We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
One of the things that most strike me from the visuals is how they often hunted in packs and how they loved those long ugly coats in the later westerns. The latter’s a far cry from Roy Rogers and the “brylcreem cowboys” whose garb was fancy enough for wearing at a rodeo!
In a Conan Doyle story Holmes is intrigued by the “dog that DIDN’T bark in the night” and here after 3 views of this video I am left thinking of the movie that HASN’T appeared: 1989’s Old Gringo starring Jane Fonda and Royal Dano. Anyway here is my pick of the splendid STILLs in the video.
1/Lone Ranger
2/the set for Stagecoach – a further remake of 1939 classic? If so I was unaware of its existence.
3/The Mountain Men
4/Billy the Kid
5/The Quick and the Dead
6/2 for Cattle Annie and Ladd’s Britches
7/The Man from Snowy River 2
8/3 Amigos -another comedy that is not my own idea of a western
9/Bronco Billy
10/Shadow Riders
11/Barbarosa
12/2nd one for Death Hunt
13/SET for Young Guns
14/two for Manchester’s Gate – glorious visuals!
15/Man from Snowy River
16/2 for Long Riders
17/Final one for Silverado
18/SET for Lonesome Dove
19/SET for Pale Rider. Said to be a reworking of Shane. Ladd’s influence lives on!
20/Mother Lode
I can’t recall seeing ANY of the films that are in the 1980s video and I am familiar with just about a half dozen of the titles. The selection of visuals was top-notch though and is rated 99%. Here is my pick of the POSTERS which stood-out most for me:
1/ Two for Lone Ranger
2/Lust in The Dust- this is the nickname that critics gave tot eh raunchy 1946 classic Duel in the Sun.
3/2 for Mother Lode
4/2 for The Mountain Men
5/The Set for Cattle Annie – awful tongue-twisting title!
6/Rustler’s Rhapsody – but I love THIS title!
7/Lone Wolf McQuade
8/Foreign language one for Billy the Kid
9/1st one for The Shadow Riders
10/2 for Death Hunt – note the compromise billing of the 2 stars
11/foreign language one for Young Guns
12/Windwalker
13/whole set For Manchester’s Gate
14/whole set for Silverado
15/2 for Pale Rider
16/2 for Failures of A man Called Work Horse
17/Bronco Billy
18/ALL Lonesome Dove
19/2 for Django 2
20/3 Amigos
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating (ooer), info and quote, mucho apreciado. Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
I’m surprised there were 30 westerns in the 1980s, but I did have to add a few TV movies and a top rated mini-series to make it 30.
Yep Pale Rider even has the little girl at the end call out at our departing hero, just like Shane. It’s been a while since I watched it so I can’t remember what she was shouting. Pale Rider also seems like a loose remake of High Plains Drifter, both have supernatural overtones.
Most critics hated Heaven’s Gate when it first came out, but many of the new boys seemed to have embraced it as a forgotten masterpiece of some kind. I should give it another watch, maybe over several evenings and black coffee. 😉
No films (TV or theatrical) scored 10 out of 10 from my sources, two titles scored 9 – The Grey Fox and Lonesome Dove.
My Video Top 5 –
Lonesome Dove 8.5
Pale Rider 7.5
Silverado 7.4
The Grey Fox 7.4
The Long Riders 7.3
The UMR Critics Top 5 –
Pale Rider 8.0
The Man from Snowy River 7.5
The Grey Fox 7.4
The Long Riders 7.4
Windwalker 7.4
IMDB Trivia – “According to Steven Bach’s “Final Cut”, Cimino got $11.6 million to make his next project, a western about a land war in Johnson County, Wyoming, featuring a first-rate cast. It went over budget almost immediately, mostly due to Cimino’s insistence on absolute perfectionism. Stories abounded that he was tearing down sets for no reason, and hiring and firing crew members almost weekly.
Many of the stories were exaggerated, but the cost ballooned to a then-astronomical $40 million ($125 million in 2020 dollars). When Cimino presented Heaven’s Gate to United Artists, it ran well over five hours. After some squabbling, he agreed to trim it down to less than three hours.
The movie was a commercial and critical disaster that destroyed Cimino’s career as a director. It nearly bankrupted United Artists, which merged with MGM. That year, MGM had a hit in For Your Eyes Only (1981). Cimino didn’t work for another five years, and his career never recovered.
When Waterworld (1995) was being made, its production encountered so much difficulty, and Kevin Costner received so much negative press concerning the shooting, it was called “Kevin’s Gate”.
HI STEVE: As said most of the movies in your video were unfamiliar to me so I was largely in your hands and didn’t have as much to say by way of comments as I usually do; so I just concentrated on the excellent visuals and as the saying goes “sat back and enjoyed the trip”!
Anyway thanks for the comprehensive reply including additional interesting trivia. I take your point about the potential “supernatural” aspect of Shane/High Plains Drifter/Pale Rider.
The argument has often been advanced that Shane was possibly a figment of the imagination of little Joey, a lonely boy on an isolated farmstead who had little to amuse himself with except letting his imagination run riot in inventing the hero he so longed-for.
If he DID imagine Shane in the plot his mind could not from my perspective have invented a better hero than one who resembled Laddie!
Similarly in 1984’s The Natural some critics have wondered if Redford’s character baseball player Roy Hobbs was real or a ghost.
He had been shot by a crazy woman – my Barbara Hershey – many years before and had dropped out of sight/or been killed by the bullet, one way or the other missing out on a promising baseball career.
He turns up as a relatively middle-aged character to start playing ball in the major league. “Mister, you’re coming here to play ball at an age when other players are retiring!”- Pop Fisher the Club manager.
Strange: whenever I recall that line I tend to think of Al Leach and his on-screen romantic exploits. I wonder why? Anyway keep safe.
Hi Bob, interesting take on Shane being a figment of the boy’s imagination,except there are scenes at the town which he would not have likely imagined. Palance’s evil baddie dressed in black would seem like something a kid would dream up though.
Regarding Old Gringo, I considered it, but when I read the synopsis at wikipedia I dropped it from the list. It’s a historical romance with a downbeat ending. Are there any cowboy types in the film? Chuck Norris was a sort of cowboy in ‘modern western’ Lone Wolf McQuade. with karate chops instead of pistols.
My next video will be out on monday.
If there are any modern westerns left to chart.
HI STEVE
Thanks for the swift response including those marvelous quotes about The Duke, my Jimmy and Clint.
There is a famous quote in the punlic domain which I haven’t personally heard in years but came up quite often in the 1950s/1960s when Wayne was regularly in the news and gossip columns.
An interviewer was discussing with him the various approaches that some of his contemporaries had to acting and the interviewer then asked him what his own technique was and The Duke replied “I don’act: I react!”
Keep safe.
BEST STILLS IN STEVE’s 1976-79 WESTERNS VIDEO
1/3 for Cactus Jack
2/Eagle’s Wing
3/2 for Frisco Kid
4/2 for Butch and Sundance
5/2 for White Buffalo
6/The Return of A Man Called Work Horse
7/Noon to 3
8/Last Hard Men
9/Goin South
10/2 for Breakheart Pass
11/ALL for Keoma
12/2 for Another Man Another Chance
13/The Set for Josey Wales – I wonder did The Duke watch this one!
14/Electric Horseman – enormous grosser! – $300 million adjusted domestic in Bruce’s charts
15/Duchess and Dirtwater Fox – what an awful title!
16/ALL for The Shootist – Good send-off visuals for The Duke – “We shall never see his like again!”
17/The Missouri Breaks. I was pleased to see this one rating so highly as it got mixed reviews upon release one critic saying “An odd one from the west.” Nicholson pointing his gun down at Brando naked in the bath “Heck you’re not much down there either!”
BEST POSTERS IN STEVE’s 1976-79 WESTERNS VIDEO [Overall Rating 98.5% from me]
1/Welcome to Blood City
2/2 foreign language ones for God’s Gun
3/2nd one for Duchess/Dirtwater Fox – wow!
4/Frisco Kid
5/The set for White Buffalo
6/2 for Noon to 3
7/Last Hard Men-Chuck still churning em out!
8/Both for Silver Saddle
9/Another Man Another Chance – first I’ve heard of this one
10/Goin South
11/The set for The Electric Horseman
12/All for Breakheart Pass
13/Keoma – quite lovely in my eyes.
14/ALL for Josey Wales
15/1st and foreign language ones for The Shootist – The Last Sunset: goodbye Pardner!
16/The Missouri Breaks: this one ends with Nicholson’s cattle rustler creeping up on Brando’s ruthless vigilante when he’s asleep. Jack shakes him and as Brando opens his eyes Jack says “Wake up- your throat’s just been cut!”
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and quotes, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
That’s 30 years of westerns I’ve covered so far, from 1950 to 1979, each decade worse than the one before. The 1950s can’t be beat. But I’m sure the 1940s will have its fair share of great westerns when I get round to it.
It’s the first tie for the top spot on one of my videos. Clint and the Duke together, at least on my video. I’m sure Clint wouldn’t mind the old cowboy legend taking the final shot in the fade out. Seems right considering John Wayne died in 1979.
Two films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Shootist and Josey Wales, two films scored 8 – Breakheart Pass and The Missouri Breaks.
My Video Top 5 –
The Shootist 8.25
The Outlaw Josey Wales 8.25
The Missouri Breaks 6.8
Keoma 6.8
Breakheart Pass 6.6
The UMR Critics Top 5 –
The Outlaw Josey Wales 8.2
The Shootist 8.1
Comes a Horseman 7.3
Goin’ South 7.0
The Missouri Breaks 6.9
IMDB Trivia – “James Stewart only agreed to play a cameo role in The Shootist because John Wayne had specifically requested him. His short time on the film proved to be trying. The bad acoustics of the huge, hollow sound stages worsened his hearing difficulties, and he stayed by himself most of the time. He and Wayne muffed their lines so often in the main scene between them that director Don Siegel accused them of not trying hard enough. Wayne’s reply was a variation on an old John Ford line, advising the director, “If you’d like the scene done better, you’d better get a couple of better actors.”
According to Clint Eastwood on the documentary, “Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows”, director Don Siegel tried to convince John Wayne to shoot an antagonist in the back for a scene. John Wayne declined saying, “I don’t do that.” Eastwood further elaborates, Siegel “made a mistake by saying, ‘Well that’s what Clint Eastwood would do.'” John Wayne then angrily replied, “Well I don’t like that, and I didn’t like ‘High Plains Drifter” Despite this outburst, Eastwood expressed John Wayne did “like” and have respect for Eastwood, despite disliking the violence in the latter’s movies.
An interviewer asked Ron Howard if John Wayne had given him any tips on acting. He said that, during the filming of the final shootout, Wayne took him aside and said he had some advice for him. As Howard eagerly awaited some profound advice, Wayne said “Ron, if you want to look menacing – close your mouth.”