Westerns in March: From Dusk Til Dawn (1996)

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I first watched From Dusk till Dawn in the theater when it came out. I liked the first half a lot more than the second. It felt more like a Quentin Tarantino film with its interesting dialogue and stylistic flourishes. The back half was too goopy and gore-filled for my tastes at that moment. It had some fun dialogue, and I certainly wasn’t going to complain about that Salma Hayek dance number, but it seemed like a completely different film than the first half, and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

I do remember immediately after watching it having long conversations with my buddies about the film. We loved that opening scene and those little stylistic flourishes, like how Richie Gecko (Tarantino) imagines Kate (Juliette Lewis) saying something crude to him, or how they do a little X-ray vision of the trunk of the car showing the kidnap victim inside. We all agreed that once the vampires show up, the film takes a dip.

I can’t remember if I watched it anymore during my college years, probably so, but then I took a very long break from it. I watched it again maybe ten years ago, and I didn’t like it at all. I felt the first half felt more like someone trying to write like Tarantino instead of an actual script written by him. It no longer thrilled. And the back half was even worse, just puerile horror that was more interested in goopy explosions than telling a story.

But Ryan Coogler was clearly influenced by this film, and I keep seeing people on the worst social media site basically saying that Sinners was a poor imitation of From Dusk till Dawn, so I wanted to give it another chance.

I think I liked it this go-around more than all the previous viewings. The first half does feel like Tarantino-lite. This was early in his career. He was paid to write this film in 1992 on commission. They say Tarantino took the best parts of this script and put them into Pulp Fiction. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but this is definitely not his best work.

The Gecko Brothers, Richie and Seth (George Clooney) are on the run after a daring escape from the courthouse where Seth was in custody. They’ve killed several people, including two cops, and have a hostage in the trunk of their car.

They stop at a hotel in El Paso, to plot how they are going to cross the (heavily guarded) border and into Mexico, where someone Seth knows will hide them until things cool down.

When Seth steps out to get a better view of what they are up against, Richie rapes and murders the hostage. Seth is a criminal who will not hesitate to kill someone when he deems it necessary, but Richie is a psychopath.

Salvation (or damnation, as we’ll soon find out) comes in the form of a loving family and an RV. Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel) is a former Baptist minister who lost his faith when his wife died in a car accident. He’s taking his two kids, Kate and Scott (Ernest Liu) to Mexico as a getaway from their grief.

There are some nicely tense scenes with the Gecko brothers forcing the Fuller family to drive them across the border and not get caught. Then they head to a skeevy biker/trucker bar called the Titty Twister. It is open from Dusk to Dawn and is the seemingly perfect place for them to hide out until the man can come and give the brothers safe passage.

After some minor confrontations and a pretty darn sexy dance, the vampires come. Things get wild and blood-soaked from there. Tom Savini plays a biker named Sex Machine. It doesn’t seem that he did any of the special effects/makeup work, but this is the type of thing he became famous for doing. There are lots of great practical effects. The vampires have grotesque faces, and they turn to slop when staked and sometimes explode.

It can be a bit much.

When this came out, I thought Quentin Tarantino was the bee’s knees. I saw Pulp Fiction in the theater and thought it was amazing. We watched Reservoir Dogs in the dorm room and went nuts. I also very much liked Robert Rodriguez (who directs this film; Tarantino just wrote it.) I thought Desperado was a lot of fun, and El Mariachi was brilliant for a no-budget film from a first-time director.

But I’ve since very much cooled on Tarantino. I think he is a very talented director but kind of an obnoxious human. I always watch his films and often enjoy them, but the days of them being an event for me are over. The days of me having to see them in the theater are long gone. I now think Rodriguez is a hack.

This feels like the best and worst of what a collaboration between Rodriguez and Tarantino could be. There is some clever writing from Tarantino (and I find it hilarious that he wrote his character as a foot-loving, psychopathic pervert), but it’s also sloppy and disjointed. Rodriguez is at his best when he’s able to let go and just have fun with all the vampire carnage. He doesn’t do nearly as well when he’s dealing with Tarantino’s more dialogue-heavy front end. The two are very good friends, and they seem to let each other indulge in some of their worst instincts. For example, Rodriguez once again uses a crotch gun, and Tarantino gets a scene where he literally sucks beer off of Salma Hayek’s toes.

This definitely falls into the category of movie where you just have to let go and enjoy the ride. I definitely did this time around.

I know this barely qualifies as a western. It takes place in modern times and no one wears a cowboy hat or rides a horse. But it is set in the barren landscapes of Texas and Mexico and its characters would certainly fit into the lawless wild west. So I’m counting it.

Westerns in March: Decision at Sundown (1957)

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Every time Westerns in March rolls around, I find myself drawn to one of the Ranown Westerns (seven films director Budd Boetticher made with Randolph Scott). In a few years I’ll have them all reviewed, and then I don’t know what I’ll do.

Decision at Sundown is the third film together and sits somewhere in the middle in terms of my love for it.

Bart Allison (Scott) rides into the town of Sundown with his pal Sam (Noah Beery, Jr.) Sam had been scouting the place out as Bart has been scouring the Earth looking for a man he thinks was responsible for his wife’s suicide.

That man is Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll.) He came to Sundown some time before and has essentially taken the town over. On the day Bart arrives, Tate is set to marry Lucy Summerton (Karen Steele).

At first Bart takes his time scoping the situation out, but he makes it clear to anyone near him that he has no love for Kinbrough. He gets a shave and tells the barber he’s no friend of the man. He gets a drink at the bar, and even though all drinks are being paid for by Kimbrough, he makes a show of giving the bar keep a coin.

Eventually, he’s had enough, and he bursts into the wedding ceremony and announces that before the day is over, he will kill Kimbrough dead.

The townsfolk chase Bart and Sam out, and they take refuge in a livery stable. From there the film becomes a base-under-siege story. But something is happening in the town. The people don’t seem all that interested in capturing our heroes. Oh sure, Kimbrough’s got some hired guns who keep shooting at the stable, and the sheriff (Andrew Duggan) is Kimbrough’s man, though even he seems reluctant to put his life on the line for Kimbrough.

Plus there is that thing that Bart said at the wedding. Did Kimbrough really seduce Bart’s wife, leading to her suicide? Certainly Lucy wants answers to that question.

All of this loosens Kimbrough’s grip on the town. Dr. John Storrow (John Archer) has never liked Kimbrough or his influence on the town. Bart has given him the courage to stand up. Others begin to wonder why they’ve been letting Kimbrough run roughshod over them for so long.

At the same time, Bart learns more information about his wife. Maybe she wasn’t the chaste, loving wife he thought she was. What does that do to his need for revenge?

It all wraps up fairly neatly, though not as happily as you might expect. That’s the thing about these Ranown films: they aren’t afraid to give you a thoughtful, even downtrodden ending. Scott is his usual taciturn self, and Boetticher’s direction is as solid as ever. This isn’t a film that’s going to get counted as the genre’s best ever, but it is sturdy and so well made that it is still worth watching. And then a few years later, watching again. I keep it in regular rotation with all the other Ranown Westerns.

Westerns in March: Valdez is Coming (1971)

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Based upon a book by Elmore Leonard, Valdez Is Coming stars Burt Lancaster as Bob Valdez, a Mexican constable who is tricked into killing an African American by a rich rancher named Frank Tanner (Jon Cypher) and then takes his revenge.

Tanner accuses the man of murder, and his hired gun, R.L. Davis (Richard Jordan) has been shooting his hovel up for quite a while before Valdez shows up. There is a great moment when the accused man’s Native American wife walks out of the hovel and over to a creek to fetch some water. Davis keeps shooting at her (intentionally missing; he just wants to watch her squeal), but she fetches the water with absolute calm.

Valdez figures he might be able to talk the man out instead of killing him. And he’s just about able to. He explains the man will have a better chance if he tells his side of the story instead of shooting it out with those men. As the man begins to agree, he leaves the door open, and Davis shoots at him. The man (and I’m sorry, I don’t think the film actually gives him a name, and I can’t figure out who played him) thinks it’s a setup and starts shooting at Valdez, who then shoots back, killing the man.

Once Tanner takes a look at the dead man, he realizes he wasn’t the murderer but shrugs it off as if it were no big deal. Valdez figures they owe the man’s woman an apology and perhaps a little money for the mistake. When he asks Tanner for $100, he’s laughed at and shooed away. When Valdez insists Tanner get his men to tie Valdez to a wooden cross and drive him into the desert.

He eventually gets himself free and finds his way home. Then he loads up with ammo and finds one of Tanner’s men and tells him to issue the titular warning:

“Valdez is Coming.”

And come he does. He sneaks into Tanner’s complex, kills some of his men, and then kidnaps Tanner’s woman, Gay Erin (Susan Clark.) The kidnapping is sort of accidental. It wasn’t part of the plan, but when Valdez gets into a bit of a jam, he grabs Gay Erin and runs.

I think this is supposed to show that Valdez isn’t the type of guy who usually kidnaps women, but that in these particular circumstances he had no choice. It helps that Gay Erin doesn’t actually like Tanner all that much. A sort of romance eventually develops between Valdez and Gay Erin, though the film is smart enough to not let it fully develop.

All of this is the type of thing we’ve seen before. There are plenty of films where a seemingly unsubstantial man gets pushed too far, and it turns out he’s an old badass after all. Valdez Is Coming doesn’t do anything particularly new with this, but it does what it does fairly well. If you can forgive Lancaster for playing a Mexican, his performance is actually quite moving.

I’m a big fan of Elmore Leonard’s crime novels, though I’ve never read any of his westerns. I have a copy of this one and have read the first few pages a couple of times, but it has never grabbed me, and I get distracted. The film has definitely made me want to go back to it. They say the film changes quite a bit and that the book is better (isn’t it always?)

The film is pretty good, so maybe that means the book is great. Time will tell.

Westerns In March: The Quick and the Dead (1987)

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Not to be confused with the Sam Raimi film of the same name, this The Quick and the Dead stars Sam Elliott, Kate Capshaw, and Tom Conti and was based on a book by Louis Lamour. I haven’t seen the Raimi film, but I’d bet my ten-gallon hat it is a lot better than this nonsense.

In the Wild West, Duncan McKaskel (Tom Conti), his wife Susanna (Kate Capshaw), and their 12-year-old son Tom (Kenny Morrison) are traveling to Bighorn, Montana, where Susanna’s brother is camped with Custard. The rest of the wagon train were stricken with consumption.

They come across an old, worn-down town and ask a man named Doc Shabbitt (Matt Clark) for help. He says they can stay in an abandoned house for the night, but Duncan decides Shabbitt’s gang looks a little too shabby, and they decide to move along.

That night Shabbitt’s men steal two horses from our heroes. And then comes Con Vallian (Sam Shepherd). He’s half Native American and a full-blooded badass. He’s also the kind of guy who likes looking at Susanna and saying things like “Your wife sure is a handsome woman.” And then says it again. And again. Seriously, half his dialogue is saying inappropriate things to her. It is all kinds of creepy, and he’s the hero of this film.

Anyway, Vallian tells Duncan about the stolen horses and how Shabbit took them. He also says if he doesn’t do something about it, then Shabbitt’s men will think them weak and will keep coming back for more stuff and his woman. Vallian says he’ll take care of it, but Duncan says, “No” it is his battle to fight. Vallian says “ok” and you get the feeling he wouldn’t mind if Duncan got killed so he could have some good times with that “handsome woman.”

Duncan goes to the men and demands his horses back and nearly gets killed for it. Luckily, Vallian came in behind him and saves the day. When they return to camp, the boy hails Vallian as a hero and she starts looking at Vallian like maybe he’s a handsome man.

The rest of the film is like this. Shabbitt or his men will attack, and Vallian will defeat them. Tom wishes his dad was more like Vallian, and Susanna finds herself taking waterfall showers within Vallian’s view.

What pissed me off about all of this is that Duncan is a good man. He’s smart and fair, and he doesn’t lack for courage. He goes after Shabbitt just as much as Vallian, and he’s not afraid to look Vallian in the face and tell him to stop saying such things about his wife. He isn’t as tough or masculine as Vallian or as good with a gun. But he still deserves respect. And he isn’t getting it from his wife, his son, or even the film.

Now I will say that Tom does sometimes say to Vallian that his dad is tough. That he fought bravely in the war. And other than one good kiss, Susanna doesn’t give in to her temptation. But it is still a weird and rather lousy way the film frames Vallian as a hero. This is a TV movie so thing do work out in the end, and if they hadn’t I would have thrown my boots at the TV.

The action is rather dull. Shabbit and his men aren’t particularly interesting or threatening, and the rest of the film never really goes anywhere. There is a romanticism to the Old West that I suspect comes from Louis Lamour’s book, but I sure hope he treats his characters better.

Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to go watch the Sam Raimi film in hopes it will help me forget this mess.

Westerns in March: Hour of the Gun (1964)

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Welcome back to Westerns in March. This is my fourth year doing this theme, and I’ve come to really enjoy it. There is something wonderful about this genre with its wide-open spaces, its barroom brawls, and its shootouts. So let’s get started.

Director John Sturges made Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1957 with Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday. It is a darn good film. It ends with the titular gunfight.

Ten years later Sturges revisited the story with this film, a sort of sequel with James Garner in the Earp role and Jason Robards as Holiday. It begins with the gunfight at the OK Corral and then deals with its aftermath.

An opening title notes that “This picture is based on Fact. This is the way it happened” and Sturges did strive for more historical accuracy than is usually told with these stories, though, of course, he still changed quite a bit to suit his needs.

Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan) survived the gunfight (something he did in real life but did not in the previous film) and is now taking our heroes to court. He claims his men were unarmed and had raised their hands in the air when Earp and his men shot them dead.

Clanton loses the court case but sets up his own personal war with Earp, his brothers, and Holiday. Some of them get shot, some of them get killed. Wyatt is determined to stop them, but his moral code demands he do it legally. But his stubbornness makes him bend the law to suit his needs.

Robards is terrific as Doc Holiday. This is a very different performance from Val Kilmer’s portrayal in Tombstone, but it’s still real good. I never really buy James Garner as Wyatt Earp. I’m so used to him playing rascally wiseacres that it is difficult to buy him as the deadly serious man he’s playing here.

Robert Ryan barely has any screen time, and when he does, he isn’t nearly menacing enough. He’s the main villain, and he’s far too tame to be threatening. Which is a weird thing to say about Robert Ryan, who is usually so good at playing scary dudes.

Sturges’s direction is steady but not memorable. Ultimately, the film is worth watching for Robards’s performance and if you are interested in what happened after the famous gunfight.

Westerns in March – Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)

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Actor Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher made seven movies together, all westerns. I’m a big fan of all of them and this weekend while looking for another western to watch I landed on this one. Mostly because I knew it to be lighter fare than the others and my wife tends to not like dark and serious films.

Buchanan Rides Alone is the silliest of the films they made together, and probably my least favorite. Scott plays Tom Buchanon a drifter returning from Mexico with a lot of money in his pocket. He’s headed home where he’ll buy a plot of land and finally settle down.

He stops at a strange little border town called Agry where he quickly learns everything – a glass of whisky, a room for the night, a well-cooked steak – costs ten dollars exactly. He sits down with a bottle only to have it taken away from him by a drunk named Tom Agry. Moments later a young man named Juan (Manuel Rojas) charges into the bar and kills Tom.

The Sheriff and several other men round Juan up and beat the living tar out of him. Buchanan steps in to lend a hand. Naturally, this lands him in jail.

Nearly everybody of importance in the town is named Agry. The leader of the family Simon runs the town with a tight fist and is also a judge.

There is a trial, and a breakout, and lots of gunfights. It is all light-hearted and fun. There are a few attempts to be actually funny, but mostly it is just breezy and slight. Most of the other films Scott and Boetticher made together are much more serious in nature and have something to say. This is pure entertainment.

It isn’t bad at that, but I can’t help but compare it to films like The Tall T and Ride Lonesome (both of which I reviewed here), and this film just doesn’t compare.

Westerns in March – Day of the Outlaw (1959)

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One of the things I love about Westerns is how they deal with taming the wild frontier, and how they depict small societies forming miniature communities. As Europeans settled across the Western United States they formed embryonic societies outside the confines of the Eastern cities. Certainly, they brought with them Western ideas of society (while destroying many of the native cultures around them) but they could literally create their communities in the ways that they saw fit.

The television series Deadwood does an amazing job of bringing forth what I’m talking about.

Obviously, Western movies take a great many liberties with history and the societies that they depict are often in the shape of (what was then) modern ideas, but it is still a fascinating concept.

Day of the Outlaw begins with a man, Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) who helped found and make safe the tiny, isolated community of Bitters, Wyoming. He killed and ran off various outlaws and badmen from the area to make it safe for women and children. He figures that gives him a say in how things are run now.

But while society sometimes needs men like Starrett, it likes to forget them once their jobs are done. Homesteaders have come to town, farmers, and they want to put up barbed wire fences (someday I want to do a study on the use of fences in Westerns) to keep their livestock from running away. Starrett runs cattle across the open land and fences get in his way.

It is this conflict that the film begins. Starrett has come into town to either force the homesteaders to not put up their fences or kill them. It doesn’t help matters that the head homesteader is married to Helen Crane (Tina Louise) whom Starrett loves. Just as the fight is about to happen Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) and his band of outlaws bust in.

They are on the run from the cavalry but need a place to button down for the night. The men are raring for a good time and figure copious amounts of whiskey and a few turns with the women would be just about right. Bruhn is a tough man, and not opposed to murder when it suits him, but he forbids the men from indulging their basest instincts. Not so much because he has a soft heart for the women but because he knows the men will wind up fighting over the small number of women in this burg, and that’s not good for anybody.

Director Andre de Toth ratchets up the tension as the outlaws grow increasingly impatient and Starrett learns to become the good man. Matters take a turn for the worse as storms blow in making it nearly impossible for anyone to leave.

Cinematographer Russell Harlan fills the screen with wide vistas of the on-location snowy mountains. The stark black-and-white photographer emphasizes the isolation and frozen hardness of everything.

Robert Ryan and Burl Ives are terrific as two hard men sizing each other up in an impossible situation. It all comes to a boil with Starrett leading the men through the mountains in a suicidal trek that he hopes will at least keep the townsfolk safe.

I liked it a lot and I recommend it to one and all.

Westerns in March: A Reason To Live, A Reason To Die (1972)

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This movie is basically a Western version of The Dirty Dozen with James Coburn playing disgraced Col. Pembroke who surrendered Fort Holman to the Confederate Army without a single shot being fired. We’ll eventually find out why, but as the film begins he’s disgraced and considered a coward.

After he breaks out of Fort Holman, where he is being held as a prisoner of war, he makes his way to another Union Fort and makes a deal with its commander. He’ll take a handful of men and retake the fort, reclaiming his good name. The commander figures if Pembroke actually accomplishes this then he’ll get a promotion and if he doesn’t then good riddance. For his team, Pembroke rescues a group of deserters and cutthroats about to be hanged. This includes Eli (Bud Spencer) who he already knows.

As soon as the men are on their way they begin to grumble and plot to ditch Pembroke and regain their freedom. Pembroke has his own reasons for going back (and it isn’t just to clear his name) but he tells the men there is hidden gold and if they succeed then they will all be rich in Mexico.

The Fort is considered impenatrable (which is all the more reason Pembroke is considered a coward for having surrendered so easily) but naturally our heroes find a way in. Telly Savalas plays the new commander. There is a big battle with lots of explosions. Some of our heroes die, but only the ones you don’t really care for.

It is pretty paint-by-numbers and it really does borrow a lot from The Dirty Dozen. The action is well done and it moves along rather quickly. Coburn is good as is Bud Spencer (whom I only know from that Robert Altman take on Popeye). Savalas sometimes attempts a Southern accent, but mostly feels like he’s playing in some other movie. I read somewhere that he wanted to portray the character as gay (which was still a big no-no in 1972) which may account for his odd mannerisms.

All in all it is a decent film, worth watching if you like westerns or Coburn, but still a bit of an oddity.

Westerns in March – Hombre (1967)

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As it is March the 15th and I haven’t written about a single western I’ve clearly been remiss at tackling my Westerns in March theme. My apologies for that. It has been quite a month, but I’m gonna try and make the back half of March full of cowboys.

Westerns have always struggled with their depictions of Native Americans. For decades they were generally depicted as nameless savages out to rape the womenfolk and massacre the men. Even when Hollywood started to be more sympathetic they often chose white actors to portray the Native American characters with more than a few lines.

I had all that in mind when Paul Newman shows up in Hombre with tanned skin, long hair, and dressed like an Apache. My immediate thought was, “Oh no. Not this again.” But Hombre has something different in mind. Newman plays John Russell a white man who was stolen and raised by Apaches. But he was treated well enough that when his real father found him as a teenager and took him home he ran away to join back with his tribe.

As the film begins he is living on a reservation. A Mexican man comes to tell him that his father has died and left him his boarding house. The man suggests that Russell should clean himself up and live a nice life as a white man. He does clean himself up, gets a haircut, and puts on white man clothes (makes himself look like Paul Newman) but he has no intention of living at the boarding house. The lady who runs it, tries to make him a deal, says she’ll still run the house that he won’t have to do anything and he’ll make a nice living. But he decides to sell it. He takes the money and joins a stagecoach out of town.

There are a couple of fancy-pants riders on the coach, one of who used to be the US Indian Agent for the reservation (Fredric March). Since Russell now looks like Paul Newman the Agent (and especially his wife, played by Barbara Rush) takes a shine to him, but once they learn he used to live on the reservation as a native they immediately force him into riding up top with the driver.

There is a lot of that in this film. Paul Newman was one of the most handsome men on the planet, and with his blondish hair and blue eyes, one of the whitest. But the moment anyone finds out his character lived with the Apache they hate him, and they treat him like garbage.

For his part, Russell doesn’t play the Indian with a heart of gold. He’s full of righteous anger. The story inevitably leads them to a situation in which Russell has to save the racist white people but it plays out in unexpected ways. It isn’t a perfect film and I can’t say that all of its racial moralizing works, but it sure is interesting. It is also a fine bit of genre filmmaking as well. I’ve made it sound like more of a morality play than it really is.

That situation I alluded to finds one of the coach riders with a box full of (stolen) cash and some outlaws trying to steal it. The film takes all of that stuff and makes it quite thrilling to watch beyond the fascinating takes on Native Americans and how the white man treated them.

Highly recommended.

Westerns In March: All the Movies

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For the last couple of years, I’ve tried to watch and write about Western movies in March. I couldn’t think of a clever title for this theme, but I’ve enjoyed partaking in it. Even if I don’t seem to write as many movies as I’d like to each time.

Here’s the full list of films I’ve covered.

The Big Trail (1930)
Blood on the Moon (1948)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Cariboo Trail (1950)
Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
Day of the Outlaw (1959)
Decision at Sundown (1957)
Django (1966)
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Hombre (1967)
Hour of the Gun (1964)
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Major Dundee (1965)
The Naked Spur (1953)
The Quick and the Dead (1987)
A Reason To Live, A Reason To Die (1972)
The Searchers (1956)
Stars: in My Crown (1950)
Valdez is Coming (1971)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Young Guns (1988)