Thought I’d be interesting to start a topic about weird westerns, basically everything ranging from The Terror of Tiny Town to El Topo. I’m always looking for recommendations. Anyway, let me kick of the the thread with these two I recently watched.
Big Money Rustlas (2010, Paul Andresen)
Insane Clown Posse in the Wild West. Some weird shit alright, with bizarre characters galore. Pretty funny as well, if you’re not too politically correct that is.
Jack the Ripper Goes West (1974, Larry G. Spangler)
Slasher/western with Jack Elam as a drunken sheriff. Seemed like a pretty cool premise, but the execution is incredibly poor. The Swedish VHS version appears to be uncut, but I wouldn’t recommend this in any form.
El diabólico (1977, Giovanni Korporaal)
This is definitely something else! A brutal rapist/murderer with a Satanic medallion is hanged, but then his ghost is transferred on to the next guy who wears the medallion. And so the mayhem continues… Not necessarily well made -ok enough though- but nice and creepy. And very original of course!
Yeah, best case scenario it would have been a spaghetti western/giallo type sleazefest. The whole idea of that I find fascinating actually. Something done in that fashion would still work today I think. Great idea for a movie!
Just finished watching El diabólico (1977, Korporaal) and I really loved it, easily a new favorite. The Mexicans sure did know how to make a mean, weird western. Too bad it is, like seemingly all of these Mexi-westerns, cropped very annoyingly with the actors sometimes totally off-screen…
Yeah, that film is something. Would love to see it as intended, in widescreen.
Korporaal is actually a Dutchman, who moved to Mexico. He changed his first name Jan to Giovanni (the Latin equivalent of Jan). I don’t think he made too many movies, mostly documentaries.
Anyone else remember Ravenous? Dark magic and cannibalism in a remote US cavalry outpost. Robert Carlyle and Guy Pearce are the bigger names in the movie.
There’s a new movie coming out that has Kurt Russell in it called Bone Tomahawk that sounds like a mix of this movie and The Hills Have Eyes.
White Buffalo and Mackenna’s Gold are pretty weird. Five Bloody Graves had some weird bits, too, especially Death/the Grim Reaper doing the narration. El Topo and Greyknight are some others but I don’t think you could call them western films. I watched Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold. That was a bizarre film! I enjoyed it the first time (maybe it was just the experience of watching something I’d never seen before) but I recently tried to re-watch it and couldn’t get further than 40 minutes. There’s something so interesting and yet something so ridiculous about it at the same time. :o My favourite “weird western” has to be Dead Man. What a movie! Anyone know where I can get a copy of El Diabolico?