. . 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,

. . What’s not to like? . . I reckon that Ed Harris in a bar one day grumbled, “They don’t make Westerns like they

. Burt as athletic Apache . This film treats the fascinating story of Massai (also known as Massa, Massi, Masai, Wasse or Massey), the last

. . Lippert B-Western but quite fun . . Rimfire is a straight-down-the-line, black & white, low-budget Lippert oater that’s worth a watch. But not

. . Audie’s last Universal Western . . By the mid-1960s we have to admit that the pictures in the long series of Audie Murphy

. . A classic gambler-gunfighter of the Old West . . We have made several references in this blog to Luke Short the writer of

. . Custerology . . It is with some trepidation that I venture in this blog even to paddle in the shallows of those vast,

. Another quality Audie Western . . Another in the long series of Audie Murphy oaters for Universal was Ride a Crooked Trail. It was

. Fun . . Audie Murphy was very modest about his 33 Westerns (34 if you count his Whispering Smith on TV) but actually he

. A nice little Audie oater . . Gunsmoke (no relation to the TV show of that name) is one of the many Westerns that

. . Subtle and introspective . . From one point of view, The Wonderful Country is a slow-paced Western with too little action. And certainly

. . Bob Mitchum gets to lead in Westerns . . After serving his time as heavy in Hopalong Cassidy movies in the early 1940s,

. . Russell Simpson does a Judge Roy Bean act . . Starting in 1904, Clarence E Mulford wrote a series of magazine short stories

. . 60s California liberal rides the trail . . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was Robert Redford’s first Western film and he made

. . Audie as killer . . Jack Arnold (no relation to Jeff, sadly) was a director known for work of the caliber of It

. . Another Robin Hoodish Western outlaw . . Did Sam Bass (1851 – 1878) ever know Calamity Jane (1852 – 1903)? Probably not, although

. . Not Sturges’s or Widmark’s best . . By the mid-1950s John Sturges had already directed some interesting Westerns or near-Westerns such as The Walking

. A good Western . In 1946, new Universal boss William Goetz decided to abandon low-budget second features to concentrate on bigger pictures and he

. . Plane stunts over the Grand Canyon . . Tom Mix was 42 by the time he made Sky High and though at the

. . Close to a masterpiece . . There are several good rodeo movies. One thinks in particular of Bronco Buster directed by Budd Boetticher

. . Creatures of a bygone era . . There was naturally a poignancy about John Wayne, who had had lung cancer and was soon

. . Mitchum was so good yet many of the movies he was in – weren’t . . Hard on the hooves of Young Billy Young, Robert

. . You’ve seen worse . . This agreeable but not top-rank Western was written and directed by Burt Kennedy, the screenwriter of the best

. Town-taming marshal . . Probably my favorite William S Hart picture is The Return of Draw Egan. For one thing, it’s a proper Western,

. . An unhappy time for Duke – and three weak Westerns . . It is commonly believed that one industry immune from the great

. Like a runty old dog . Allied Artists was a transmogrification of the old B-movie producers Monogram and they had big dreams. This oater

. Pretty routine . This film is curious in that the director, ‘Allen Smithee’, didn’t exist. The first director was Robert Totten, with whom lead

. A bandit reformed by the love of a maid . Knight of the Trail is a rather charming 23-minute two-reeler produced and written by

. . An underrated gem . . A fine little movie, only 79 minutes, black & white, The Ride Back was the sleeper of 1957.

. Three Sad Men . . Three Bad Men (as also the title of a 1926 John Ford motion picture) is a very good name

. Now if there were a Western Hall of Shame… . On this blog we’ve talked from time to time about the British Western. Everyone

. 100 Years Ago . In the year of the big blockbuster Western with Johnny Depp, let’s look back a century.   The Battle of

. . Less djangly music . . After the three Dollars movies directed by Sergio Leone, Django and its 31 sequels, directed by Leone’s friend

. . The best spaghetti western . . On the front of the DVD box there is a quote from Alex Cox, an expert on

. Gray . . Man with the Gun (aka Deadly Peacemaker, The Trouble Shooter) has the classic town-tamer plot. A town treed by an arrogant

. Robert Mitchum plays a hard-drinking, womanizing, cynical outsider. How hard did he have to act? . . In his excellent biography of Robert Mitchum,

. . A twenty-gallon hat . . I don’t always go for comedy Westerns. I find the genre faintly sacrilegious.   But I do sometimes

. . Magical . . Fatty Arbuckle, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, WC Fields, all comedians had to Go West or be a Paleface sooner

. . James Arness on the big screen in a cloud of gunsmoke . . Gun the Man Down is in many ways little more

. . Cheesy . . Yvonne De Carlo specialized in cheesy 40s Westerns. She was Calamity Jane in one. In this one she is accompanied

. . A very good Western . You might think that a Western with Elvis Presley in it would be a popular, ultra-commercial vehicle, just

. . A menacing game of chess . . Bad Day at Black Rock is a very good film. You can argue whether it’s a