. . 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

. . 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