. . The credits are a classic of the genre . . There have been seven films of this title between 1914 and 1975 but

. . Once upon a time in the West… . . The short story has been (and is) a key part of the history of

. . Old-fashioned oater . . Looking very like a pulp black & white talkie Western of the 30s, this Tex Ritter vehicle (it was

. . A thundering good read . Kit’s house in Taos   I visited Kit Carson’s home in Taos in the summer of 2005 and

. . A record ofseveral years of variegated vagabondizing . . Written 1870 – 71 and covering Twain’s travels from 1861 – 66, Roughing It

. . Longmire . . The Cold Dish (Viking, 2005) is the first of Craig Johnson’s series of police procedurals featuring Sheriff Walter Longmire, of

. Where Cowboys Dare . . Because this is set in the Rockies in about the 1870s and has US Cavalry and Indians and outlaws

. . Good modern Western . . Silver Rock (1953) is a modern Western, about a war hero, Tully Gibbs, back from Korea, who wangles

. . How the West was fun . Most Western fans of a certain age have a soft spot for the Maverick TV series and

. . Sublime . . A Christmas treat for you: . . Only a Western in the very vaguest sense, this is a stupendously good

. . Heat on the Hudson . . There have been film and TV versions of The Last of the Mohicans a-plenty between 1911 and

. . Gay Western? If you say so. . . Johnny Mack Brown made a great number of Westerns between 1927 and 1965. He was

. . Better than a non-Western but that’s about all you can say . . This spaghetti western is unusual in that it is not

. . Low-grade TV Western . . This is a petty crummy made-for-TV Western with low production values (the kind where a boom mike is

. . No country club . . Forty Lashes Less One (1972) is a 1909 prison story and only really becomes a true Western in

. . Dreadful excuse for a Western . . This is just a standard, boring Terence Hill/Bud Spencer junk spaghetti western, with no merit.  

. . A real Western . . Some dispute that Cuba Libre is a peoper Western, which I understand because it’s really an historical novel

. . Of historical interest only . . Randolph Scott made a series of eight quick talkie Westerns for Paramount in the early 1930s, remakes

. . A great Western novel . . Hombre was Elmore Leonard’s fifth Western novel and came out in 1961. I have been an admirer

. . Corbucci dross . . Sergio Corbucci spaghetti westerns are supposed to be (according to spaghettisti) at the upper end of the quality scale

. The very best of Western fiction . Apart from the nine Western novels (if you include Cuba Libre, which I do) Elmore Meonard wrote

. . Jokes older than them thar hills . . Lightning Jack is a comedy Western co-produced, written by and starring Paul Hogan. As such

. . L’Amour on top form . . I have long had a dream of building a proper Western town. Wooden buildings with false fronts

. . Telling it like it isn’t . . Telling Western Stories: from Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry by Richard W Etulain (University of New

. . Heart-warming . . Lou Diamond Phillips, of Spanish, Scottish/Irish, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, and Cherokee ancestry (which is probably why he is Cheyenne in Longmire),

. . Seven riders at the showdown . . Killoe (1962) is not perhaps my favorite Louis L’Amour novel but it’s still a good read.

. . Spaghetti all’americana . The Deserter is a European/American collaboration Western, half spaghetti and half OK. It stars Bosnian Bekim Fehmiu as a Ramboesque

. . Hold on, Davy Crockett scouting for a wagon train in 1848? . . Davy Crockett, as any schoolboy knows, died at the Alamo

. . Predictable programmer but good to see Harry Carey . . Wagon Trail was one of six Westerns that Harry Carey (Sr) – click

. . Weirdly watchable . . Roger Corman (b 1926) is one of the pillars of the film industry. In the early 1950s he started

. . Recommended . . Flint is one of my favorite Louis L’Amour tales.   It dates from 1960, and the 60s were in some

. . Gunslingers and girl with a derringer . . Showdown at Yellow Butte, one of seven novels that Louis L’Amour set in New Mexico,

. . Gunslingers: the fact behind the fiction . . A well-researched and well-written book entitled The Gunfighter: Man or Myth? would naturally be of

. . Tyrone Power, On Her Majesty’s Service . . Tyrone Power didn’t really do Westerns. Any big studio star in the 1950s had to

. . Short story by Dorothy M Johnson (in the 1953 collection Indian Country) & NGP film starring Richard Harris (1970) . . The commendable

. . Le western européen . . The Western, like jazz, was in origin a specifically American genre. The two could almost be thought of

. . Formulaic but in a good way . . Crossfire Trail is a good film. Tom Selleck’s production company TWS teamed up with Simon

. . Novel by Elmore Leonard (1959) and TV movie (1997) . . Last Stand at Saber River was the fourth Western novel written by

. . Probably the least of the Elmore Leonard Westerns but still a good read . . Escape from Five Shadows is a 1956 Western

. . 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