The Last Western You Watched?

The Saloon
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[size=10pt]THE LONELY MAN (1957) D:Henry Levin( Jack Palance, Anthony Perkins)[/size]

There’s not much action in this, but the performances of J.Palance and A. Perkins are ok though. Palance decides to come home to make peace with his son after living a life as an outlaw, but his son doesn’t want to have anything to do with him because he blames his father for the death of his mother. Meanwhile Palance is going blind and there’s a gang lead by Neville Brand out to kill him. Not bad for this type of western. 2.5 out of 5

10202

Some Randolf Scott stuff.I really enjoyed them especially the first one.

Man in the Saddle (1951 De Toth)
A Lawless Street (1955 H. Lewis)
The Nevadan (1950 Gordon Douglas)

10203

Finally watched [size=12pt]DJANGO UNCHAINED[/size]

First impression: Mixed feelings. Not a bad film, but not really innovative (neither within the western genre, nor within Tarantino’s body of work). Good to see Tarantino doing a western, but I still think he should leave this postmodern, referential, recycling style and try something new. I’d also like to see him doing a really traditional western.

I was a bit sceptical about Jamie Fox, thought he wasn’t the right man for the job, but he was great. Most performances were by the way.

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… actually i thought it could have been more postmodern, to me whole movie seemed calmed down

anyway - Genius and Two Companions
almost two hour SW with Hill and i must say as it was the case with Nobody i like it now more than years ago - this is not bad effort at all
quite engaging and with lot of good performances and some funny Hill’s clowning, all with real life Indians and spectacular looking landscape
Morricone’s music again here with exceptional piece during the final stagecoach chase

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... actually i thought it could have been more postmodern, to me whole movie seemed calmed down

Not the blood-letting though, and that was more in the style of comics like Jeremiah than western movies. In some scenes wires were used in Wuxia style, etc.

Genius & 2 Companions: that music was part Beethoven. Not a bad composer either, btw.

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yeah and that was “for elise”, right?

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[size=14pt]WILL PENNY(1968) D:Tom Gries (Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett)[/size]

2xSfQuz.jpg2792×2008 572 KB

Had not seen this in a long time, glad I did again as this is a very good western and Charlton Heston proves just how good of an actor he really was.
Heston as a rugged but good-hearted cowpuncher, rides out for his next job with his two best friends,… kills a man in a shoot-out with a psychotic family lead by a good Donald Pleasence over a dead deer, and now they want revenge. Along the way Heston gets mixed up with a woman and her son in a cabin and things get mighty cozy until the psychotic gang show’s up. It’s beautifully shot and looks realistic with a good cast. I don’t know why it’s so underrated though, it’s a good one for sure.

Taking a break from westerns for a while, moving on to other stuff that I have piled up. I think I’ll watch " From Teen Mouth to Teen Ass " tonight, with a few beers of course!

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The Shooting.

Warren Oates and his not so bright partner decide to take on a job helping a woman cross a desert. The woman though is such a pain in the arse… in many other Oats starring films he would have told her what to do and head off for a beer or two. Its what I would have done aswell. Even so Oats kept me watching this film which is no where as good as its companion piece.

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“Fort Dobbs” (1958)
-Clint Walker, Virginia Mayo

Plot: IMDB
Having eluded a posse, a wanted man rescues a woman and her young son from a Comanche attack. He then escorts them to the presumed safety of a U.S. Cavalry fort. Trouble develops along the way when the woman comes to believe that her rescuer was responsible for the recent death of her husband.

Phantom’s Review: Highly entertaining, western action film. Good performances from the leads, plenty of solid action and a good (if unoriginal ) plot. Clint Walker makes for a great cowboy hero and Virginia Mayo is gorgeous. Lots of fun.

10210

Finally got around to seeing Return of the Seven. Its about as good as I thought it would be considering Brynner is the only guy from the first one and the other characters from the first film are played by different actors.

While McQueen stole every scene in the first film due to his “acting fidgets” and natural charisma, this dude stole very scene because it was so distracting how he was not Steve McQueen! lol. 6/10. I think it was a bit better than “Ride”. I haven’t seen the Burt Kennedy one yet.

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Return of the 7 is the Burt Kennedy one. :wink:

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well, Ride and Return - i wonder which one is worse, but probably Ride
the best Seven sequel is Guns for Magnificent Seven with George Kennedy

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Return is the most boring, and therefore the weakest.

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Ah yes, I meant George.

Can’t blame McQueen for not wanting to do the sequel. I likened Robert Fuller replacing him to all those Fidani films where you get people like Hunt Powers playing Django and Sartana and such.

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Some new entries on my [size=12pt]Western Blog[/size], the first one brand new:

[url]http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/gardenofevillc6.jpg/[/url]

[size=12pt]http://westernsontheblog.blogspot.be/2013/04/garden-of-evil-1954.html[/size]

I wrote about this one before, but I developed the review a little:

[size=12pt]http://westernsontheblog.blogspot.be/2013/04/johnny-ringo.html[/size]

The title is JOHNNY RENO (not Ringo), I mispelled the title initially.

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Fury At Gunsight Pass, 1956… An unexpectedly entertaining romp. Neville Brand learns that $35,000.00 is in Gunsight Pass’s bank-safe, and that the entire town will be shutting-down for the banker’s son, Richard Long’s wedding celebration. Brand enlists the town’s undertaker to hide the cash, then treks back to his gang to plan the robbery. There’s 8 of 'em, so he sends 4 on ahead to draw less suspicion… but those 4 decide to rob the bank ahead of Brand’s arrival. It’s enjoyable to watch how things transpire as the undertaker is accidentally shot, the stolen money vanishes, an entire posse is captured as pawns, and a final town-shootout during a violent dust-storm. Deftly directed by Fred F. Sears.

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Scherp, I have noticed that you often call westerns “forgotten today” which are pretty well known at least here in Germany. Garden of Evil is here one of Hathaways best known westerns. since the 80s it was regularly shown on TV and it was released twice on DVD. Only his Wayne westerns are better known.
The most (nad only) unknown of Hathaway’s westerns (from those he made after WW II ) is Rawhide. All the others are easily to get here.

Other westerns like Cat Ballou or The Professionals are also far from forgotten, not even halfway forgotten. Are these films which are not so famous in Belgium or the Netherlands?

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I think that in general westerns are more popular in Germany than in Holland or Belgium.

I cannot remember that Garden of Evil was ever shown on TV over here. In France the western is more popular, and therefore I often buy French DVDs when in Brussels. One of the problems for me, living in the North of Belgium, is that the French language has become less popular. Flemish people above the age of, let’s say, 45-50 usually speak French, not perfectly, but like most younger people speak English these days. As a result French books and comics were widely spread in Flanders, today French books have only a small stand in a library and French comics are read in either Dutch or English translations.

On TV the situation is hopeless. French television used to show a lot of westerns, but the younger generations have taken over and westerns have become far less popular (I guess the DVDs are bought by my generation). In Holland and Belgium Sergio Leone is virtually the only name younger people recognize, his films are available on DVD (stock permanently renewed) and his films are shown on TV every now and then. Still, when A Fistful of Dollars was shown on TV a while ago, I got two phone calls from TV magazines who wanted some info.

The American western has become a matinee genre. On Saturday afternoon networks occasionally have a western on the program, usually a John Wayne vehicle (The Comancheros, The War Wagon etc.) or one of the films of that special group of classics (3:10 to Yuma, High Noon, Shane, The Gunfighter, Clementine, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Liberty Valence and a couple of others). That’s about it. Spaghetti westerns have always been a bit more popular, at least in cinemas or on VHS. Apart from the Leones, they have hardly ever made it to television, and I guess they’re not a good investment on DVD (and fans buy DVDs on the net).

I might have underestimated the popularity of The Professionals a little, but I don’t think it’s one of those titles instantly recognized by wide audiences. Cat Ballou is probably only remembered for Lee Marvin’s nose (I asked a couple of film critics if they knew the movie, and after a while one of them said: Oh yeah, that’s the one with that nose!). Note that the film was an Oscar winner, note also that it was one of the most popular American westerns from the sixties with enormous grossings, most probably third after Butch & Sundance and True Grit. That’s why I said it was a more or less ‘forgotten’ movie.

I’m afraid this tendency cannot be stopped. Virtually every movie is available these days (DVD, download, PPV, etc.) but this also means that everybody has its own “niche” : fans stick together and what they watch or like is of no concern to large audiences.

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Of course westerns are not very popular a amongst younger audience. and yes the DVD buyers are those who watched them in the childhood, like us. But for those only those films are “forgotten” which are not easy to purchase. The unreleased on the home video market and those which are rarely or never shown on TV.

And then, of course how films are remembered has a lot to do with their directors and their stars. A bad John Ford film is more present than a very good film by “forgotten” directors like Elliot Silverstein or Richard Wilson. And Richard Brooks is nowadays less popular than Boetticher or Mann.

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Amazing !