What Is Your Top 5 Worst Westerns?

The ones i hated the most so far are:
Les Dalton (most unfunny comedy i’ve ever seen, shitty beyond belief)
Glory Glory aka. Hooded Angels (i’ve only managed to watch about 30 minutes of it, it was that terrible)
Apache Blood (has to be seen to be believed, especially the “bear” scene)
$20.000 on no.7 (bored the crap out of me like no other western ever did, it’s badly made and makes no sense)
Kid Vengeance (simply horrible, even with Lee Van Cleef)

Apart from the usual suspects (Pancho Villa, Finders Killers etc.) mentioned every now and then on these pages, I have bad memories of one particular Gregory Peck western

A quick look at Peck’s page at IMDB, tells me it must have been The Stalking Moon (1968, Robert Mulligan)

I saw this thing in cinema, back in the sixties, so when I was very, very young
Some reactions on IMBD are more positive, so it’s possible I saw it at the wrong age

I had high expectations, because I had seen McKenna’s Gold, also with Peck, a few months earlier
Now I know that film wasn’t great, but it seemed a tremendous adventure movie back then, full of action, excitement, indians and beautiful women
This was nothing of the sort, it was extremely dull, talktalktalk, nothing really happening untill the last five minutes

Hahaha, why not.

But for me The Stalking Moon belongs to the underrated westerns. It’s not a masterpiece but a good one, maybe a very good one. The photography is remarkably good and very atmospheric. The story was fine and intelligent, but maybe some of the dialogues were really a bit pretensious. Only annoying thing was that they used shitty fast motion scenes for the last confrontation.

But McKenna’s Gold on the other hand, that’s a real disaster. Not a bad story, but this was one of the films in which everything went wrong, and so the film looks. The very bad and fake looking back projections show the path.
Can’t imagine you would like it in these days, Scherp.

I can imagine that I would like The Stalking Moon better these days
I don’t remember anything about the photography, atmosphere etc.

Mckenna’s Gold is something special to me, since it was the first western I saw in cinema
I saw it during a school holiday, the cinema was crowded with boys of my age
I never forget the moment Julie Newmar took of her clothes and jumped into a lake
Temperatures reached boiling point, I guess, and probably weren’t the only things rising

Everything about the film is wrong, even the story about the treasure map and everybody fighting over the posession of it, is uninventively told. The scenes shot against the blue screen (sometimes for no discernable reason), the corny special effets (the bridge!), the silly voice over, the earthquake and avalanches of rocks … it’s all laughably bad
But I like it
Some films make me feel young again
This is one of them

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Not viewed MacKenna’s Gold for a long time, and think a purchase may be in order.

I actually like McKenna’s Gold despite all its faults. But then a bit of Julie Newmar can divert my attention from a lot of other shortcomings. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey, I can’t remember this Julie scene, but I should. What a shame!

Al least there was a justification to shoot it in 70 mm. And for all those who lament about Blu Ray.

  1. American Outlaws
  2. Texas Rangers
  3. Joe Kidd
  4. One Eyed Jacks (This will probably surprise some.)
  5. El Puro

Well, all 5 surprise me …

  1. China 9, Liberty 37 (Tries to be something special, but it’s just a moment of extreme boredom :’()
  2. South of Heaven, West of Hell (Simply awful)
  3. Joe Kidd (Part Western, part Thriller, part slow and boring, no need to say more)
  4. Gunfight at O.K Corral (Boring and slow 1950s western, even if it’s made with quality)
  5. His Name Was Sam Walbash, But They Call Him Amen (Let’s say the best of the worst)

I forgot Red Sun, it is almost worse than China 9, Liberty 37. :’(

anything with John Wayne, save for The Searchers

Havn’t seen anything with John Wayne, so I guess I shouldn’t? :stuck_out_tongue:

If you think you might like it, give it a shot

For me, I can’t stand John Wayne. He embodies everything I hate about classic American Westerns… I’ve no love for them, even if they kicked things off

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John Wayne westerns are a part of my childhood, so I can’t hate him. I don’t hate US westerns either. Some of them are dull or too clean or petty, ok, but there are many I love.
One of my favourite westerns is for example EL DORADO with the Duke.

I don’t hate all American westerns… just most of them :wink:

But seriously, I don’t care for the classic American western structure and character type at all. I can’t get into the whole cowboy and indian thing, the cleancut American west goodguy, etc… all reeks of BS to me. The spaghettis are far from historically accurate, but they seem much more realistic to me and I can find more to relate to in them

That said, there are certainly some American westerns I enjoy, but most of them came after this period… maybe The Magnificent Seven being the earliest I can think of and closest to the classic types

A matter of taste. Wayne has made lots of wonderful westerns, but also a fair share of turkeys.

Not viewed a John Wayne western for a very long time.

Without US Western there would have been no SW! So I could never hate them. :slight_smile:

For me John Wayne Western Turkey’s are:
The Undefeated
The Train Robbers
Cahill US Marshall
Dakota

But he was also in some great too: The Man who shot Liberty Vallance, She wore a Yellow Ribbon, Red River, Rio Bravo, True Grit, Stagecoach …

[quote=“Paco Roman, post:39, topic:508”]But he was also in some great too: The Man who shot Liberty Vallance, She wore a Yellow Ribbon, Red River, Rio Bravo, True Grit, Stagecoach …[/quote] i would add his last " The Shootist" to that list