The Crappificent Seven *)

Years ago I made a list of Top Westerns movies. Well, now here I have some of the less inspiring western films I've seen.

Some words of warning: There are worse films. These are at least watchable in some way. Yet I hasten to say that for the most part these are not "so bad it's funny good". What do I mean with "watchable?" For example, Blazing Stewardesses (1975) is much worse than anything on this list because I could not bring myself to watch it to the end.

Ok, that's enough, here's the list:


Captain Apache (1971)

A singing Lee Van Cleef in a crappy British faux-spaghetti western. Also, tiresomely brutal and corrupt Mexican revolutionaries etc. What is the mystery of "April Morning"? Ooh, aren't you just dying to know! (Hint: In the end it doesn't even matter)


White Comanche (1968)

As Clint Eastwood ascended from a TV career via European westerns, many were undoubtedly seeking to repeat this success. Here, William Shatner plays two roles in this stupid western made in the heels of better productions. I know what you're thinking, but no, although some laughs can be had here, for the most part it is a dull affair.

But WHICH of them died? Eh? Eh?

Consider two identical half-breed twins, one who lived with the white people and the one with the native Americans.  Does a thoughtful essay on nature and nurture ensue? Well, apparently nature does not so much abhor a vacuum, but redundancy, so a duel inevitably ensues between the two forces. This calls for an ancient Apache ritual... A joust on horseback, with revolvers.

(Trivia: Leonard Nimoy played a western villain in a slightly better film Catlow.)


Lucky Luke (1991 / 2009)

Lucky Luke is such a household name that for a certain generation of Europeans the whole idea of a western is tinted with the humor and caricatures of the Morris and Goscinny comic strip. It's a bit sad that the concept did not result in any good live action films. (Except maybe the Terence Hill flick Man from the East, a rip-off of the LL story The Tenderfoot)

The first tries to translate pick'n'mix elements from the comic book too directly to the screen, whereas the 2009 version attempts to cram every possible meta-reference about Lucky Luke and western cinema into one film. Luke is also given a totally unsuitable tragic "origin story" and the makers tried very hard to be post-modern. They succeeded.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Les Daltons from 2004 is not too good either, but I've not seen it (yet). Edit: I have seen it – it's not too good.


Trinity and Sartana (1972)

As a rule of thumb a prolonged "barfight scene" is a good indicator of a poor-mediocre western (as opposed to just some minor violent exchange in the saloon). Well, this film climaxes with a ten minute bar fight scene at the end, and man, isn't it comedic.

Trinity and Sartana were well established names in their own official and unofficial movies, here the names are exploited for something that has nothing to do with either. Trinity is really "Trinidad", while Sartana, who looks more like actual Trinity, does some acrobatic tricks.


Apache Blood (1975)

Frankly I can recollect almost nothing about this borefest with poor editing and disjointed scenes. On second thoughts, I might have been watching Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys. 

Yes, it's bad to the point I was wondering if it was really supposed to be an art film.


Django's Cut Price Corpses (1971)

Aka. A Pistol for Django.

Well, it might be said that as a rule of thumb any unofficial "Django" movie that isn't the original Django, Django Kill! or Django Unchained, could compete for inclusion in a list of bad westerns. I wouldn't go so far, as some "Djangos" are quite reasonable. This one's pretty stupid, though.

There's a guy who does not look or behave like Django at all, the plotline is quite incompatible with anything we know about Django, and overall it doesn't make much sense. The twist ending makes the Django-premise even less credible. (It's of the "he planned it all beforehand" variety)

Left: From the bottom of the barrel, Right: Poetic justice.

There's a group of Mexican brothers and one sister (no great spoiler there, it's very apparent she's a woman) who all seem to be inadequate at accomplishing anything. Notably the film has quite many woman characters for a western, but this simply means a lot of women getting slapped on the face or otherwise mistreated.


Tex and the Lord of the Deep (1985)

The idea of western characters encountering an ancient pre-columbian mystery is not that bad, but nothing good comes out of it here.

I've always considered Tex Willer to be dry reading, but here the filmmakers have really been able to expand on that quality: there's a lot of time-wasting and all the sets are very lackluster. The same lethargic tune seems to play throughout, and any craftsmanship that made Italian westerns interesting seems to have been forgotten.

Only the guy dying from the super-poison is a relatively interesting special effect, and spaghetti-veteran William Berger makes a passable Kit Carson, not that the role involves much more than having a beard.


Dead Men Don't Make Shadows (1970)

Also known as The Stranger that Kneels Beside the Shadow of a Corpse.

Demofilo Fidani is sometimes regarded as the Ed Wood of Spaghetti Westerns, so I'm saying nothing new here. To be fair, there are some nice scenes and the consistently low-budget surroundings even helps lend an aura of originality. Yet with Fidani the general editing and cinematic storytelling is rather abysmal, and instead of having artistic merit they tend to evoke a feeling of "what the hell did I just watch?".

In some mysterious way person grows wiser through watching Fidani westerns, so perhaps they are not all bad.


Hey, it can look interesting occasionally. But the main character there, is almost as expressive as he gets.

Here, the first 10 minutes of initial happenings all look and sound like the title scene: some guy rides in the wilderness, and then arrives at a western town, accompanied with dull background music. Dramatic zooms into Wanted-posters abound.


Django and Sartana are coming... It's the End (1970)

(It's "Django Defies Sartana" in my box set, a whole different film holds that title.)

Another Fidani film. Let's cap this up in some more detail:

Fidani's trademark seems to be long, wandering sequences that clearly explicate how the hero travels through the landscape, riding on horseback. In a striking contrast to this meticulous attention to detail, it's nigh on impossible to get any clarity on who's actually travelling and where to.

A woman gets kidnapped. The ranch hands, almost a full minute into the attack, are still carrying barrels and baskets when they are cruelly shot down.

When the ransom note appears on the door, the voiceover reads it, including the signature followed with a laughter. "...Burt Kelly. Brahahaha!"

Well, moments after, both Sartana and Django seem to be after the kidnapper. After meeting a frog and an old shivering man in a ghost town.

Dramatic zooms into Wanted-posters abound.

The villain is clearly insane, as they tend to be in Italian westerns. (He lives in a kind of a tepee inside his house.) His shtick is playing cards in front of the mirror, and the joke is that the mirror image "cheats".

Also, the villains, although they have no reason at all to spare Django's or Sartana's life, never kill them when they might have the opportunity.

In the shootout at the end, for the most part the villains proactively make enormous leaps just before they are shot, in order to fall spectacularly for no particular reason.

One Damned Day at Dawn... Django meets Sartana from the same director is also a contender.


Terror of Tiny Town (1938)

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a Western film populated entirely with midgets would be hilariously non-PC and camp, but in fact it is endlessly boring. The camera scans the little people on eye-level anyway, and the sets are mostly built to scale, so the impression of their smallness diminishes and what the viewer is left with is - and I must apologize - some malformed cowboys.


White Fang and the Hunter (1975)

This is the sequel n to the White Fang films, which I suppose have some tenuous connection to Jack London books.

Just some Joseph looking for a manger... It's not there

The titular dog gets little screen time in this film. Mostly we are subjected to the antics of a venerated spaghetti sidekick Ignazio Spalla, who plays a drunken old fart. The joke is that he drinks a lot of booze, and that's the joke. He usually responds to everything with a "blaarh", or "arrr..?" with pouted lips and a surprised look on his face. Then he marries an indian old maid and they both get drunk, rolling around in a snowy dirt ditch. Then railroad something-something, forced marriage, fake priest, a bar fight, the end.


The Outlaw (1943)

Some seem to think this is a reasonable movie, so I may be in the wrong here. The film depicts an unlikely meeting between Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. They are so removed from any historical (or legendary) depictions of them, sometimes I feel these are just three guys who happen to have those names by accident.

Some unintentional surrealism and absurd scenes here and there seem to portend more unconventional westerns to come, but I just can't care at all.

I guess the film was considered somewhat daring or even "naughty" in it's time, and echoes of this reputation may have made the film more well-known than it deserves to be. Jane Russell is hardly as "prominent" in the film as in the posters & promo stills.


It Can be Done Amigo (1972)

Somewhere in El Crapo, Texas... A cute idea: Jack Palance tries to force-wed his pregnant sister (or whatever, can't remember) to Bud Spencer, who does not fancy her at all. And when Bud Spencer does not get along with someone, you know what he can be like.

Two actors relying on heavy mannerisms can't quite carry it through. Spencer frowns and head-butts his way through the movie, whereas Palance mostly lies down, seemingly recovering from a hangover or something worse.

The pinnacle of jokes is the end where Spencer apparently finally beats up the woman. Ha, ha.

I have a pretty big soft spot for Bud Spencer movies, may he Rest in Peace, but here, no.


Bonus: Frisco Kid (1979)

It's one thing to point out failures in small productions, and perhaps not too fair either. But when a large cinematic production goes awry, it's a different order altogether. Using this metric, Frisco Kid might be the worst western film ever.

Again, it's not a bad idea, a Jewish Rabbi traveling through the old west. However, two hours are wasted in prolonged sketches and vignettes, possibly aiming at some kind of muted, subtle humor.

Sad to see Gene Wilder (Rest in Peace him too), who did a good job in Young Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, plod through this useless material.



*) Yes there are more than seven

Fort Django

A little reflection on the making of a Commodore 64 game. It's the first C64 machine-code game project I've really finished. All right, it was made with cc65 C with inline assembler but what I mean it's not made in BASIC. Significantly, it's the first 8-bit game I've made public in some way.

I guess making an 8-bit game is something I would have liked to do for a long time. Fort Django was started in 2014, and after a long pause I found the energy to make it into a release.

Djangooooooooohh....!

The game

You guide the character with a joystick in port 2. You can run, climb, crouch, jump and shoot. Shoot down the baddies, collect money bags and find the exit. The descending bonus timer means the faster you can collect the next bag the more $ you can get.

The game is very short and not at all hard. The only challenge comes from trying to be faster, for example it's possible to break the $10000 barrier on completion.

Get that bag, shoot that baddie

Inspired by Saboteur! from Durell, I at first thought about making a beat 'em up oriented game. As I needed to scale down the project I found it would be simpler to turn the game into a shooter with a western theme. The map is very small, but then again I like short games such as Saboteur! and Bruce Lee, as they have a strange kind of replay value. Much like with Saboteur!, I wanted to ensure there was a definite ending to the game and score could not be milked forever.

Making of

I created the game with cc65 C compiler, using inline-assembler for speed critical parts such as the sprite routines. The C64 has eight sprites, eight 8-bit addresses for the horizontal coordinate (0-255) and one address that holds the highest bits for all the X coordinates, so the sprites can also reach the right hand part of the screen. (256-320)

For a beginner it can be a bit tricky to decode these 9-bit sprite coordinates, especially in pure assembler. I have eight separate 16-bit memory locations for storing the X coordinates. These are then broken down into the hardware sprite coordinate values. This approach is a compromise between ease of use and speed.

The figure below shows how the 16-bit X coordinates are stored in $C000/$C001, $C008/$C009, $C010/$C018 byte pairs (the grey stuff in the middle). The less significant byte of these 16-bit values can be copied directly to the $D000, $D002, $D004... but the high bit is taken from the lowest bit of the most significant byte of the 16-bit values and combined into a value that is stored in $D010.

This is done once in a frame, so the high-bit issue can be forgotten in other parts of the code. The handiness of this is only really apparent in C, where you can then move the sprite x coordinate around with:

*(unsigned*)0xc000=*(unsigned*)0xc000+1;

Comparisons between coordinates become easier, too.  This checks if sprite 7 is right of the sprite 0:

if(*(unsigned*)0xc038>*(unsigned*)0xc000){do_stuff();}

Basically all the "collision detection" is built from this type of statements instead of the hardware sprite collision address, and as such is not pixel perfect. In these box-collision cases it's better to be lenient toward the player and a bit biased against the enemies.

The "16-bit" coordinate ought not to exceed 511, because only one bit is taken from the more significant byte.

The sprite Y coordinates are 8-bit values anyway and can be handled directly with the $D001, $D003, $D005... hardware addresses.

The whole X coordinate copying is achieved with the code below, starting from the less significant byte copying and ending with the high-bit construction. Obviously other locations than $C000- can be used for the coordinate storage.

     lda $C038
     sta $D00E
     lda $C030
     sta $D00C
     lda $C028
     sta $D00A
     lda $C020
     sta $D008
     lda $C018
     sta $D006
     lda $C010
     sta $D004
     lda $C008
     sta $D002
     lda $C000
     sta $D000

     lda $C039
     clc
     rol a
     ora $C031
     rol a
     ora $C029
     rol a
     ora $C021
     rol a
     ora $C019
     rol a
     ora $C011
     rol a
     ora $C009
     rol a
     ora $C001
     sta $D010

This is a starting point for a fairly generic solution, but of course it can be adapted for any particular needs. For example, the top sprite coordinates of the dudes in the game are copied and transformed from the bottom part coordinates, which changes the above routine a bit. Also, if less sprites are used why bother going through all the eight?

About the graphics

The graphics are made with PETSCII editor. Not only the background tiles, but the game map and even the sprites have been edited there. It goes to show that the PETSCII editor multiframe-editing is surprisingly powerful way for controlling this type of game "assets".

The game map tiles.

Another PETSCII screen was wasted for defining the movement rules for the above tiles. These are used for building a movement table every time the player enters a room, just as the room is drawn from tiles. How all these sprite, tile and movement table elements exactly relate to each other is a bit too intense to explain here, especially as they are not that well thought out.

The tile movement rules. @=space, A=block, B=platform, C=ladder

The map was also edited in the PETSCII editor. The 40x25 area is divided into 5x3 tile elements, giving 64 simple screens. Coloring indicates enemies and money bags. Not everything is absolutely visible in the picture below, as some spaces can be "colored" too. The game engine allows only certain combinations and positions for the enemies and objects.

The game map.

The map memory area is also used for indicating whether objects or enemies are removed, from the 1 (white=enemy) and 2(red=bag) status into 255 and 254. After the game is over these are changed back into 1 and 2.

Editing a multicolor sprite in PETSCII editor. The sprite export is not a standard feature!

What next?

I dropped many game elements I toyed with at some point. For instance, the chests could have contained items, and the doors could have potentially led to other areas in the fort.

The gold bags were a fairly late addition when I felt that only shooting bad guys would be far too minimal. From adding the bags it was a small leap to increase the jumping elements in the game. The bags also inspired the time-based "bonus dollars" mechanic. Still there might have been a bit more to do.

Code-wise, a music routine would have been nice but in the beginning I was a bit scared to sync the animation with a music interrupt. The sound effects are also sparse due to my inexperience with SID.

Yet, all additions would have also expanded the complexity of the game and the testing time exponentially. I'm glad I could finish it as it is. With this experience I already have some ideas about how to approach this type of project better.

Links

You'll need a Commodore 64 or an emulator to play the game.

Fort Django v1.1 at CSDb
Read the blog post about the v1.1

1.0 (older version):
Direct download
Alternative link
Page at CSDb
A cracked version in a T64 format

Day of Anger

It's not often I have the same film in multiple formats and editions, so I decided to make a little comparison from still images.

Day of Anger (I Giorni dell'ira, 1967) was directed by Tonino Valerii and it stars Giuliano Gemma and Lee Van Cleef. I tend to think it as an above average spaghetti western, but not outstanding. Admittedly it belongs to an earlier stage of Italian westerns and thus perhaps more innovative than it now seems.

Well, anyway, to the picture quality. I have an italian DVD from "Medusa", which does not have english dubbing or subtitles. So I eventually acquired the Blu-Ray/DVD combo, recently released by Arrow media.

(To see the bigger images properly, you have to click on the images and open them in a new browser window.)

DVD/ Medusa (position 1:03:10)

Even without having anything to compare to, the Medusa DVD does not seem so good. However, the image quality is much better than many cheap spaghetti releases.


DVD/ Arrow (position 1:04:37)

Focusing only on the horses, there seems to be not that much more detail, but then I realized the cropping in the Medusa version :) Overall, the image is of course sharper and the colors are clearer.


Blu-Ray Disc / Arrow

Looking at a still image, the difference between the Blu-Ray and the good DVD is almost as big as between the two DVDs. When watching the moving image, the difference is not that heightened. There's some film grain noise that's not visible in the lower resolution DVD. Note how the color red was a bit blurry in the DVD but not so here.

Gimmick guns of the Spaghetti West

For the western film aficionado, It doesn't take too long to notice that Italian "spaghetti" westerns often have pretty colorful characters, scenery and items. Besides copious amounts of dynamite, acrobatics and warzone-levels of gunfire, sometimes what strikes as most unusual are the "signature" weapons, special weapons and hidden gimmick guns.

A gimmick gun is often presented as a reflection of the smarts of the character, a notion which may stupefy the modern viewer or the fan of US westerns. Whereas a gimmick gun would be really unprincipled for a hero in an american western, the "hehe, fooled you with my preparedness!" type of thinking is instead a sign of high sophistication in the Italian west.

Here are some examples. Click on the images to make them bigger!


Django's portable gatling gun (Django, 1966)

The scene where this gun is used pretty much set the standard for all subsequent "hidden gun turns tables on enemies" instances in Italian westerns.

The fact that the gun is carried in a coffin is a particularly Spaghetti touch, a cool idea less successfully varied in numerous films.

The belt appears not to need any feeding. Also, the barrels do not rotate, in fact the barrels are not laid out in a circular pattern at all and thus the front part resembles a Mitrailleuse.

Compare this to the more realistic depiction of the Hotchkiss machine gun in Bullet for the General (1966), oiling the clips and all.


Sabata's trick gun (Sabata, 1969) 

Sabata films are a treasure-trove of stupid guns, acrobatics and dynamite. This is a very James Bond-inspired, comic-book style film and perhaps the best in this sub-genre.

Lee Van Cleef's Sabata is equipped to the brim with tricks. For instance, he has an extra-long barreled rifle and a bag he uses as a shield and for setting gun-traps. Nearly all characters rely on tricks here, but Sabata out-wits them all.

Most inspiring is Sabata's tiny, seemingly four-barreled gun. It is strongly implied that the small size of the gun permits Sabata to draw much faster than his enemies. But the gun holds a secret. Should you be so silly to assume that Sabata can fire only four shots... a small panel flips out from the butt of the gun, revealing additional gun barrels! Sucks to be you!

Banjo's banjo-rifle (Sabata, 1969)

Banjo (William Berger) has a banjo-gun that is semi-realistic in the "hidden gun" category. The banjo simply holds a small rifle. It is less credible that the banjo would function as a good musical instrument, though? Not too sure where the empty shells are supposed to come out from.

The rifle resembles a Mare's Leg (a largely fictitious, "sawed-off Winchester"), but clearly the barrel has not been cut.

Trivia: the tune that Banjo plays is a melody from 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Why? Nobody knows.


Indio Black's harmonica gun (Adios Sabata/Indio Black, 1970)

Yul Brynner stars in this colorful and comic-book style Western. He brandishes a manually worked multi-chambered weapon that I initially thought was a completely made up concept. However harmonica guns were once an alternative to revolvers.

In dimensions it also resembles the Mare's Leg but it's not a cut Winchester. The last chamber usually holds a cigar, which Yul then coolly lights after killing all the enemies.

It's worth mentioning the same film also sports the "Flamenco of Death", where the dancer finishes the dance by launching a deadly stone from a dedicated stone-holder on the toe of his boot.


Doc Holliday's gun (Day of Anger, 1967)

Here the gun is not that gimmicky per se, but the film purports that the legendary gunslinger's gun embodies Holliday's gun skills, inherited through past use.

Also, the film has a great collection of "gun wisdom", for example by shortening a gun barrel a few millimeters it is possible to gain an edge when drawing on your opponent, etc.

There's also a sort of tournament duel on horseback with muskets, loaded on the go...

...one might say the film is about guns somehow...

Yeah, that's pretty safe to say.


7-barreled rifle (Hanging for Django, 1969)

Again we have William Berger, whose character this time holds something that might be a kind of a nock gun, although it doesn't make much sense to carry one around.


Machine gun (Return of Ringo, 1965)

What is that they are wheeling in... Another Maxim-wannabe or a Gatling? It's hard to see from this blurry image.

No, it's another composite of different ideas. At least here they acknowledge that the machine gun is a heavy thing and needs two people to operate it. But the barrel arrangement is more reminiscent of "organ guns", volley guns and other proto-machinegun evolutionary dead end designs.

Well, that's it for now. I'll update the list when I get more screenshots.

Top Western movies

I gathered my thoughts and wondered what might be the best Western movies in my opinion, at the present moment. I've seen more than 250 and viewed the better ones several times.

The list contains films I've "Facebook-ranked" with four or five stars. The order is not very thought-out, especially when going further than Top 10. But in any case I would perhaps build the list differently at different times.

Edit 4.8.2016: I added a couple of pictures and tightened the text a bit. The list stays the same though.

Once Upon a Time in the West

.1968 Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)

I'd like to present something less typical as the "best western ever", but I can't avoid it. It is such a great summary of the genre, and works on so many levels.

.1968 The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci)

I'm not going to let Leone entirely dominate the top 3. The Great Silence is bound with intriguing visuals and the fantastic Morricone score. Corbucci shows an almost supernatural wintry West, even harder than the normal west, where a normal western character does not survive long.

.1966 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone)

The Western "small story" opens up into a war movie, the three protagonists worming their way within the chaos around them. Ultimately, it does not have all the depth of Once Upon...

.1971 Duck, you Sucker! (Sergio Leone)

This is not often rated very highly, supposedly Leone even distanced himself from the product. What is now available is a sort of reconstruction. I consider the themes in it to be very moving, and I usually like James Coburn better than Clint Eastwood.

Duck, you sucker!

.1952 High Noon (Fred Zinnemann)

High Noon is able to combine psychological and social "political" themes without making them too underlined. Tends to get better in multiple viewings, almost as if the ultimate outcome - the one we keep waiting for - didn't matter all that much.

.1970 The White Sun of the Desert (Vladimir Motyl)

Perhaps not strictly a western, but clearly plays with Western themes within a war setting, albeit in smaller way than, say, the Good, Bad and the Ugly. The tempo, tones, compositions, editing and generally everything shown on-screen are so delicately put that it doesn't even much matter if the plot is fairly simple. I almost expect Corto Maltese to show up.

Some villains from The White Sun of the Desert.

.1969 The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah) 

An all-around classic film.

.1982 Barbarosa (Fred Schepisi)

One of the first post-1960s movies that tried to positively re-affirm the Western hero myth, yet still remain revisionist.

Willie Nelson and Gary Busey in Barbarosa.

.1971 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman) 

This is probably the peak of "revisionism" in Western movies. The scenery and the Leonard Cohen soundtrack remain haunting.

.1962 The Man who shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)

I'm always astonished how this film manages to provide a very grand scenario and at the same time a small, but interesting, Western story. The only John Wayne film here.

.1966 Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima)

One of the "political" spaghettis made by Sollima. Face to Face may be better as a more serious work, but for once I feel the humour, music and extravagant characters are spot on and do not detract from the broader themes.

.1967 Face to Face (Sergio Sollima)

The more serious of the Sollima Westerns, the plot and the "moral" delivered are both interesting yet boiled in a good spaghetti styling.

.1959 Day of the Outlaw (Andre de Toth)

Another winter movie and a true original. A really gripping scenario that just gets tighter all the time. The winter environment is well integrated with the plot.

.1954 Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)

Yeah it's a bit theatrical but somehow even that functions to serve the expressiveness and psycho-dynamics between the characters. It's a rare time women get the spotlight in a Western without everything becoming a silly affair.

Johnny Guitar

.1965 For a few Dollars More (Sergio Leone)

This one I would have previously ranked higher, but recent viewing revealed there are many spaghettis I prefer to this one. Some of the best Lee van Cleef material here, though.

.1976 Keoma (Enzo Castellari)

The last really significant spaghetti western, Keoma is pretty ingenious work, especially due to the music-image synergies and editing. On occasions I can't help feeling it's more of a "best of the guilty pleasure movies" than a truly, truly great movie.

.1971 Lawman (Michael Winner)

This film plays well with the elements of classic western yet turns them around. The revisionism is not for revisionism's sake, but helps deliver the moral problem for the viewer's consideration. Rarely, if ever, have the motivations of "small time henchmen" bad guys been fleshed out so well.

1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah)

This is a more uneven film than the Wild Bunch but I've found it emotionally satisfying. The focus is clearly on Pat Garrett here, which James Coburn delivers as the more interesting character.

Some good sound-visuals combinations with the Dylan soundtrack (that "knocking on heaven's door"...), but Dylan's presence in the film is perhaps less successful.

.1990 Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner)

I thought it predictable at times, but then again things that sort of needed to happen, happened. I suppose for a certain generation it's almost impossible not to know something about the film even if you've not seen it.

.1960 The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges)

Initially I did not think much of this, it seemed to have all the hallmarks of what I consider a boring western, but it has grown on me.

.1987 A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines (Alla Surikova)

A Soviet "Western", but not bogged down with the kind of politics one might expect. It's not often that stunts, acrobatics and technical hijinks manage to support a Western film well, but here it happens.

.1952 Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan)

Maybe not a Western either, and perhaps a bit suspect politically even, but the story arc works well for me and leads to a great ending. Hilariously Marlon Brando cuddles some puppy dogs.

.1951 Westward the Women (William Wellman)

Many Wellman Westerns would deserve to be mentioned (The Ox-Bow Incident, The Yellow Sky, Track of the Cat) but this has a more grand scenario, with appropriate humor and seriousness mixed in good proportion.



Edit: Recently I have watched the three and a half hour version of Heaven's Gate (1980, Michael Cimino) and the zapata-western Tepepa (1969, Giulio Petroni). Both might easily be included, but of course the list reflects the situation by the end of 2014...