Westerns

It’s Sunday and the final day of the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, typically the quietest day of the convention. After a crazy weekend of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Godzilla 2, Skull Island, Mad Max: Fury Road, Crimson Peak, a ton of TV, and comic news, we’ve got one last big film announcement. As reported by Deadline from the Dynamite Comic’s panel, while promoting the Django Unchained/Zorro crossover comic, Quentin Tarantino confirmed that he is officially moving forward with his new western The Hateful Eight.

If it were only for Wayne’s performance, which is excellent, Red River would be a vital entry into the Western genre. But there is more to this extraordinary picture. That’s why it’s not only one of the greatest Westerns ever made, it’s an American classic.

Westerns may appear as diverse and unruly as the characters they contain, but beneath the ten gallon hats and spurs lie a handful of basic mythologies. This guide selects one movie which epitomizes each legend plus another four outstanding examples, each one given a capsule review and illustrated with a classic movie poster. Click on …

A lone warrior comes across a town held hostage by two competing gang leaders. He meets the keeper of a local inn who explains the situation and warns him to leave as soon as he can. Our rogue, a man with no name, decides instead to play the two sides against each other and make …

Tombstone Directed by Kevin Jarre, George P Cosmatos and Kurt Russell (uncredited) Written by Kevin Jarre US, 1993 It’s a strange phenomenon, considering just how much of Hollywood takes Western sensibilities and lends them to very different settings, but 1993’s cult movie Tombstone has the classic Western scenario, story and set up but without the …

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid Directed by Sam Peckinpah Written by Rudy Wurlitzer 1973, USA Sam Peckinpah was not an easy man to get along with at the best of times and the battles he faced in making Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, now widely considered as amongst the top dozen Westerns ever …

Westerns are one of those rare, uniquely American film genres. They dominated film screens for years, were amongst some of the finest stories told in film, and they are films that have created some of the most compelling characters in film history. But somewhere around the brilliant, sprawling mini-series Lonesome Dove in 1989, the western …

  It’s hard to believe, but starting in 1947 (Howdy Doody), with very few exceptions, there has been at least one Western on TV every season. In 1984, the genre took the year off (probably due to Little House fatigue), and there was some downtime after Deadwood ended and before Justified premiered (2007-2009), but other …