'A Lone and Angry Man' is one okay western

A Lone and Angry Man (aka "A Coffin for the Sheriff") (1965)
Starring: Anthony Steffan, Eduardo Fajardo, Armando Calvo, Arthur Kent, Arturo Dominici, Luciana Gilli, and Miguel Del Castillo
Director: Mario Caiano
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A man with murky motives and background (Steffan) worms his way into a gang of outlaws in search of information about one of their previous raids. Things become dangerously complicated when he discovers the outlaws are planning a raid on a local ranch owned by the one man who knows his true identity.

"One Lone and Angry Man" is one average spaghetti western. Nothing here is particularly good, but nothing is particularly bad. It moves steadily through its story-line with a shoot-out or fight every few minutes, with the actors all playing the usual assortments of Mexican banditos, corrupt sheriffs, staid ranchers, and damsels just waiting to be placed in distress so the hero can show his true and chivalrous colors and save them.

It's film for those who haven't seen very many European westerns, or for the hardest hardcore fans of these movies... the rest of us would be better off with something featuring Clint Eastwood & Lee Van Cleef or Bud Spencer & Terrence Hill.

'Cowboys and Aliens' is smart and lots of fun!

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and Adam Beach
Director: Jon Favreau
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When an aliens start terrorizing an isolated area of the American Southwest in the 1870s, outlaws, cattle-ranchers, settlers, and Apache Indians join together with a mysterious woman (Wilde) and an amnesiac who has somehow gotten his hands on one of the alien devices (Craig) to defeat them before they conquer Earth.

"Cowboys & Aliens" is an action-packed genre-bending mix of Western and Sci-Fi as a landscape populated with Western archetypes becomes the setting for an epic adventure tale told through one of the smartest scripts I've witnessed in years.

Although this is a movie that's primarily about aliens blowing the hell out of cowboys and visa-versa, a lot of thought and care went into just about every character that appears on screen that's not just part of the background. Even minor supporting characters get little touches that give them more depth and life than some main characters in recent allegedly character-driven movies--including one of the alien invaders. And the actors all rise to the level of this superior material, with not a single bad performance among them.

The most remarkable character and performance in the picture is given by Harrison Ford. His Colonel Dolarhyde starts out as the stereotypical, psychotically evil ex-Army officer cattle-rancher strong man, but by the time the film is over, he is completely transformed into a sympathetic character who is the most fully developed of all of them.

Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde are basically, well, Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde. Both characters that they play are of such a nature that their physical appearances are very important, and both of them are perfectly cast in their roles... Craig for his craggy, weather-worn looks and Wilde for her ability to seem mysterious by just standing around. The fact that neither one of them was the first choice to play those parts is a sign that the Movie Gods were watching out for this film. They're both so perfect I can't imagine this film being as good if they hadn't been in it.

"Cowboys & Indians" deserves to be counted among this years best movies, whether measured by quality or box office receipts. I highly recommend going to see it, even if you're a stingy bastard like me who goes to matinee screenings. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood needs to make more of..

'The Outlaw Josey Wales' is one of the greatest westerns

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1970)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sam Bottoms, Bill McKinney, John Vernon, and Sondra Locke
Director: Clint Eastwood
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When his family is killed by renegade Union troops, simple farmer Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) signs up with a band of Confederate irregulars. When the Civil War ends, he refuses to surrender and ends up pursued the leader of the riders who killed his family (McKinney).

"The Outlaw Josey Wales" is one of those gritty 1970s westerns where the west is very wild and extremely savage and honorable (or even decent) people are virtually unheard of. However, in the character of Josey Wales, we have one of cinema's great reluctant heroes, a man whose compassion for his fellow human beings survived the destruction of everything he loved, war, and his own death wish.

Although some of the gunslinging scenes are a bit redundant, Josey's trek west after the end of the Civil War and the adventures he has encounters he has along the way (especially the way he keeps collecting company to ride along with him, whether he really wants to or not) will keep the viewers engaged.

The characters in the film are all interesting and engaging, especially Josey, who on the surface might seem like Eastwood's classic Sergio Leone hero revisited but who is actually so much more, and you'll not notice that this film is well over two hours long until it's over.

'Dan Candy's Law' is a different western

Dan Candy's Law (aka "Alien Thunder") (1973)
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Kevin McCarthy, Jean Duceppe, John Boylan, Chief Dan George, Gordon Tootoosis, and Francine Racette
Director: Claude Fournier
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A Canadian Mountie's obsession with hunting down and bringing to trail a Cree Indian (Tootosis) who killed his friend and colleague (McCarthy) ends up triggering a confrontation between rebellious Native Americans and the Canadian army. Will Dan Candy (Sutherland) get his man, and at what cost?

"Dan Candy's Law" is a quiet, almost gentile movie--despite the cussing, gunplay and ultimately cannon fire--that is through-and-through Canadian western. Instead of the scorching heat of a desert southwest, we have the chilly windswept northwestern plains of Canada. Instead of a shoot-from-the-hip renegade vigilante sheriff, we have a tall-tale-telling Mountie who, even while disobeying orders from his superior, is trying to uphold the law and to bring a fugitive murderer to justice before a court.

Based on a true story of a NWMP officer Dan Candy who spent a year tracking a Cree Indian who stole government cattle and killed a police officer while escaping custody, the film is sympathetic to both the police officers and white settlers and the Native Americans who have been displaced. It's a film that's probably a lot closer to reality than most westerns that are made, even to the point of the way it unfolds slowly and quietly, except for moments of chaos and violence.

Donald Sutherland is particularly excellent in the film, and his character is a fascinating one, particularly for a western. More often than not, movies center on vigilantes who are out for revenge more than anything else, but the anger of his friend's murder subsides, Candy returns to being a true professional who stands for law and order on the frontier. Up to the very end, he is dedicated to bringing in his suspect alive, if possible.

If you enjoy the western genre, "Dan Candy's Law" might be a nice change of pace for you.

'The Shooting': An overlooked Western gem

The Shooting (1967)
Starring: Warren Oates, Millie Perkins, Will Hutchinson, and Jack Nicholson
Director: Monte Hellman
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A retired bountyhunter and tracker (Oates) is hired to escort a mysterious, and dangerously insane, woman (Perkins) through desert badlands. During the trip, they meet up with a hired killer (Nicholson) and the bountyhunter realizes that he is guiding the woman to an execution.


"The Shooting" is a quirky western the oozes atmosphere, mystery, and strangeness from every frame. Many questions come up about the characters and the situations they're in, but virtually none of them are answered. The ending, although in perfect keeping with everything that's led up to it--and not terribly surprising if you've been paying careful attention as they film unfolds--only heightens the questions and mystery. That sort of approach is one that bothers me in most cases, but in this film, it works.

Well-acted, well-filmed (even the day-for-night campfire scenes are tolerably well done), and unfolding with the steady, deliberate pace of a well-told suspense tale, "The Shooting" is an overlooked classic of the western genre. If you liked "Pale Rider" or "High Plains Drifter", I suspect you'll appreciate this movie as well.

Join Jack Nicholson for a 'Ride in the Whirlwind'

Ride in the Whirlwind (1965)
Starring: Cameron Mitchell and Jack Nicholson
Director: Monte Hellman
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When three drifters cross paths with a band of desperadoes, vigilantes mistake them for members of the gang. The innocent riders are forced to become the criminals they are mistaken for in order to survive.


"Ride in the Whirlwind" is a surprisingly engaging western. I say "surprisingly", because when it comes right down to it, an awful lot of the movie is spent with characters having fairly mundane and repetitious conversations, and is populated with characters who are as unknown to the viewers when the movie ends as they were when it started. Usually, such elements are signs of a cheap movie that is choking on the padding added to stretch it to a decent run-time. In this film, however, the elements merge with the random way three possibly shady--but certainly not the bad guys they are mistaken for--men are forced down a path of violence and brutality. I suppose this movie is an illustration of how a talented director and cast can create a find movie where hacks would merely produce a pile of crap out of the same material.

I recommend this movie if you are a fan of westerns. "Ride in the Whirlwind" occupies a sort of middle ground between the "traditional" American western and the European western (best recognized through Sergio Leone's movies starring Clint Eastwood) that was transforming the genre when this film was released.

(Trivia: "Ride in the Whirlwind" was shot back-to-back with "The Shooting", another low-budget western directed by Hellman that featured much of the same cast and used the same crew and locations.)

'God's Gun' is flawed but worthwhile

God's Gun (aka "A Bullet From God") (1977)
Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance, Leif Garrett, Sybil Danning, Robert Lipton, Heinz Bernard, and Richard Boone
Director: Frank Kramer
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When the vicious outlaw Sam Clayton (Palance) and his gang murder a small-town priest (Van Cleef), the church's altar boy, Johnny (Garrett) and the priest's twin brother (also Van Cleef) set about getting revenge and stopping the outlaws in a most unusual fashion.


"God's Gun" is a dirty, grimy western in the mold of "For a Fistful of Dollars." Even the good guys are somewhat questionable when it comes to their morals, virtuous acts are tainted with blood and evil, and you can almost smell the sweat and feel the dust gritting between your teeth as the wind blows from the screen. It also features fairly convoluted storyline that rivals those found in more famous westerns from the same period, and while there aren't any developments that are particularly surprising to viewers paying attention or who are well-versed in the western genre, the twists and turns of the plot are well executed.

The film also features some fine acting from Lee Van Cleef, who plays the dual role of twin brothers who are retired gunslingers. One has become a priest, the other a rancher just across the border with Mexico,but both have sworn off violence and have committed themselves to lives of peace. It's rare that we get to see Van Cleef actually act in a film--beyond his usual "I Can Stare At You And You'll Drop Dead"-type characters--and to see him in in an almost Obi-Wan Kenobi-esque role is pretty cool. (As the priest, Father John, he is attempting to mold young Johnny into a responsible adult. Even as Lewis, the gunslinger-turned-rancher, he attempts to direct Johnny away from a life of violence.)

Another remarkable part of the film is Jack Palance. Although he once again is playing a psycho--and a psycho who is so far around the bend that the quiet menace that so often hangs around Palance's characters is all but dispelled by naked brutality--he is fun to watch as he brutalizes everyone from townsfolk to the members of his own gang. His idea of family values is also creepy, or unintentionally hilarious, as his idea of getting to know the son he never knew had in the second half of the movie is to bellow, "Come out here, or I'll kill your mother!"

Speaking of Sam Clayton's son, Leif Garrett does an okay job, but he's like most child actors... in some scenes, he overacts slightly while in others he barely seems to be running lines. He's not exactly bad, but he's not exactly good either.

Every other actor in the film is decent enough, but they aren't portraying characters so much as they're just filling the shoes of figures that populate any western (the druken sheriff, the cowardly townsfolk, the plucky saloon girls, the sleazy bandits, and so on). None of them detract from their place in the scenery, so they're all good. (Although a few of the bandits get to shine a bit during the gang-rape scene in the saloon, and durning the sequence when Johnny and Lewis are executing their unusual revenge scheme against the Clayton Gang),

Despite all its good points, the film suffers from a lack of moral focus. The writer and director seem to want to give Sam Clayton an eleventh hour redemption after he discovers Johnny is his son, but the character's actions--and Palance's portrayal of him--have been so repulsive and over the top that there is absolutely no way that any amount of speeches about how he now just wants to raise his son in peace will win viewers onto his side, nor make us believe that even Clayton himself believes what he is saying. So, while Clayton's ultimate end has a degree of irony to it, the climax of the film is undermined by the way the filmmakers suddenly seem to desire to invoke sympathy for him. This weakness in the ending is what keeps this movie from rating any higher than average.

"God's Gun" is an undeservedly obscure entry in the Spaghetti Western canon (and I'm using the term loosely here, as it was actually shot in Israel and produced by the Israeli team of Golan-Globus) that fans of the western genre should check out. It may be a tad too confused about its own moral viewpoint, but it's still worth seeing.

'Beyond the Law' is not beyond boring

Beyond the Law (aka "Bloodsilver") (1968)
Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Antonio Sabato, Lionel Stander, Bud Spencer, and Gordon Mitchell
Director: Georgio Stegani
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When master-thief Billy Joe Cudlip (Van Cleef) and his cohorts decide to rob a silver mine of its payroll, a series of events lands Cudlip in the position of town sheriff. As he settles into the job, he develops respect for the honest, townsfolk, and he starts to want more than just life as a thief. But his partners are still bent on committing the heist, and things go from bad to worse when murderous bandits, led by the psychopathic Burton (Mitchell), come to rob a silver shipment.


"Beyond the Law" in an interesting film in that it features actors in types of roles that we're not use to seeing them in. Lee Van Cleef plays a through-and-through good guy in this film (despite his larcenous tendencies as the story starts), and Bud Spenser doesn't throw a single punch during the entire movie; in fact, he's hard to recognize without his beard and usual scruffy appearance.

Unfortunately, the film features from a script that is focused in all the wrong places--for example, Van Cleef's character makes a transformation from ever-scheming thief to a man who feels loyalty and protectiveness toward the citizens of the mining-town, something which would have made for interesting viewing, but which happens between scenes--and the middle section is padded more heavily than the middle-section of a longhaul trucker who loves beer too much.

At a few points in the film--such as when Cudlip and his partners make their presence known in the film for the first time, when Burton takes the town's women and children hostage in order to get the silver shipment, and the shoot-out--gives us glimpses of the excellent movie "Beyond the Law" could have been if the script had gone through another draft or two, and if the director had given the film more substance and less filler. As it stands, however, this is a sub-standard spaghetti western that's more boring than entertaining.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Stay thirsty, my friends, with this review of a western featuring two Spanish Ladies who will undoubtedly be the subjects of future "Tectonic Tuesday" case studies.

Bandidas (2006)
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Steve Zahn, Dwight Yoakam, Sam Shepard, José María Negri, Denis Arndt, and Audra Blaser
Directors: Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Two young Mexican women from wildly different backgrounds--one is a wealthy, European educated sophisticate (Hayek) and the other is a rough-and-tumble farm girl (Cruz)--team up with an American criminologist (Zahn) to stop a rogue agent of a major American bank (Yoakam) from driving poor famers from their land to make way for the railroad.


"Bandidas" is an action/comedy heist movie set in the late 1800s. It's about as predictable as it could possible be (with one tiny little twist toward the end that I didn't see coming), but it is so breezy and fun, and its two very attractive leads are so charming and sexy that it really doesn't matter. Penelope Cruz's performances is especially fun, and Salma Hayek's cleavage is always a welcome sight.

This is probably one of the better, completely forgettable eye-candy movies I've seen. It was a fun way to spend an hour-and-a-half, and I'm surprised this movie never saw a wide North American release; it's got some plot elements that could be construed as anti-American, but it's far better than some of blatantly political and America-hating crap that was in movie theaters around the time it was made. (Or maybe that's why it didn't see wider release. It wasn't anti-American enough.)

If you like light-hearted westerns that feature explosions, train robberies, and darkhaired beauties in cleavage-revealing tops, this is a film that's worth a look.

Cinematic Black History Milestone:First Black Sheriff

Blazing Saddles (1974)
Starring: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, Hedley Lamar, Madeline Khan, and Mel Brooks
Director: Mel Brooks
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

A villainous political boss (Lamar) bent on ruining a small frontier town for his personal gain appoints a black sheriff (Little). Comedy and satire without bounds ensue.


"Blazing Saddles" is one of Mel Brook's greatest films. Using the framework of a traditional horse opera, the film spoofs westerns, modern societal conventions, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, racists, bigots, and just about about anyone else you can think of. It's so crammed with satirical bite that the western genre can't even hold it, and the final minutes of the film is one of the best fourth-wall sequences to ever be put on film.

There isn't a single misfire in this film. The casting is perfect all-around, and all actors give hilarious performances. The script is perfectly paced. The jokes all work--even if many of the skew toward the 4th-grade boy level of humor... but who can possible not laugh during the campfire scene?

The only people who don't laugh themselves sick while watching "Blazing Saddles" are those who are pathelogically obsessed with political correctness, prudes, and dead people. The rest of us will have a great time with this classic comedy.

Double Feature: Two Tales of Trinity

They Call Me Trinity (aka "My Name is Trinity") (1971)
Starring: Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, Farley Granger, Steffen Zacharias, Dan Sturkie, Remo Capitani, and Riccardo Pizzuti
Director: Enzo Barboni
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Trinity (Hill), a shiftless drifter so lazy he has his horse tow him on stretcher instead of riding, arrives in a town where his his horse-thieving half-brother Bambino (Spencer) is pasing himself off as the new sheriff while looking for the best way to rustle horses belonging to the evil Major Harriman (Granger). Trinity has a habit of spoiling Bambino's plans and otherwise complicating his life, and soon the two find themselves protecting a group of pacifist Mormon settlers from both the Major and Mezcal (Capitani) and his banditos.


When I was a kid, my friends and I loved to rent Bud Spencer and Terence Hill videos. Whenever we spotted one of their movies we hadn't seen, it became our next rental. We also rushed to see them in the movie theater when they'd run them during the summer, or when new movies with either or both of them would be released. They never dissapointed, and the Trinity films were our favorites.

It was for this reason that I was a bit hesitant to watch "They Call Me Trinity" when I noticed that it was included in "Mean Guns", a 20-movie collection of westerns that the folks at Mill Creek Entertainment were kind enough to send me. I feared the film would not hold up to my very fond memories of it.

I am glad to say that, 25+ years later, this first Trinity movie is every bit as hilarious as it was when I was a kid. The comedy in this spaghetti western spoof--made by filmmakers who understood spaghetti westerns the best: Italians--is a fabulous bit of filmmaking from beginning to end.

With humor and satire that ranges from subtle to the basest of slapstick, good acting, excellent set and costuming, and the over-the-top fights and gunplay that we loved so much (not to mention Bambino's imperviousness and his trademark "fist-to-the-top-of-the-head" knockout blow) this film is a near-perfect western and action-comedy. It's the sort of film that "Shanghai Noon" and all three "Rush Hour" movies desperately tried to be, but none of them come even close.

If you like western and comedies, I think you'll enjoy the heck out of "They Call Me Trinity". I think you'll enjoy it even more if you watch "For a Fistful of Dollars" or "The Magnificent Seven" first, as both are poked fun at with great effect.



Trinity Is Still My Name (aka "All the Way Trinity") (1971)
Starring: Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, Yanti Somer, Emilio Delle Piane, Harry Carey Jr., and Pupo De Luca
Director: E.B. Clucher
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Shiftless drifter Trinity (Hill) and his short-tempered brother Bambino (Spencer) promises their dying father (Carey) they'll do something with their lives, so they set out to become successful bandits. It seems however that every robbery they try to commit ends up becoming a good deed (and costing them money instead of earning them any), and when they are mistaken for Federal Agents because Trinity wants to impress a beautiful farmgirl (Somer), they find themselves protecting a Catholic mission that's fallen under the thumb of smugglers and a frontier crimeboss (Piane).


"Trinity Is Still My Name" was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, and it's every bit as funny as I remember it. A sequel to the classic Spaghetti Western spoof "They Call Me Trinity" it's not only as funny as the original, but it also has an identity all its own as it's less concerned with lampooning other films than it is with offering up a unique film.

Hill and Spencer give their usual excellent performances, and they are ably supported by the gorgeous Yanti Somer and a whole host of regulars from the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s. The film is also remarkable for the excellent dubbing and the voice actors who did the work. It is so well done and the voice actors so talented that you can hardly tell the film wasn't originally done in English.

"Trinity Is Still My Name" is another near-perfect action-comedy set in the wild west. The script may meander a bit at times, but the jokes are all top-notch--the scenes where Trinity and Bambino go to a fancy French restraunt, and the one where Bambino goes to confessional will have you laughing so hard you'll have to watch those parts of the movie again to catch everything--and the final free-for-all fight where Trinity and Bambino take on dozens of thugs in a fight over $50,000 in ill-gotten loot tops the one at the climax of the original Trinity film.

I recommend this film highly to lovers of light-hearted westerns and quirky comedies.

'Dead Aim' is worth setting sights on

Dead Aim (1975)
Starrng: James Westerfield, Glen Lee, Venetia Vianello, Virgil Frye and Evaristo Marquez
Director: Jose Bolanos
Steve's Rating: Six of Ten Stars

The lives of three very different groups of people--a government employed undertaker (Westerfield) and his adopted son (Lee), a former prostitute (Vianello) and her sociopathic lover (Frye) and an unlucky Army deserter (Marquez) intersect in a barren desert at the height of the American Civil War.


"Dead Aim" is a bleak western that features gorgeous cinematography, interesting performances by all the principles, and a storyline comprised of two different plots that criss-cross as the movie unfolds but that are mostly so disconnected that the film borders on an anthology. However, the tales are linked thematically and by the fact that the two most decent characters in the film--the undertaker's son and the Army deserter--both fall in love with the only beautiful thing in the movie, the former prostitute.

This is an interesting film that is permeated with a unique atmosphere and style. In fact, it presents a world that seems to operate on its own rules, so viewers might have to suspend their disbelief and just go with the flow at times. However, it's also a film that will hold your attention, because, while there isn't a whole lot of action, you will want to see what strange turn the movie takes next, and you will be interested in knowing where it's all heading.

"Dead Aim" is an undeservedly obscure Mexican-produced western, and its presence in the "Mean Guns" set adds great value to an already low-priced DVD 20-movie pack.

'The Villain' is live-action to Looney Toons

The Villain (aka "Cactus Jack") (1979)
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Ann-Margaret, and Arnold Schwarzenegger
Director: Hal Needham
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

The Handsome Stranger (Schwarzenegger) volunteers to escort the lovely Miss Charming safely to her father... but the villainous Cactus Jack (Douglas) has dark intentions for both!


"The Villain" is a hilarious physical comedy that plays like a live-action version of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny vs. Elmer Fudd or the Road Runner vs. Wiley E. Coyote. It even borrows several jokes from those cartoons... and they're even funnier when live people are put through their paces by them.

I'm sure some hysterical parent will be up-in-arms over the violence in this film, and I suspect there's some retarded kid who will watch it, draw a tunnel on the wall, and run headlong into it and crack his head when it doesn't become real. The rest of us, however, be we normal adults or kids who are congenital idiots, will certainly laugh ourselves silly while watching this highly underrated, very unusual comedy.

'Any Gun Can Play' isn't worth the time

Any Gun Can Play (aka "River of Blood" and "For a Few Bullets More") (1967)
Starring: Edd Byrnes, George Hilton, Gilbert Roland, Ivano Staccioli, and Kareen O'Hara
Director: Enzo G. Castellari
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A banker (Byrnes), a bountyhunter (Hilton), and a bandit (Roland) race each other to recover a stolen gold shipment that was hidden by a Mexican cutthroat who was subsequently killed by the US Army.


"Any Gun Can Play" is a singularly uneven and uninventive western. It starts out attempting to be a dramatic western along the lines of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" but it turns into a comedy along the lines of "My Name is Nobody" at about the halfway mark, but it is vastly inferior to both of those other movies. The first half of this film is so-so, but once it tries to become a Hill/Spencer-style western spoof, it becomes an unfunny mess with dull fights, dumb gags, and scenes that drag on and on because the director seemingly lost all ability to know how end a scene.

The best part of the is the performance by Gibert Roland, who plays a Mexican bandit leader who masterminds the goldheist and later finds himself doublecrossed every time he turns around. He the only actor who rises above mediocrity of everything around him.

Everything about this movie is unoriginal, substandard and lackluster. It's not so bad so as to be unwatchable, but there are far better ways to spend your idle moments.