The MoFo Top 100 Westerns: Countdown

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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
The Ballad of Cable Hogue is my #20 and my fave Peckinpah. David Warner, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones and Slim Pickens are all terrific and Sam's direction is very lyrical. The Furies is a pretty good western with surprisingly incestuous overtones.


My List

11. Oklahoma!
20. The Ballad of Cable Hogue
22. Support Your Local Sheriff!
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Introducing the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood Counter. I will be tracking how many titles featuring the two icons of Western cinema appear on the countdown, updating with each reveal. Those are tally marks, not ones. Duke is ahead 2 to 1 over Clint in the very early going: The Sons of Katie Elder and North to Alaska for Wayne, Two Mules for Sister Sara so far for Clint.

Please, no wagering.
Lee Van Cleef is going to win.




Unfortunately didn't manage to get round to either for this and if I ever had watched one, t'other or even both those memory cells have sadly already demised so not much I can say really.

Seen: 8/18
My list:  

Faildictions (yee-haw version 1.01):
82. The Battle Of Elderbush Gulch
81. Day Of Anger



The Furies I watched on a recommendation from JJ. I liked it, but didn’t quite love it enough for it to make my list.

Seen: 3/18
- Slow West (#95)
- The Big Gundown (#85)
- The Furies (#84)

My ballot:
None



The Furies was my #24. What Mark and Holden said about it contributed to my enjoyment, and plus I like Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston anyway. I'm sure it didn't hurt that I watched it recently.

I was looking at Peckinpah's filmography after revisiting The Wild Bunch and Alfredo Garcia earlier this month, and I noticed Cable Hogue. I had never heard of it and saw it was part comedy so I passed. What Mark and Holden say about it doesn't really appeal to me, but with both of them voting for it I'm definitely going to give it a go.



The Ballad of Cable Hogue is one I was very close to watching, but just ran out of time. It looks really interesting, and I'll definitely watch it before this countdown is done.



Seen both. The Furies was my #17


The Furies (Anthony Mann, 1950)

Based on a sprawling western novel by Niven Busch, the movie is rich in drama, intrigue, angst, greed & betrayal. This is not an action film and yet it packs a wallop as there's action when action is needed.

Veteran actor Walter Huston made his last appearance as the larger than life T.C. Jeffords, who's built an empire out of the open range of New Mexico circa 1870s. His firebrand daughter, Barbara Stanwyck is cut from the same jig as T.C. She's determined to run The Furies and her father is in full support of that...Until that is, when he meets a cultured woman who has plans for The Furies herself, putting the daughter at odds with the outsider woman.





The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah, 1970)

This comedy-western kind of felt like a big budget American production of the old Benny Hill TV show. The jokes certainly reminded me of dirty ole' Benny getting an eye full I suppose after the sexual revolution of the 1960s that was the style of comedy. Not really my thing, though Stella Stevens was lovely to look at in her pink corset. But I really didn't like her in a blonde wig and it looked like she had lost a lot of weight as her face was much thinner than in earlier made movies I've seen her in.

Like the director's Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, this also seemed to be a patchwork of well shot scenes, that didn't really stitch into the finish work. The characters were all dressed up with no place to go & the movie lacked cohesion and focus. The director was a notorious drunk so maybe that's why.




Pearl Harbor is the second best western ever made.
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What's the first best western? Armageddon
I said it in the last page Descendants is the best Western ever made. Probably Pearl Harbor is a bit stretching it. Tora Tora Tora should be second and Pearl Harbor third.



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Furies is a Must See, so, perhaps I may get to, yet.


It's said, if you wanted to know Peckinpah, look no further than the character of Cable Hogue.
Robard is ideal. But then, it's Jason Robard. He WILL be ideal.
This is one of a number of my favorite performances by David Warner. For me, a scene-stealer as the slippery, parasitic priest.
Snail paced and reflective between the moments of absurdities, The Ballad of Cable Hogue was the ONLY movie to make it to a movie night on any of the three TV channels, back in the 70s when I was but a pup. Destroying my eyes because I was on the floor with my brothers, within arm's reach to switch channels and not have to actually get up. That, and it was our favorite spot.
I watched this about a year, maybe two, ago, to see if there was more than nostalgia, since it had been about two, or more decades since my last watch.
There was plenty.
In fact, this is one of a good chunk of favorites I truly wish I could have had room for on my Ballot.


Movies Watched 7 out of 18 (38.8%)
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I watched The Naked Spur and The Furies for this countdown. They were both pretty good movies, with The Naked Spur being the better of the two, but neither was ever in contention for a spot on my list.

I haven't seen The Ballad of Cable Hogue, but it sounds interesting, so I added it to my watchlist.
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You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
The Unforgiven is the only other western to appear so far that was in contention for my list. It's a strange movie (Audrey Hepburn, though very good in the role, is a distracting choice to play a Native American; the racism message feels muddled and hypocritical, likely from production tug-of-wars; and I'm unsure how audiences are expected to react to the bizarre incestuous love angle), but I found the movie enormously entertaining. In a sense, the "flaws" only make it more interesting and memorable.
While I agree that Audrey Hepburn was a distracting choice for the role in The Unforgiven, I thought it was more because of her accent than the fact that she was supposed to be a Native American. Wasn't it kind of the point that even her family didn't believe that she could have been an Indian because she looked more like a white woman than an Indian woman.




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