Drive ‘em north   Well, I have some very good news for Western lovers. Readers of this blog may remember an article I posted

    Forgive me for blowing my own (rather beat-up) trumpet again, but I hope you might want to scan this review of my new

  Disney, but still just about watchable   Of course it depends on your definition of a Western but Disney’s 1958 film version of Conrad

  Tough cattleman finds love   We’ve been looking at the Westerns Thomas H Ince made, especially those with William S Hart, and one that

  Father of the Western   Film titles with livelinks can be clicked for our reviews of the pictures.   Tragically in a way, the

  New Western   Surrounded is a beautiful-looking film, shot in New Mexico (that wonderful pink light) by Max Goldman, better known for rock videos

  Reading the West     On Jeff Arnold’s West we have reviewed or discussed various Western books – mostly biographies, novels, history and film

  Pretty darn good   By 1960, the B-Western, in the sense of a one-hour second feature, was all but dead, but producer/director Maury Dexter,

  Hoss off the Ponderosa   In the fall of 1968, NBC’s TV show Bonanza was already beginning its tenth season, and although Adam Cartwright

  Winter Wyoming   We’ve reviewed some of Taylor Sheridan’s Western or semi-Western films on this blog, the likes of 1883 and 1923. Wind River

  A brief guide   Howard Hughes’s book on Western movies Stagecoach to Tombstone: The Filmgoers Guide to the Great Westerns (IB Tauris) came out

  American Indians in early Westerns   Today, something a bit different: two Westerns for the price of one.   The two greatest pioneer artists

  New Western novel   This is a red-letter day for your Jeff, because today Stay and Die is published, his new Western novel, and

  Independent 70s Western   Shoot the Sun Down was a small independent film which seems to have got a limited theatrical release in the

  A cracking good oater   Wyoming Renegades is just the kind of Western I go for, a fast-paced 73-minute actioner with a strong cast,

  “Times are bad and gettin’ worse. That’s when the show business flourishes, when times are bad.” (Burt Lancaster as Ned Buntline)   I don’t

  A dark tale of the Arkansas woods   Bastard’s Crossing (the title is explained in the final scene) is another of the ‘twelve Westerns

  What in the old days we would have called a B-Western   Counting Bullets is a recent cavalry Western with a pretty traditional ‘siege’

  Spooky, man   And we’ll finish our current mini-season of three horror-westerns, pictures which deliberately crossed between the genres, with a classic of the

  Weirdly watchable   Since we are on a roll of horror-westerns, today one of the cheapest.   Jacques Marquette (not the Jesuit missionary) was

  Fangs for the memory   I’m like a dog with a bone as far as Jesse James and Billy the Kid are concerned. Any

  Kirk’s last Western   Draw! was Kirk Douglas’s last Western. It was a TV movie made by Douglas’s own Bryna Productions (named for his

  Another old post I have revised!   Hats off to the Stetson   There are three main ways to distinguish a cowboy: his horse,

  The finest Western Peck ever made   I reviewed The Gunfighter back in 2016 but having just seen it again and also listened to

  Worthy, if a tad dull   Continuing our current thread of ‘important’ 1920s Westerns, today we’ll look at a big Paramount picture from a

  Coop’s first big role   It is often said that Samuel Goldwyn’s The Winning of Barbara Worth is not a Western, and indeed it

  Coop’s first sound Western – though not really   Wolf Song, released in March 1929, dates from the period of transition between silent and

  Indian Charlie   Charles Stevens was colorful character actor of the Western. For most of his professional life he claimed to be Geronimo’s grandson,

  L’Alliance brisée: Le Western des anneés 1920 by Jean-Louis Leutrat   The Western movie certainly took enormous strides forward in the 1920s, even before

  The only surviving footage of Tom Mix directed by John Ford   In 1920 John Ford moved from Universal to Fox, where he was

  A guksu western   Lovers of spaghetti westerns will probably like this nine-part Netflix show. It is set in Jiandao, known in Korean as

  A woman’s lot   Heartland is a drama which in a way harks right back to the early days of silent movies. There is

    Readers in the US might be interested in this e-mail I received from INSP:     Hi Jeff,   I hope you’ve been

  DVD, please   I’m writing about a film today but not reviewing it, as such. That’s because I haven’t seen it, and indeed my

  Divided opinions   There’s a whole sub-genre of capture-the-wild-horse Westerns. Many cowboy stars felt they had to do one. Joel McCrea did two. These

  That’s enough Mohicans   Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans has sold millions of copies, has been filmed very many times and

  The B-Western in its death throes   By the early 1960s, the second-feature just-over-an-hour black & white Western movie was a rider on a

  Yet another go-round of the Mohicans yarn   Made as Last of the Redskins but finally released as the marginally more PC Last of

  Notes from the prairie   How important music can be to a Western!   It must have been even more so in the early

  Siegel and Fonda, not bad!   In the mid-1960s Don Siegel was ‘reduced’ to working in TV. He produced the series The Legend of

  Walsh at the typewriter   In 1969 or ’70, when Raoul Walsh was in his early eighties, he hadn’t made a Western or indeed

  Western parable   A curious picture in some ways, Stranger at My Door is, I suppose, a Western. It starts with a James gang-style

  Weighty tomes   As part of my summer reading I have been re-perusing some hefty guides to the Western, in particular three, Brian Garfield’s

  Durango rides (yet) again   A Durango Kid Western every now and then doesn’t hurt.     The Rough, Tough West is part of

  Another Geezer Western   Red Tomahawk was one of three Westerns that AC Lyles produced which were released in 1967 (the others were Fort

  A Western? Nah.   Tulsa is often called a Western, in TV listings, guides and so on, and indeed, the first reel is Western

  The Preston Westerns   Robert Preston Meservey (1918 – 1987), actor and musician, is probably best remembered today for his role as The Music

  Film noir on the page   Reel West is a series of (admirably short) books about Western films from the University of New Mexico

  Tough guy supreme   Part of my holiday reading was Lee Marvin: Point Blank by Dwayne Epstein (Schaffner Press, 2013) and in light of

  On vacation now, dear e-readers, so I won’t be posting for a bit but I hope you’ll tune back in towards the end of

  A wonderfully good Western   We have of course reviewed the 1959 Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott Western Ride Lonesome on this blog, along with the

  Bang, bang (silently)   I’ve always liked Lloyd Bridges in Westerns. He was a talented actor, I think. Just look at the way he

  OK if you like that kind of thing   Alone Yet Not Alone: Their Faith Became Their Freedom, retitled for some television showings more

  Hard case Clint   The Western has long pursued a love affair with the character of the bounty hunter. One might have thought that

  “Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”   Film titles with livelinks have been reviewed already on this blog

  Mediocre-to-fair   Big Kill is a Western written and directed by and also co-starring Scott Martin. It’s a good-looking picture, shot in handsome New

  Frenemies   During Jeff Arnold’s West’s appropriately short season of Western short films, we have looked at a couple of shorts made by Michael

  That’s a lot of gunfight in 8 minutes   Jeff Arnold’s West is currently having a mini-season reviewing Western short films, and we looked

  Short and not too sweet   The Dentist is another Western short film (I’m rather into shorts at the mo), a nice little picture

  Nine minutes well spent   The ‘short’, so long a staple of the Western genre (very many of the early silent oaters were one-