. . 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

. . 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