American Outlaws (Warner Bros, 2001)
. Jim: Is that bad? Frank: Very. In the last quarter of the twentieth century big-screen Westerns featuring Jesse James, which had been so prolific in the 1940s and 50s, were becoming quite thin on the ground. There was only one in the 1970s, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, and one in the 80s, […]
The Long Riders (UA, 1980)
. We played a rough game… and we lost. I’ve always been a fan of director, screenwriter, and producer Walter Hill. After all, he said in an interview that “every film I’ve done has been a Western”. The Wikipedia article on him even says that he contributed “to the revival of the Western genre.” […]
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (Universal, 1972)
. Cole’s the boss It was inevitable, once the 1970s dawned, that revisionism would have a go at Jesse James. After all, pictures like Little Big Man and Soldier Blue demolished General Custer as American hero, Doc gave us a corrupt and cowardly Wyatt Earp, Paul Newman was a drunken charlatan William F Cody […]
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Columbia, 2019)
Tarantino isn’t just walking down memory lane; he’s strutting (Barbara Scharres) Although, having said that, he was only six in 1969. The other day we were talking about Tommy Lee Jones as Duke Montana, a former screen cowboy in a movie-about-a-movie, The Comeback Trail (click the link for our review). There is […]
Jesse James in TV Movies
Made-for-TV Jesse We’ve looked at Jesse James on the big screen and Jesse on the small one. But in addition to appearances on various Western TV shows like Yancy Derringer, Bronco, Hondo, and so on, as well as getting his own show, The Legend of Jesse James (for one season only), the […]
Jesse James on TV
Jesse now rides across the small screen As we have seen, the Missouri outlaw Jesse James, sometimes with and sometimes without his brother Frank, appeared a great deal on the big screen, from the silent movie days, through Fox’s big A-pictures, and loads of B-Westerns of varying degrees of direness. But by […]
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (Embassy, 1966)
. “While you finish preparing, I shall activate the artificial brain.” When you hear Dr Maria Frankenstein say that, you will probably want to de-activate your real brain. After the plethora of big-screen Jesse Jameses in the 1950s, there were far fewer in the following decade. People had reached Jesse-saturation point, I think. […]
Young Jesse James (Fox, 1960)
. Jesse not a saint for once In 1960 Fox was back yet again with a Jesse James movie. This one was not a major A-picture, as its 1939 Jesse James and 1957 The True Story of Jesse James had been. It was a more modest mid-budget affair. It was directed by […]
The Comeback Trail (2020)
Watch it for Tommy Lee A brief pause from Jesse James (phew, I hear you exclaim) to look at a recent offering. Available now on Netflix is an entertaining picture, one in a long line of movies about movies, The Comeback Trail. It benefits chiefly from its stars, especially Tommy Lee Jones, […]
Alias Jesse James (UA, 1959)
. Jesse is a two-gun womanizing rogue The first quarter of an hour of this one shows us Milton Farnsworth (Bob Hope) in NYC as a spectacularly unsuccessful life insurance salesman who sells a policy to Jesse James. Milton’s boss Titus Queasley (the great Will Wright), furious, sends Milton out West to protect Jesse, […]