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

. . Crackerbarrel wisdom . . Judge Priest was one of a boxed set of three Western DVDs and so I am reviewing it, although

. . Joe Pepper (Forge, New York, 1975), originally published under Elmer Kelton’s pseudonym of Lee McElroy . . To be brutally frank with you

. . Tel Aviv trashy . . Matzo-ball Westerns filmed in Israel were sort of American spaghettis. Lee Van Cleef had made one the year

. . Lee Van Cleef in a cassock . . Not so much a spaghetti as a matzo-ball western, this one was filmed in Israel.

. . Junk . . This is a spaghetti/paella Western filmed in Spain which has Lee Van Cleef partnered with Lieh Lo (or Lo Lieh).

. . Read, enjoy but don’t expect greatness . . Elmer Kelton (1926 to 2009) wrote a large number of Western novels which were always

. . Amateur post-spaghetti . . There’s a whole website devoted to this rather tiresome Western and if you like that kind of thing you

. . Fermented cabbage western . . When I started this blog I never thought I would be reviewing a Western called Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom.

. . Preposterous twaddle . . Casting is so important. Walter Hill has told us that Sam Peckinpah used to say the success of a

. . Yet another low spaghetti . . Don’t you get tired of these so-called ‘comedy’ Westerns with Terence Hill in them? They aren’t in

. . Admirable if too consciously didactic . Dee Brown’s worthy and weighty tome Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian History of the

. . Mormon whitewash . . I don’t know if Tom McGowan (director) or Philip Yordan (writer) are Mormons but McGowan had done a movie

. . Amusing . . I personally don’t much care for tricorn-and-sword dramas, nor do I think they are proper Westerns, but Mohawk, a lively

. . The frontier story-teller . . Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988) is an enormously popular writer all over the world, with over 100 novels

. . Corny, predictable, fun . . Paradise Canyon was the last in the series of tight little B-Westerns that Lone Star produced starring John

. . The franchise continues . . Larry McMurtry’s Comanche Moon, the novel, last of the Lonesome Dove tetralogy to be written but second in

. American literature . Comanche Moon (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997) was the last of the Lonesome Dove series of novels to be written

. . As convention-ridden as a Japanese Noh play . . The penultimate Lone Star B-Western of the 30s starring John Wayne was (for no

. . Cartoon . . This more-Hollywood sequel to El Mariachi screened at Cannes in 1995 and has cultish pretensions. It’s a cartoon, really, a

. . Robert Vaughn, Pernell Roberts and Gladys Knight? . . The Eagles song Desperado first appeared on the album of the same name in

. . A bit short on Terror but stll fun . . John Wayne, 28, is a young sheriff, John Higgins, in Texas Terror. Chasing

. The master .   . Elmore Leonard died on August 20th.   Much as I love Leonard’s crime fiction, it is his Westerns that

. . Wayne at Warners . . After his starring role in Fox’s big-budget The Big Trail for Raoul Walsh in 1930, it all went

. . Great Western . . The book and subsequent TV mini-series Lonesome Dove spawned a considerable number of prequels and sequels.   The first

. . Duke slowly improving his acting skills . . Ride Him, Cowboy, aka The Hawk, was the first of the six Warners Westerns starring

. . British Western filmed in Spain . . Eurowesterns are named for foodstuffs. If Italian or Spanish cowboy movies are called spaghetti or paella

. . Classic . . The Star Packer was the eighth of the series of Lone Star westerns made between 1933 and 1935 and came

. . Indy and Bond take on strangers from outa town . . We haven’t (tragically) had a huge number of movie Westerns this century.

. . Embarrassingly bad . . There are some films so bad that you sort of cringe before the screen. Your toes curl up in

. . Chilly . . The lives of some of the mountain men of pre-Civil War America were so colorful and dramatic that it is

. . Splendid . . The TV mini-series Lonesome Dove was of course based on the great Western novel of the same name by Larry

  The Dickens of the West . . Since its publication in 1985, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1985) has become

. . Very good . . Much of the American interest in the Mexican revolution and therefore by extension (regrettably or not) world interest, has

. . Gripping . . An excellent way to get into the characters and events of Pancho Villa’s part in the Mexican revolution is to

. . A classic Villa . . Until the recent HBO film And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, the 1930s Viva Villa! was the best movie

. . The worst film about Pancho Villa . . The worst of all the films made about Pancho Villa was a ‘comedy’ Western made

. . The best American film about Pancho Villa . . Just as the best book in English on the Mexican Revolution is Villa and

. . Pretty poor all round . . This is a European film about revolution rather than a Western but as it is usually listed

. . The past is not another country. It’s this one. . . Lone Star (the title has several meanings) is a very good movie

. . Ideal for those who find the average Western TV movie too deep . . There was a 1932 Hollywood Jack Hoxie talkie called

. . Cruel men in a pitiless terrain . . There is a short but high-quality list of Australian Westerns or, if you prefer, Australian

. . Lowbrow, maybe, but that suits me . . Although many ‘comedy Westerns’ were dire, some were splendid. The Sheepman was the best of

. . A fine Western novel . . Situated in Western novel terms somewhere between the literary weight of Cormac McCarthy and the sweeping scope

. . A great leader . . If you take Highway 10 south east from Phoenix, you pass near the town of Chandler, AZ and,

. . Cochise 2 . . Once Fox’s had shown us in 1950 a statesmanlike Cochise making peace despite stupid racist white bigots, pro-Indian movies

. . Not very good . . The Quick and the Dead with its double meaning and slightly biblical sound is naturally a great title

. . Very fine . . It seems paradoxical that the really big, long Westerns these days are made for the small screen while movie

. A great Western novel . . The best novel about Wild Bill Hickok by far, and indeed one of the finest of all Westerns,

. . You can rely on Walter Hill to give you a good Western . . Probably the best movie (so far) about Wild Bill

. . Clint is second to nun . . Directed by Don Siegel and based on a story by Budd Boetticher, this Clint Eastwood movie

. . Better than some later Eastwood stuff . . This movie came in a boxed set of spaghetti westerns with the Dollars trilogy which is

. The Prince of Pistoleers . Pancake hat, Prince Albert frock coat . Even while Wild Bill Hickok was alive, and ever since his dramatic

. . Book and film leave you with a hard knot of coldness in your stomach . . Set in West Texas (as was the

. . So bad you laugh . . Jaws meets Moby Dick on the Plains. Great white shark, a white whale, a white buffalo? White

. . Cormac McCarthy, Camus, Peckinpah: Tommy Lee Jones . . You can argue whether this very fine film is a Western. Purists would reject

. . One of the greatest . . Of all the great characters of the Old West, the so-called gunslingers (it’s actually a twentieth century

. . Great fun . . Apart from a celebrity appearance in 1940 along with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and several others in Rodeo Dough,

. . A 60s actioner with good plot twists . . One of the better offerings of the mid-1960s, The Professionals was well directed by

. . A Farewell to the West – and the Western . . Tumbleweeds was William S Hart’s last Western. Hart left Paramount in 1924,