. . Early Eurowestern . . Just about passable as Eurowesterns go, this fairly early example (original title Tierra brutal) was directed by Londoner Michael

. . Not quite unwatchable . . Randolph Scott was in five films in 1939. There was a coast guard movie, one about pilots, and

. . Decent but lacks spark . . The Command was the first Western – the first Warner Brothers movie, in fact – in CinemaScope

. . A landmark Western novel . . The term shootist was, I believe, a jocular one coined by gunman Clay Allison to describe his

. . Audie’s meaner this time . . Audie Murphy did so many Westerns for Universal in the 1950s and 60s that they risk all

. . You can’t help smiling . . There’s something rather depressing about a Western-lover of my vintage (born in the decade after the Second

. . Slim as sidekick . . Santa Fe Passage is a rather routine Republic Western with not a huge amount to recommend it. It’s

  . The Wild West for real   A Frontier Doctor by Henry F Hoyt (edited by Doyce B Nunis, Jr, Lakeside Press, RR Donnelly

. . The kind of Western you want to see . . An absolutely classic, straight-down-the-line 1950s Western, The Tall Stranger has a first class

. . Formulaic but not at all bad . . I was always rather a Dana fan. Mr Andrews was in 14 Westerns and was

. . Josey Wales . . An early-1970s privately printed novel under the title The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales was republished in 1975 by the

. . Only OK, despite the cast . . Universal was a great studio for Westerns and 1953 was one of the classic years for

. . The least of Richard Brooks’s Westerns . . In one way this is a typical end-of-the-West tale because it’s set in 1905 and

. . In the clunker department . . It sometimes seemed that in Westerns Jeff Chandler could only appear in a war bonnet or US

. A good little psychowestern . Jeff Chandler’s last Western (he died in 1961 from blood poisoning got in a slipped disc operation, at the

. . Better than you might think . . From 1950 onwards, any number of sub-Broken Arrow, broadly pro-Indian Westerns appeared, some of them pretty

. . Poor acting, writing and direction . . Ray Milland, as a tough Army-deserter who guides an 1840s wagon train (he could only really

. . A sleeper . . At first blush a B-picture with stars of the second rank, this movie is actually creeps up on you.

. . The sanctity of blood . . Many MS Word files have been saved and blogposts posted and dinner party conversations become heated and

. . Quality oater . . A Day of Fury (marketed also under the titles Jagade and Justice Comes to Tomahawk) is a Western of

. . Monte Cristo on the Mississippi . . When in the Westerns rack of the DVD store you see a film titled Gambler from

. . The color purple . . Riders of the Purple Sage (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1912) is probably the most famous Western tale

. . Wild Bill Hickup . . It was amazing how quickly after the showing of the first effective narrative Western, The Great Train Robbery

. . The mighty Quinn . . Any chance to see Anthony Quinn in a Western is worth taking. To see him in anything, come

. . The West as a fantasy world? What an odd idea. . . An entertaining blend of Western and sci-fi, this movie was Jurassic

. . British boys and Billy the Kid   British readers of a certain vintage may have wondered if the writer of this blog is

. aka Si può fare…amigo, Bulldozer is back amigo, The Big and the Bad, etc. etc. [yawn] . Why does such drivel have to be

. . Re-re-make . . Remakes were part and parcel of Hollywood. It was natural to try to cash in on a theatrical success for

. . A late Elmore Leonard Western novel . . By the mid-1970s Elmore Leoanard’s books were pretty well exclusively crime stories. Gunsights (Dell Publishing,

. . Good late 60s Western . . In 1969, the excellent Glenn Ford, though his Western glory days were really behind him, made two

. . Cowboys and Indians . . If you are used to Barbara Stanwyck as the impressive matriarch figure Victoria Barkley of the 1960s 112-episode

. . Unchallenging but not junk . . On one level, The Outsider is just another unchallenging, family-friendly Hallmark movie. But I think it’s a

. . Arty . . How much difference a definite article makes. Just as, long before Unforgiven, there came The Unforgiven, so forty-two years before Ed

. . Mid-sixties pop cinema . . Well, you had Viva Zapata! and Viva Villa! It was inevitable that Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau should star in

. . Not the greatest start for Audie’s Western career; still fun though . . War hero Audie Murphy went into movies in the late

. . Could have been a good movie . . The Law at Randado (1954) was Elmore Leonard’s second Western novel, following hard on the

. . Dan Duryea as McCart(h)y . . Immediately after the lively 1954 Universal picture Rails into Laramie, 50s beefcake star John Payne got back together

. . Dan Duryea a great villain . . Rails into Laramie is a predictable oater but is a lot of fun. Directed by experienced

. . Bookkeeper with a Napoleon complex . . Gerald Mayer directed an episode or two of Gunsmoke, one of The Virginian, a couple of

. . Ride round this one . . A good rule for Western fans to live by, as they mosey on down the trail of

. . Jack Palance (1919 – 2006) . . The artist Loren Kantor contacted me about a woodcut he had done of Jack Palance. Thanks,

. . The scalp trade . . The Bounty Hunters was written in 1953 and was Elmore Leonard’s first Western novel. One of the most

. . Diluted . . There’s a limit to how much Lonesome Dovery one can take. When you’ve read the four novels by Larry McMurtry

. . A static siege Western . . Cuthbert McCown (1922 – 1999) was better known to the Western-going public as Rory Calhoun. Before ‘Smoke’

. . Great fun . . Fort Worth is a 1950s Randolph Scott Western which is rather good. It has a very complex plot but

. . Intense frontier drama . . The Unforgiven (not of course to be confused with Clint Eastwood’s 1990s Unforgiven) is very, very good. It

. . For hard-core fans only . . Some Hollywood studios ought to be sued for selling under false pretenses. If you make a movie

. . The end of the saga . . Streets of Laredo was the first book featuring Woodrow Call to be written by Larry McMurtry

. . Wyatt gets the Spenser treatment . . Robert B Parker is of course best known for his hard-boiled crime stories, particularly those featuring

. . These seraphim fall . . It is a commonplace that there are not many plots for a Western. You can have revenge plots,

. . Long, earnest, verging on the sugary – but a good film . . The most commercially successful Western so far, made with a

. . No return? Probably just as well . . River of No Return was Otto Preminger’s only Western. It featured top Hollywood stars Robert

. . Luke Short in fine form . . The novel High Vermilion was first published in serial form in The Saturday Evening Post in

. . A plethora of jokes . . One of the funniest of all Westerns, this movie is just right. Directed by John Landis and

. . It’s a good ‘un . . The Restless Breed (odd title considering the content) is a classic late-1950s Western.  . . Racy poster

. . A true Western . . I’ve been meaning to review this movie for some time as it is one of my favorites. There

. . The hallmark of blandness . . A lot of Westerns came out in 2007, luckily, some very good too. There was some lighter

. . A burger Western . . Blaxploitation could also be applied to Westerns. This 70s effort had Fred Williamson (Kansas City Chiefs football star

. . Michael Winner inaptly named . . Chato (Charles Bronson) is an Apache half-breed on the run because he killed a racist sheriff who