Mine is of course the only one that makes sense …
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Henry Hathaway never made a bad movie. You should all cut your tongues
and wash your mouths with sulfuric acid because you don’t know what you’re
talking about 
. Gregory Peck was a very talented actor of the highest order.
My rating for SHOOT OUT (1971) Gregory Peck Robert F. Lyons
is 17.2 out of 20 
---->only now the rating is complete
Oh Hi SD.
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
his spirit continues to drool.
(Leonard Cohen)
Bandolero! I love that movie. Dean Martin and James Stewart as brothers? Doesn’t get more odd than that, but it makes for an interesting pairing.
Mild mind possessions are our only worry now.
THE RETURN OF SABATA (1971)
I started watching this last night on the German bluray…I got about one hour into the film and fell asleep. I’ll try and watch the rest tonight.
Of the three ‘Sabata’ films, I’ve always had a major problem with this one.
The original ‘SABATA’ (which I watched as an avid teenager in 1979, as part of the BBC2 Season of 'Spaghetti Westerns) was ulta-cool, James Bondish, Tabernas Desert, a classy villain in the form of ‘Stengel’ (Franco Ressel), and a magnifico soundtrack by Marcello Giombini!
‘ADIOS, SABATA’…fantastic score by one of my favourite composers, Bruno Nicolai; beautiful Almeria scenery; Gerhard Herter lapping it up as ‘Colonel Skimmel’…and the ever-serious Yul Brynner dressed in Post ‘Django Kill’ black tight-fitting Q. attire…
‘RETURN OF SABATA’ (1971) …to my mind, the thorn among the roses…
What on Earth was the Director, (Frank Kramer), thinking? The ‘humour’ is way over the top…
Why did the usually cool Lee van Cleef decide to wear a wig, and sport ‘Liberace’ side-burns?
Reiner Schöne - who plays ‘Clyde’ is not a patch on the great William Berger (‘Banjo’ in the original ‘Sabata’).
Schone simply appears to be a ‘knob-head’, who is trying his luck.
The music - again by Marcello Giombini - is not a patch on his original for ‘Sabata’…although the opening theme is rather catchy…
I have to admit that - when I first watched the film (34 years ago), I was surprised by the first 7-8 minutes…a very cool intro, to what ends up being a merely mediocre and boring endurance test.
One of the high-lights for me was the absolutely, drop dead, please marry me’, gorgeous red-head interest, played by the adorable, desirable, ‘please lick my ice-cream’, Annabella Incontrera .
Interesting enough, this supremely beautiful, red-head also appeared in another of my favourite films - ‘THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU’ (1969) - in which she attempted to poison the debonair and ever-cool ‘Ivan Dragomiloff’ - played with typical charisma by the ever-reliable OLIVER REED.
There is - to my mind - too much humour (occasionally coarse, and in your face) in this film.
Lee Van Cleef (with an obvious wig, longer hair, and large side-burns), does not look as cool as we are used to in the earlier films.
As a film, ‘Return of Sabata’ is flat, pedestrian, an endurance to sit through…and a waste of Lee Van Cleef’s talents…
Enjoy Annabella Incontrera …!!!
THE HALLIDAY BRAND - A serious, dramatic and well-crafted late 50s one with great character development and an enchanting score, can’t stress how much it surprised me. There’s not much action, there are actually only two killings in the film, but they are surely enough to raise the tension. My only gripe regards the way Joseph Cotten delivered some of his lines - he sounded too much like the Duke. A small gem that deserves more attention, I could even place it among the best I’ve seen from that particular decade.
Ambuse at Cimarron Pass - Clint Eastwoods start in the western movies. At least as one of the leading rolls. But a realy good western but nice to see Eastwood in this movie.
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis, whose Gun Crazy is an excellent film noir. Haven’t seen The Halliday Brand, but, after reading your short review, I hope to do so soon.
Last American Western I watched was George Englund’s Zachariah (1971), starring John Rubinstein and a very young, but already awful John Donson. Englund’s film ambitiously attempts to retell Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha in an anachronistic Wild West setting, employing an eclectic blend of disparate elements: electric guitars, saloon brawls, a drum solo, shoot-outs, soul-searching, fancy Western costumes, and hints of homosexual love.
Story and characters left me indifferent. I liked some of the music – cool drumming by Elvin Jones of Coltrane fame. Zachariah might be of interest as an expression of a particular (post-)hippie zeitgeist.
Never had a chance to see Zachariah, but I probably will download it soon and check what it is, or what it wants to be.
Another favorite from Joseph Lewis, from the same decade, is TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN. A duel with a harpoon and a gun is something you don’t come across very often in the history of western films 
Check it out if you haven’t done it already.
I have also seen A LAWLESS STREET, but can’t remember much about.it.
Thanks, I surely will – after Gordon Douglas’s Only the Valiant (starring Gregory Peck in his fourth Western role); got the German DVD today, alarmingly titled Bis zum letzten Atemzug – “Till the Last Gasp.”
Which describes A Lawless Street very well.
Terror in a Texas Town is Lewis’ best western. The Hallyday Brand is ok but a bit pedestrian in its use of the usual drama stuff.
Decision at Sundown (1957)
Probably the one I liked the least from the Ranown cycle (I still haven’t seen Westbound and Tall T).
Although it is one of the two from the cycle (if you count Westbound in the cycle, which, just like Seven Men From Now, was not produced by Harry Brown - ah, those definitions) which was not written by Burt Kennedy, story shares some recurring motives with other movies in the cycle. But it is missing spice and the detail of the Kennedy’s scripts and leaves us with anti-climatic ending.
But this very unusual ending is great. And a bit pessimistic. Makes it a revisionist western.
Btw for me Westbound does not belong to the cycle. For various reasons.
Westbound is without a doubt the weakest of the seven films Boetticher and Scott made together, whereas The Tall T you should see. Very close in spirit to the Ranown cycle is Harry Keller’s little-known Western Six Black Horses (1962), a lively chevauchée-à-trois, written by Burt Kennedy, starring Dan Duryea, Joan O’Brien and Audie Murphy.
Lively?
It’s a routine western which shows why the Ranown films needed a director like Boetticher.
I meant that their ride together is lively, on an internal and external level: growing tensions within the group, attacks from the outside; chevauchée-à-trois being a clumsy attempt at wordplay with ménage-à-trois. The film itself, as you write, pales in comparison to Kennedy’s collaborations with Boetticher. Quantez (1957) is Harry Keller’s only other film I’ve seen.
Last of the Fast Guns. One of George Sherman’s cinemascope dramas. Excellent writing. Enjoyable!