The MoFo Westerns List

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-22-19

Gregory Peck isn't usually mentioned in the first handful of classic Western movie stars, but he did quite a bit in the genre. Besides the four Citizen listed (Yellow Sky, The Gunfighter, The Bravados, and The Big Country) there's also Duel in the Sun (1946), Only the Valient (1951), The Stalking Moon (1968), Mackenna's Gold (1969), Shoot Out (1971), Billy Two Hats (1974), Old Gringo (1989), and he's one of the myriad stars in the widescreen epic How the West Was Won (1962).

For my money The Gunfighter and The Big Country are the best of the best, but he was a Western stalwart like Jimmy Stewart, even if they are often best remembered for dramas and comedies outside the genre.

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Last edited by Holden Pike; 11-22-19 at 09:04 PM.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-22-19

Jimmy Stewart was a movie star of the first order, but today he is likely best known for the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life, the Hitchcock pictures Vertigo and Rear Window, and comedies such as The Philadelphia Story and Harvey. But Stewart, a real-life war hero pilot, was in many Westerns.

Jimmy started in Westerns proper with the comedic Destry Rides Again (1939) playing a soft-spoken, milk-drinking unlikely sheriff. The next time he saddled up it was the first of what would be five oaters with director Anthony Mann they would make in the 1950s, Winchester '73 (1950). The other four Mann/Stewart collaborations are Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954), and The Man from Laramie (1955). For my taste the last one, Laramie, is the best, but they are all worth seeing.

Apart from Mann he also worked with director Delmer Daves in Broken Arrow (1950), James Nielson in Night Passage (1957), Vincent McEveety in Firecreek (1968), and three with Andrew McLaglen in Shenandoah (1965), The Rare Breed (1966), and Bandolero! (1968). He worked for the master John Ford first in Two Rode Together (1961) and then in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), one of Ford's very best. Stewart is also in Cheyenne Autumn (1964) and one of the gazillion stars in How the West Was Won (1962) which in addition to having every actor in town on the screen used the directorial talents of Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, and an uncredited Richard Thorpe.

At the tail end of his career Jimmy Stewart appeared in Gene Kelly's gentle and wistful The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) and in Duke Wayne's swan song The Shootist (1976) directed by Don Siegel. Jimmy's last foot in the genre came in the animated An American Tail: Fivel Goes West (1990) voicing the old bloodhound Sheriff Wylie Burp.

Last edited by Holden Pike; 11-22-19 at 09:06 PM.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-22-19

Here is the quick 16-minute segment on The Western by Marty Scorsese from his documentary A Personal Journey Through American Movies (1995). Spoiler alerts if you have never seen some of these classics like The Searchers and Unforgiven. The movies discussed are Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers, The Furies, The Naked Spur, The Tall T, The Left-Handed Gun, and Unforgiven.

Last edited by Holden Pike; 11-22-19 at 01:47 PM.

Nostromo87

BANNED

11-22-19

Impressions on the fitness of...

"Westworld" (1973)

Starring Yul Brynner and James Brolin, featuring a virtually Blade Runner-esque story concept

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Last edited by Nostromo87; 11-22-19 at 02:13 PM.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-22-19

It's fine if you want to include it the same way somebody can include Back to the Future Part III if they see fit.

This only applies to Michael Crichton's original 1973 film, of course, and not the HBO series. Television series are ineligible.

Yul Brenner stars in several Westerns, most famously the rousing original John Sturges The Magnificent Seven (1960) but also Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964), Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966), Villa Rides (1968), Adi�s, Sabata (1970), and Catlow (1971). That is the established screen persona that was being used for the robotic menace in Westworld.

Last edited by Holden Pike; 11-22-19 at 09:08 PM.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-22-19

It is buried in the original post's instructions, but because there are so many remakes and sequels and films with similar titles, please be sure to at least include the year of each film on your ballots. This will save me time in having to send follow up messages clarifying which Magnificent Seven or 3:10 to Yuma or is it Unforgiven versus The Unforgiven and so on you are attempting to vote for.

Thank you.

edarsenal

Women will be your undoing, P�p�

11-23-19

Well, I finally watched The Big Country and it was very worthy of all the talk I had previously heard and my expectations. This instantly earned a spot on my short list.

Another film I haven't seen anyone mention that severely deserves mention is Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962)

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Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-23-19

I am a big Peckinpah fan (obviously, with a handle like Holden Pike) and Ride the High Country is surely a good'un, arguably his first great film. It is definitely revered among Western aficionados but gets less mainstream attention than any of his post-Wild Bunch flicks.

The Deadly Companions, Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Junior Bonner, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. I am not a gambling man, but the over/under on how many of Sam's eight will make the cut is around four, I reckon?

We'll start finding out in May 2020.

gbgoodies

You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.

11-25-19

Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

You can't go wrong with these Gregory Peck westerns and they are westerns!

Yellow Sky (1948)

The Gunfighter (1950)

The Bravados (1958)

The Big Country (1958)

The Gunfighter (1950) was on one of the cable movie channels this weekend. I DVRed it, and I'm hoping to find time to watch it this week.

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gbgoodies

You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.

11-25-19

Originally Posted by Holden Pike

Apart from Mann he also worked with director Delmer Daves in Broken Arrow (1950), James Nielson in Night Passage (1957), Vincent McEveety in Firecreek (1968), and three with Andrew McLaglen in Shenandoah (1965), The Rare Breed (1966), and Bandolero! (1968). He worked for the master John Ford first in Two Rode Together (1961) and then in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), one of Ford's very best. Stewart is also in Cheyenne Autumn (1964) and one of the gazillion stars in How the West Was Won (1962) which in addition to having every actor in town on the screen used the directorial talents of Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, and an uncredited Richard Thorpe.

I watched Bandolero! (1968) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) this weekend.

Bandolero! was a good movie, but I thought the casting of Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin as brothers was kind of a strange choice.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was great, and it has a good chance to make my list.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-26-19

Here are the 46 Western titles included in the most recent edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. That's only about 5% of the book, but plenty there alone to make a really nice Top 25.

The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Stagecoach (1939)
Destry Rides Again (1939)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Red River (1948)
Winchester '73 (1950)
Rio Grande (1950)
High Noon (1952)
The Big Sky (1952)
The Naked Spur (1953)
Shane (1953)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
Oklahoma! (1955)
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
The Searchers (1956)
Giant (1956)
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Man of the West (1958)
Ride Lonesome (1959)
Rio Bravo (1959)
One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Hud (1963)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Hombre (1967)
Once Upon A Time in the West (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
El Topo (1970)
Little Big Man (1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
The Hired Hand (1971)
High Plains Drifter (1973)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (2008)
True Grit (2010)
Django Unchained (2012)
The Revenant (2015)
Hell or High Water (2016)

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-26-19

Originally Posted by Holden Pike

Eligibility Debates
The Beguiled

Film set during the Civil War would by in large be ineligible. Movies such as Gone with the Wind and Glory are clearly not Westerns. There are certainly Westerns set at the end of the war, impacted by the lasting spectre of the war, or even during the Civil War, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Dances with Wolves though all of those titles clearly move their narratives away from the East coast and to the frontier. Whether we are looking at Don Siegel's The Beguiled (1971) starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page or Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled (2017) starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, neither are set on the frontier. The 1971 version is set in Mississippi while the 2017 remake in Virginia. Most obviously the story is a Southern Gothic piece. Had the wounded soldier found a secluded girl's school in Missouri or Montana I could see arguing for sneaking it in as a Western. As is I don't think it qualifies.

If anybody can lay out their reasoning for why it should be included, other than Clint Eastwood has an old timely revolver in it, please do. My instinct would be to disallow both versions of The Beguiled.

The IMDb lists the genres as Drama, Thriller, and War for the 1971 version, Drama and Thriller for the 2017 version.

The General

As for Buster Keaton's 1925 classic The General, again we have a movie set during the Civil War. Right at the outbreak of the War, actually, in Georgia. Keaton's locomotive engineer must steal his train and save his fianc�e, based loosely on an actual event known as The Great Locomotive Chase. It is an undisputed masterpiece, funny and thrilling, placing all the way at number two on the recent MoFo Top 50 Pre-'30s list. But other than having a choo-choo train speeding through wilderness and a little gunplay and canon fire I'm not sure why it should qualify as a Western? It was filmed in Oregon but is set in Georgia, which is not the American West.

Again, unless somebody can clearly explain why it belongs to the Western genre I would probably lean towards excluding it.

The IMDb lists its many genres as Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, War, and Western.

Still soliciting opinions and arguments for either classifying or excluding both versions of The Beguiled and the Buster Keaton silent The General as Westerns.

Yoda

Administrator

11-26-19

I'll vote against The General. Haven't seen The Beguiled, so no opinion there.

pahaK

Anti-Woke

11-26-19

Haven't seen either but The Beguiled is on watchlist. If its eligibility is still up to debate after I've watched it I'll post my opinion.

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Kaplan

A genuine idiot!

11-28-19

I wouldn't count either The Beguiled or The General as westerns.

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pahaK

Anti-Woke

11-28-19

Mostly out of curiosity, what exactly makes Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia western? I just rewatched it few days ago and was honestly confused about its general inclusion in the genre. Didn't like it enough for this to have any relevance to my vote but as I said, I'm curious.

cricket

Msg

Registered User

11-28-19

I cut down my preliminary list to 34 titles that I can't imagine not voting for, and I still have plenty to watch. This will be tough, but very nice.

Holden Pike

One Ornery Sumbitch

11-29-19

Originally Posted by pahaK

The Contemporary or Neo-Western, two terms for the same thing, deal with the themes, genre conventions, and archetypes of the traditional Western but are set in the 20th or 21st centuries. In the case of Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia the cynical piano-playing barfly Benny is hired as a bounty hunter to exact retribution for a powerful Mexican warlord, intending to use the cash to make a better life for himself and his girlfriend. In the course of the sweaty, bloody deed he loses his lover and through his dogged, fatalistic determination goes on a mission of revenge and discovers he has a bit more honor than the cutthroats and desperadoes trying to collect.

Though this takes place in dusty 1970s Mexico instead of the 1870s and substitutes sedans and submachine guns for horses and six-shooters the characters, plot, and themes belong to the Western genre.

Some other Neo-Westerns like Lonely Are the Brave (1962) and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) may more easily identify their genre roots because they overtly make the connections and, well, have horses in them. But Alfredo Garcia is a Neo-Western as well.

As with any genre, what you deem eligible for your own list is a matter of taste. If you don't consider parodies or Neo-Westerns as "true" Westerns in your book, don't vote for them. There may even be those who dislike Revisionist Westerns and don't consider The Wild Bunch and McCabe & Mrs. Miller to be part of the same genre as Red River and Stagecoach. They can certainly construct or weight their lists that way. The Searchers, A Fistful of Dollars, �Three Amigos!, and Bad Day at Black Rock are all Westerns. Everybody can make their own determinations after that on what to include on their ballots.

Last edited by Holden Pike; 11-29-19 at 12:08 PM.

pahaK

Anti-Woke

11-29-19

Originally Posted by Holden Pike

As with any genre, what you deem eligible for your own list is a matter of taste.

Exactly, I agree. Like I said I was just curious because I don't personally see it. I'm more of the opinion that it's considered western only because it's directed by Peckinpah and some settings in Mexico look like they could be straight from the previous century. Its themes seem very basic action/crime/thriller themes to me.

But yeah, I'm not trying to make it ineligible (I'm 100% sure it would survive the vote) or even trying to make this a debate. I'm just trying to figure why others see it so differently.

Holden Pike