Westerns

Cat Ballou

Long before Unforgiven deconstructed the Western, or Blazing Saddles lampooned it, Cat Ballou poked the genre in the eye. An altogether enjoyable comedy, the film is full of small surprises, big laughs, and wonderful character turns. Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) is a schoolteacher until a hired thug kills her daddy. To protect what she loves, she collects two petty criminals, a wisecracking hired hand, and a hired killer, Kid Shelleen (Lee Marvin). Unfortunately, Shelleen is a raging drunk who is so inebriated and unsteady with a gun he literally misses the broad side of a barn. However, Cat, has, as they used to say in those days, a mind of her own, and she masterminds a spectacular train heist that puts them all on the lam. Marvin won an Academy Award for his role as the derelict Shelleen, and his performances (he actually has two) are still topnotch and on target. The framing device, two wandering minstrels, played by Stubby Kaye and Nat "King" Cole, are the maraschino cherries on the top of this Wild West confection. --Keith Simanton

The sleeper hit of 1965 Cat Balou was declared an instant classic when its sly blend of Western parody and rapid-fire action hit the screen. Lee Marvin won an Oscar for Best Actor for his dual role as noiseless ("it got bit off in a fight") gunslinger Tim Strawn and as Kid Shelleen the woozy boozy has-been who goes up against him. Jane Fonda co-stars as Catherine "Cat" Balou the schoolmarm-turned-outlaw who teams up with Kid. Slinger Nat King cole and comedian Stubby Kaye also appear singing the title song "The Ballad Of Cat Ballou." This wild and wooly adventure is "the ultimate American spoof of the American Western." Judith CristSystem Requirements:Starring: Jane Fonda Lee Marvin Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman. Directed By: Elliot Silverstein. Running Time: 96 Min. Color. This film is presented in both "Widescreen" and "Standard" formats. Copyright 2000 Columbia TriStar Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating:  UPC: 043396048645 Manufacturer No: 04864

The Villain

This curiosity from the mid-1970s is breathtaking in its dreadfulness. Directed by Hal Needham, this was an attempt at creating a Roadrunner cartoon with live actors--except that instead of a live actor they got Arnold Schwarzenegger, before Hollywood smoothed his rough edges (and his Austrian accent). He plays the invulnerable sheriff who rides blithely through life, unaware that the evil Kirk Douglas wants to kill him and kidnap his squeeze, Ann-Margret. The stunts are cartoony without being funny and Schwarzenegger shows exactly why he was known as "the Austrian Oak." Douglas works extra hard but effort alone isn't enough to elevate this script. --Marshall Fine

Geronimo - An American Legend

Walter Hill's revisionist take on the American cavalry's campaign to capture renegade Chiricahua Apache warrior Geronimo (Wes Studi) is, like Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, a dark tale that both celebrates and critiques myths of the American West. Despite its title, Geronimo is really about the American cavalry officers who undertake the responsibility of recapturing the warrior, in particular the young narrator Lt. Charles Gatewood (Jason Patric), a Civil War hero who respects the great Geronimo and brokers a treaty with the Chiricahua, only to see it collapse when the army kills the tribal medicine man. Gene Hackman plays Gen. George Crook, the proud but sympathetic officer charged with bringing in the renegades who take to hills after the killing. Robert Duvall, the tough, racist army scout and Indian fighter Charlie Sieber, practically steals the picture with his cagey, underplayed performance. More complex and complicated than most Westerns, this is a Walter Hill film through and through: lean, ironic, beautiful to look at (it was shot on location against the astounding landscape of southeastern Utah), and driven by a wonderful Ry Cooder score. Don't confuse this with the 1993 TNT cable film by the same name; it confounded many viewers at the time of its release and may have been at least partially responsible for its box-office disappointment. --Sean Axmaker

An American legend comes to breathtaking life in this explosive epic Western starring Jason Patric Robert Duvall Gene Hackman and Wes Studi as Geronimo. Studi (The Last Of The Mohicans) gives a stunning performance as the fearless warrior who was the last Indian leader to surrender to the white man. Betrayed by the Army s legendary "Indian fighter" General George Crook (Hackman) Geronimo leads a small band of warriors in escape. Pursued by a principled officer (Patric) a grizzled Army scout (Duvall) and a gung-ho West Point graduate (Matt Damon Good Will Hunting) Geronimo evades capture through brilliant military strategy and cutthroat courage. His true story is both an action adventure and a spiritual journey through the heart of a warrior. "Two thumbs up for GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND a visually stunning elegy to the last of the great Apache leaders." Siskel & EbertSystem Requirements:Starring: Jason Patric Robert Duvall Gene Hackman and Wes Studi as Geronimo. Directed By: Walter Hill. Running Time: 115 Min. Color. This film is presented in both "Widescreen" and "Standard" formats. Copyright 2000 Columbia TriStar Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: PG-13 UPC: 043396587090

The Quick and the Dead

Director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) tries gamely to recapture the exotic mysteries of spaghetti Westerns in this stylish but empty film, which stars Sharon Stone as a stranger who comes to the town of Redemption in time for an annual shooting contest. Her real motivations for being there are the stuff that might have found their way into a film by Sergio Leone--in fact, much of this film is a pastiche of Leone's greatest hits, including A Fistful of Dollars and Once upon a Time in America--but one can't quite believe Stone in the role. Gene Hackman gives a predictably solid performance as the town tyrant, and Leonardo DiCaprio is good as a lucky young gunslinger who gets to kiss the heroine. But not even the cast can help this failed project. Raimi brings a lot of razzle-dazzle to his camera work, but it doesn't make the film any more substantial. --Tom Keogh

A mysterious young woman shows up at a fight-to-the-finish gunslinger contest to seek revenge for her father's death years earlier.
Genre: Westerns
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD

The Man From Laramie

Only John Ford excelled Anthony Mann as a purveyor of eye-filling Western imagery, and Mann's best films are second to no one's when it comes to the fusion of dynamic action, rugged landscapes, and fierce psychological intensity. The Man from Laramie is the last of five remarkable Westerns the director made with James Stewart (starting with Winchester '73 and peaking with The Naked Spur). This collaboration marked virtually a whole new career for Stewart, whose characters are all haunted by the past and driven by obsession--here, to find whoever set his cavalry-officer brother in the path of warlike Indians.

The Man from Laramie aspires to an epic grandeur beyond its predecessors. It's the only one in CinemaScope, and Stewart's personal quest is subsumed in a larger drama--nothing less than a sagebrush version of King Lear, with a range baron on the verge of blindness (Donald Crisp), his weak and therefore vicious son (Alex Nicol), and another, apparently more solid "son," his Edmund-like foreman (Arthur Kennedy). There are a few too many subsidiary characters, and the reach for thematic complexity occasionally diminishes the impact. But no one will ever forget the scene on the salt flats between Nicol and Stewart--climaxing in the single most shocking act of violence in '50s cinema--or the final, mountaintop confrontation.

For decades, the film has been seen only in washed-out, pan-and-scan videos, with the characters playing visual hopscotch from one panel of the original composition to another. It's great to have this glorious DVD--razor-sharp, fully saturated (or as saturated as '50s Eastmancolor could be), and breathtaking in its CinemaScope sweep. --Richard T. Jameson

An intensely satisfying drama of rugged primitive justice THE MAN FROM LARAMIE marked the final and finest collaboration of one of the most important teams in Western films: director Anthony Mann and star Jimmy Stewart. Together this perfectly-matched pair provided audiences with eight classic pictures including Winchester '73 and Stategic Air Command. Under Mann's superb direction Stewart departs from his well-loved "ordinary hero" role and gives a riveting performance as a resolute vigilante obsessed with finding the man responsible for his brother's death. Among the suspects are an arrogant cattle baron (Donald Crisp) his sadistic son (Alex Nicol) and his ranch foreman (Arthur Kennedy in the best performance of his career). One explosive confrontation in which Stewart is dragged by a wild horse and shot in the hand at close range is one of movie history's most memorable sequences. Among the first Westerns filmed in CinemaScope THE MAN FROM LARAMIE uses the widescreen technology to emphasize the scope and power of this harrowing action-drama making it a perfect example of the Western as America's epic art form.System Requirements:Running Time: 103 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 043396041707 Manufacturer No: 04170

MacKenna's Gold

Attempting to do for Westerns what his Guns of Navarone had done for World War II action epics, director J. Lee Thompson crafted Mackenna's Gold as a lavish, absurdly ambitious variation on Erich Von Stroheim's Greed, resulting in a last-gasp Western so eager to encompass the genre's traditions that it turns into a big, silly, wildly entertaining mess. Gregory Peck surely had more serious intentions when he signed on, and he brings prestigious gravitas to his glum role as Marshall Mackenna, who gets shanghaied into searching for the gold-filled canyon of an elusive Apache legend. The rest of the 1969 film labors to undermine Peck's respectable demeanor; how else to explain Omar Sharif as a Mexican villain, Julie Newmar as a hot-blooded Apache temptress (with underwater nude scenes that were celebrated in Playboy magazine), and a jaw-dropping finale that's so ridiculous it's impressive in spite of itself?

Formerly blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman and composer Dimitri Tiomkin joined up to coproduce the film, and one can only imagine how Anthony Mann or Howard Hawks might've handled Foreman's sensible script. Thompson goes for scenic splendor, heavy action, and heavier emotions, casting everything at a fever pitch that's wildly enjoyable without betraying his "serious" intentions. A stable of Hollywood veterans (Eli Wallach, Raymond Massey, Edward G. Robinson, and others) appear in lively supporting roles--they're all dispatched in a garish Apache ambush--and Camilla Sparv is an ingénue with plenty of fighting attitude. Gold fever reaches its peak, along with some awesome special effects, and divine intervention reaches new heights of intensity. Top it off with José Feliciano's theme song, and you'll be in zany Western heaven. --Jeff Shannon

Silverado

Director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) clearly set out to make an old-fashioned Western, but he couldn't help bringing a hip, self-conscious attitude to the proceedings. Silverado thus finds its own funky tone--sometimes rousing, sometimes winking. Four cowpokes converge on a little Western burg called Silverado; they're played by Kevin Kline (a distinctly modern kind of Western hero), Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and the rowdy young Kevin Costner. Kasdan peppers the somewhat generic action with smart dialogue and a parade of quirky supporting players, including John Cleese as a sheriff who seems to have stepped straight from a Monty Python sketch into an Old West saloon. Bruce Broughton supplies the music, a real throwback to the glory days of thundering Western themes. One thing's for sure: Silverado's a lot more fun than the later Kasdan-Costner Western, Wyatt Earp. --Robert Horton

Cowboy

This sturdy Delmer Daves picture--his third with Glenn Ford, following Jubal and 3:10 to Yuma--is one of the most offbeat Westerns ever. And it must be the most writerly, with Frank Harris's memoirs as the source and a picaresque screenplay by Edmund H. North and Dalton Trumbo (a blacklistee, credited only posthumously). There's a pileup of oddities and complications at the outset, with Chicago hotel clerk Harris (Jack Lemmon) already in mid-romance with a daughter of the Mexican aristocracy (Anna Kashfi--Mrs. Marlon Brando at the time), and Texas cattleman Tom Reese (Ford) storming in to commandeer an entire floor of the hotel for him and his drovers so they can party till, well, the cows come home. Partying is curtailed when Reese loses big at cards; Harris bails him out with his savings, and Reese finds he's taken on not only an unwanted partner but a tenderfoot besides. Soon everyone is headed south.

Cowboy merits its bedrock title. This is a rare Western in which the job of breaking horses, trail herding, etc. figures as a dynamic aspect of the storytelling. The film also has a blunt and original way of looking at death, not as a genre convention but as something abrupt, ungainly, and often absurd, in both senses of the word. (This applies equally to men and cattle, by the way.) The camerawork is trim, angular, and somehow precarious, and the jagged editing hustles the very eventful proceedings to a close in barely an hour and a half. Saddle up. --Richard T. Jameson

Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon star in this Western depicting life on the cattle trail.System Requirements:Running Time: 92 Min. Copyright 2002 Columbia TriStar.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 043396078741 Manufacturer No: 07874

Buck and the Preacher

Sidney Poitier made his directing debut with this 1972 action comedy with an edge to it. Made at the height of the Black Power movement in America, the film has an unmistakable militancy in its story of a wagon-train guide and a con man who team up to throw a posse of white nightriders off the trail of escaped slaves. Poitier has never been a distinctive filmmaker, and Buck and the Preacher certainly doesn't indicate any early signs of raw talent that later went undeveloped. But the film's energy and sense of fun, hand in hand with the suggestively political zing, make it watchable. --Tom Keogh

Alvarez Kelly

Alvarez Kelly (1966) isn't really a classic, but it's a pleasant enough Western, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The rather convoluted plot (adventurer plays one side off against the other on a cattle drive from Mexico during the Civil War) relies heavily on the charm of the two stars, William Holden and Richard Widmark, but the two prove as reliable as ever. There are some so-so action scenes, but it's the battle of wits between the two principals that supplies all the fireworks. By contrast Janice Rule is just adequate as the love interest. --Ed Buscombe

This is the story of a renegade adventurer ALVAREZ KELLY (William Holden) who gets caught in the middle of the Civil War. With no loyalties to either North or South Kelly is hired to drive a herd of cattle from Mexico to the Union Army in Virginia. However along the way he is captured by Confederate Colonel Tom Rossiter (Richard Widmark) who persuades him...by shooting off a finger to deliver the cattle to starving Confederates in Richmond. At a bridge leading to Richmond the Union Army attacks and a bloody battle ensues in which Kelly risks his own life to save a Confederate officer. In the end Kelly's fate once again lies in the hands of Colonel Rossiter.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 043396011991 Manufacturer No: 01199