New blu-ray:
Picked this up today for just £14.99
Four classics and ‘Pale Rider’ 
not one of my favs, the rest however are fab.
’The Searchers’
‘Rio Bravo’
‘How the West was Won’
'The Wild Bunch’
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Pale Rider should’ve been called High Plains Preacher. I dunno what’s worse, that or Joe Kidd.
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I’ve never managed to sit through all of ‘Pale Rider’ - usually give up about 30 minutes in … or I catch the last scene on a TV broadcast.
To me it’s a vastly inferior version of ‘Shane’, without the charm and sense of danger … and there’s no one in the supporting cast to like or even sympathise with.
‘Joe Kidd’ is nothing special, and feels a bit like a TV movie, but at least I got thru it a few times 
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I actually really like Joe Kidd. Clint Eastwood’s delivery is a bit naff at the end in the courthouse. Still really enjoy it though and I find it more watchable than Unforgiven. Fantastic soundtrack, as well.
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I don’t love any of Clint’s US westerns, but Two Mules for Sister Sara was pretty fun. His role was surprisingly talkative.
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I find Unforgiven to feel a bit more like “ok here we go again it’s the 90s and one more Eastwood western” with a list of hollywood well-knowns. Pale Rider was starting to feel close to that, also. I like The Outlaw Josey Wales and High Plains Drifter but not quite enough to go and buy the blu-rays. TBH, when it comes to westerns, I mostly just like the spaghetti’s. I didn’t grow up watching John Wayne movies and I discovered spaghetti’s when I was about 21.
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The Outlaw Josey Wales is one of my favourite westerns and definitely the best of Clint’s American westerns. I might end up getting the Blu-ray but I was hoping it would get a re-release with the original mono as an option. I grew up watching American westerns and the only spaghettis I watched were the Dollars films until I was 10 or 11 and watched Django Kill. I’d never seen anything like it and that’s the film that got me hooked on the spaghettis.
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I used to like all Clint’s movies when I was a kid, though of course the Dollars movies were extra special … but by my late teens and Clint’s mid 50s, I began to see how limited he was as an actor. Which at the time was actually difficult for me to acknowledge, like admitting that the football team you support are shit. 
These days I can look at some of his films with nostalgia, even if they’re really not very good. He simply should not be directing and acting in the leading role - he’s not up to it.
In many of his self directed films, when he has more than a few words to say in character, you can see that he’s really struggling to remember the lines - I recently watched ‘Bronco Billy’ which might have been a lot more enjoyable if a more capable actor had played the lead … perhaps someone like Jeff Bridges - Eastwood just can’t pull it off and frankly it’s embarrassing to watch. If another director had been helming that film, they would have been calling ‘cut’ and redoing the take.
So even though he’s a softly spoken laid back kinda guy … he still must have an enormous fucking ego, to think he’s putting in a decent performance. He’s waffling on about putting on a show for the “little pards” and he can’t even maintain eye contact with Sondra Locke … who must have had a hand in rewriting the script, because we’re told half a dozen times throughout the film how beautiful her character is ! ??? Yeah right ! LOL Clint and Sondra: The deluded years 
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Clint Eastwood is indeed very limited as an actor and sometimes his delivery can be pretty sloppy. I think he just has a certain appeal and I’ve always liked him. Bronco Billy is great fun for me. I can’t imagine anybody else in the role.
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Maybe he should’ve stuck with dubbing his lines like in the Dollars films. 
That way he can just read off of a page. Clint is more looks and style than acting ability, that’s for sure. Spaghettis wouldn’t be the same without him, though. I liked Kelly’s Heroes but let’s face it they were all being sloppy in that one. haha. Where Eagles Dare was interesting but even I as a Canadian can tell Clint wasn’t “acting” like a German very convincingly. Most people think of Dirty Harry but those films were sloppy also. But hey, he had a big gun!
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Agreed - and I’ll keep watching the older films, but alas not with the same enthusiasm 
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Not true, there’s Richard Kiel. 
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I’m not sure I got far enough into the film to see Richard Kiel … but I must have seen him in the clip or trailer. Let me guess, does our Clint get the better of the gigantic man ? LOL 
There are actually some very good actors in this movie, just that they don’t suit this film, or the film is just plain flat, and they don’t have much to work with.
However Chris Penn (R.I.P) is just awful and sticks out like a sore thumb - not in a good way. 
Now I have the BD, I’ll have to watch it all the way through … but I don’t get how it rates 7.3 on IMDB and a 4/4 from Roger Ebert and 92% at Rotten Tomatoes … perhaps if that was for Clint’s cool wardrobe and iconic look I’d understand … but this film is weak and cliched. Quien Sabe !
Pale Rider tries so hard to be Shane and it just fails.
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Did Eastwood think at that time, riding around looking cool and mysterious was enough to carry the film? because it doesn’t - To me this illustrates that he’s not a good director, as he doesn’t know his own strengths and weakness … it’s also clear from various interviews that he didn’t get what Leone was about either. He seems to quietly resent that people want to talk more about the Dollar movies than his lack lustre versions of the western, and yet they’re clearly trying to impersonate the Leone style.
There’s a rather uncomfortable interview with Eastwood, from the time he was in England to plug ‘Pale Rider’, (I think it’s with Christopher Frayling ?) and Clint clearly wants to get away from talking Leone and talk about his own latest product … and that’s what it comes down to … is it art or entertainment, or just a commodity.
Yep, from here More Than A Fistful of Interview with Prof. CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING on SERGIO LEONE
“in London when he came to promote his film called ‘Pale Rider’. We spent a lot of time talking about the Italian Western. It was quite embarrassing, because he wanted to talk about ‘Pale Rider’, quite rightly, but we talked about his days in Italian films back in 60s, and a lot of it goes into this book. Some of the materials, which didn’t get into that book got into the Leone book.”
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More Italian additions:
Der Fluss der Mörderkrokodile
Foltergarten der Sinnlichkeit
Eurocrime Collection (Stadt in Panik / Gewalt über der Stadt / Convoy Busters)
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Bought the new Army of Darkness Steelbook blu-ray collector’s edition by Shout Factory.
New blu-rays:
Wasn’t especially taken with The Conjuring 2 when I saw it but I enjoyed Annabelle: Creation a couple of week ago and I think the first movie was a cracking picture so I thought, sod it, let’s get it and give it another go. Maybe I wasn’t quite in the right mood for it or something.