful Claudia Gravy is the only reason to watch this through. William Berger’s name appears in the credits but I don’t think he was in it.
[size=12pt]Backlash - 1956 - John Sturges[/size]
Interesting enough Richard Widmark vehicle, in form of western directed by John Sturges.
It starts very well with a cool first scene, and some fine chemistry between Widmark and Donna Reed. At the end of the film, things get to start to became a little bit weaker with a very disappoint finale, you could see the end coming.
For a US Western the production value weren’t that good, but that was overpass by some good photography work, I also find out that it wasn’t only in SW that they repeated the sets over and over, I had a déjà vu feeling in the last scene, it seemed like the same set used for Rio Bravo or it was the same set.
Anyway entertaining enough Western nice to follow some good main characters, but nothing memorable, just reasonable.
[quote=“Bill san Antonio, post:11730, topic:141”]Zabalza: Adios Cjamango[url]http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Rebeldes_de_Arizona,_Los[/url]
-It’s been a while since I saw a new sw, too bad I’m now scraping the bottom of the barrel with the most crappiest entries in the genre left. Adios Cjamango is a weird film which doesn’t really have a plot. First it seems like a traditional plot as greedy banker wants to buy Cjamango’s wife’s ranch where railroad is supposed to be built. But after the villains burn down their house (while people keep happily dancing to a music by invisible band) they just start to wander around and we are never returned to the original plot. Badly directed and edited film, beautiful Claudia Gravy is the only reason to watch this through. William Berger’s name appears in the credits but I don’t think he was in it.[/quote]
Good observations, post them in the Forum topic too.
Good idea. And done.
[size=12pt]Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - 1973 - Sam Peckinpah[/size]
[url]Photobucket | The safer way to store your photos
Always when asked to choose my favourite film, I never really give a concrete answer, there’s a few I could pick, so it’s hard for me to select just one. But if for some reason it was mandatory to choose one, then Pat Garret and Billy the Kid could perfectly be that one.
I think everyone here have already seen it, so there’s no need for saying much, apart that it’s a great film.
In my opinion Peckinpah with both Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, and the Wild Bunch, wanted to show the end of an era, so death is omnipresent in the film.
Apart from the main actors who did a great job specially Kristofferson, there’s a genuine western cast from Jack Elam to Katy Jurado.
More than other great westerns, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is the kind of western made especially for people like us that love westerns.
Of course the version to watch is the uncut one
The only downsize doesn’t came from the film, but from the absurd Portuguese title, Duel in the Dust, one of those things
Need to re-watch the flick, haven’t seen it in quite a while.
[quote=“El Topo, post:11734, topic:141”][size=12pt]Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - 1973 - Sam Peckinpah[/size]
[url]Photobucket | The safer way to store your photosAlways when asked to choose my favourite film, I never really give a concrete answer, there’s a few I could pick, so it’s hard for me to select just one. But if for some reason it was mandatory to choose one, then Pat Garret and Billy the Kid could perfectly be that one.
I think everyone here have already seen it, so there’s no need for saying much, apart that it’s a great film.
In my opinion Peckinpah with both Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, and the Wild Bunch, wanted to show the end of an era, so death is omnipresent in the film.
Apart from the main actors who did a great job specially Kristofferson, there’s a genuine western cast from Jack Elam to Katy Jurado.
More than other great westerns, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is the kind of western made especially for people like us that love westerns.
Of course the version to watch is the uncut one[/quote]
I think it damages the film a bit. And it is not really an uncut one, as it is one which wasn’t cut properly, and definitely needed some fine cutting. If I had to chose between the theatrical version (106 min) and this preview version (126 min), I would chose the theatrical one. Even if this version loses some of the film’s complexity, and does not have the brilliant opening montage, which isthen its biggest loss.
After having watched the theatrical version countless times (often in terrible VHS fullscreen) the highly anticipated preview version was a bit disappointing, cause it wasn’t a revelation, and did destroy for me some of the film’s beauty. It is still a great film in the preview version, but one with some unnecessary flaws.
Apart from that it is also for me one of the 4 or 5 best westerns ever, and was that already in the theatrical version.
Iquino: Nevada Joe[url]http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Oeste_Nevada_Joe[/url]
-Spanish/Italian co-production from 64 with George Martin. Martin plays gunslinger called Nevada Joe or Joe Dexter who tries to help small town miners and balances between affection from 2 women. Not really a bad film but there isn’t anything really memorable either. Or maybe the horrible theme song which belongs to the category of infamous cheesy sw songs.
Santee.
Former lawman becomes a bounty hunter for personal reasons and ends up taking in the son of a man he has killed. Starts off ok enough in the tradition of 70’s westerns I like, then it turns a little to sensitive for the type of story the film presents itself at the start. The pace picks up at the end, then everything seems a little rushed. Shame I like the main star and this could have been alot better.
Gun Fury (1953)
Raoul Walsh’s dynamic pulp style makes this a fun little B western. Offers some food for thought too.
This past weekend I watched THE PROUD REBEL (1958) directed by Michael Curtiz and ONE FOOT IN HELL (1960) directed by James B. Clark. The latter is a hardboiled western noir written Sydney Boehm who also wrote THE BIG HEAT (1954) for Fritz Lang, among others. A-list productions in the best tradition of the 1950s American western. Good looking westerns given excellent widescreen transfers on DVD. Both are character-driven morality stories and both have a lot of heart. The absence of nihilism is a virtue, I think. By coincidence, both westerns starred Alan Ladd delivering two of the best performances of his career since SHANE (1953). I recommend them.