Western

In 1870, a gang robs a train and steals a ceremonial Japanese sword meant as a gift for the U.S. President, prompting a manhunt to retrieve it.Read More »

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An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the “traditional” American West is disappearing around them.Read More »

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Ride the High Country is the one Sam Peckinpah movie about which there has never been controversy–save at MGM in 1962, when a new studio regime opted to dump this beautiful, heartbreakingly elegiac Western into the bottom half of a double-bill. Westerns rarely even got reviewed back then, so it’s wellnigh miraculous that critics discovered the movie and raved about it. Newsweek called it the best American picture of the year.
Veteran cowboy stars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea portray aging gunslingers in the twilight of the Old West. McCrea’s character, Steve Judd, signs on to transport a shipment of gold from a remote mining camp. Gil Westrum (Scott), an old crony now trick-shooting in a carnival, agrees to help but really aims to seduce Judd into stealing the treasure. The slow-building tension between longtime friends–one still true to the code he’s lived by, the other having drifted away from it–anticipates the tortuous personal dilemmas played out to the death by Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Benny and Elita in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.Read More »

A wealthy land baron’s sadistic son has taken to abusing the local citizenry with his bullwhip in perverse, evil games.
Prospector Franco Nero returns home to help his alcoholic half-brother and finds a maniacal, bullwhip-wielding tyrant controlling the land and Nero’s sibling.
Nero joins forces with his kin to try to beat the sadistic creep and his followers.Read More »

Steve Daley is in the Abilene jail waiting to be hanged when Judge Carr brings Cheyenne O’Malley into his cell and says that Daley can go free if he marries the girl without knowing her name. She must have a husband to claim an estate. Daley agrees and gets a letter of pardon from the Judge, who plans to kill him, but Daley, with the help of his friend Podo escapes the jail and the Judge’s hired killer, “Slow” Karp. Daley sets out to find his new bride but is captured and taken to the mansion of John Parnell who tells Daley that Cheyenne is actually a half-breed who runs a fur-trading company and needed a husband because of provisions in her father’s will. Parnell is also a fur-trader but he wants Daley to take over Cheyenne’s business so he and Daley can work together. Daley agrees, trails the wagon train and takes over but not before Cheyenne bull-whips him…Read More »

A number of John Wayne’s early westerns looked alike, but that’s not a criticism because the handful I’ve seen were
all entertaining.
That’s one similarity: others included the fact they only were about an hour long, had interesting (albeit strange)
dialog, had a pretty lead female (here, Mae Madison) and a very talented horse named “Blue.” Of course, the men were
all tough guys.
There is a lot of action and interesting scenes packed into this one hour.
My only complaint was that Luis Alberini’s character made the Mexicans look unnecessarily stupid.
From IMDBRead More »

Paul Tatara, TCM wrote:
Some movie projects, no matter how promising, seem doomed to one form of failure or another. When RKO first filmed Edna Ferber’s popular Western novel, Cimarron, in 1931, it was a major critical success, and even snagged the Oscar® for Best Picture. But it was an expensive movie to make, and the studio lost a pile of money on it. Then, when MGM enlisted Anthony Mann to remake Cimarron in 1960, the production was beset with an assortment of problems, including studio interference and a misbegotten romance between its lead performers, Glenn Ford and Maria Schell.Read More »

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There are arguably no bigger cinematic icons of America than John Wayne – the right wing side of America steeped in violence and guns, and James Stewart – the left wing side of America rooted in humanity, understanding and intelligence. And there is arguably no finer chronicler of America’s mythology and past than John Ford. Put them together and you get one of the finest westerns ever made.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Although Marie Windsor plays the title role in Dakota Lil, she is shunted away to third billing, right after male leads George Montgomery and Rod Cameron. Montgomery is cast as a secret service agent Tom Horn, sent West to round up a gang of counterfeiters. He starts by gaining the confidence of dance-hall girl Lil (Windsor), one of the ringleaders. She, in turn, leads Horn to the brains of the operation, Harve Logan(Cameron).Read More »