weird westerns
Westerns refer to the genre of films that take as their setting the American West (also known as the Wild West). Writer-director Michael Crichton’s work was truly original, never more so than with 1973’s Westworld. But those who wallow in the dregs of the medium celebrate Murray’s skills as an importer of fine Mexican cinema, which achieved a zenith of sorts with the 1964 classic Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy. Led by Queen Tika, the denizens of this subterranean culture battle surface-dwellers both good and evil with such futuristic devices as ... television! Historically, this took place between 1865-1895, the period when towns were being settled westward across North American, where population of the towns had begun in varying degrees but the area was still a lawless frontier. There was also the entirely surreal The American Astronaut (2001). Before Flash Gordon battled supernatural creatures in the golden age of movie serials, our planet was protected from bizarre unseen forces by none other than Gene Autry. The Wind (2018) is a ghost story about a woman isolated in a cabin on the prairies during the pioneer era that sits in a fascinating place of psychological ambiguity as to whether she is facing prairie demons or they are all in her head. So subversive and explosive was his image that it ended up being Ride the High Country, by far his most normal-looking Western, that ended up sticking out to movie buffs as his cult classic. As was the convention with Italian movies of that era, the audio is entirely dubbed so it’s your choice as to whether you see the Italian dub or the English. Here are 10 weird westerns that will leave you shivering, either with fear or with laughter. Starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, Cowboys & Aliens grossed $100 million, but is considered a flop because Universal spent $163 million to make it. Series of programmes exploring film music. I once commented to Harry Carey Jr. that no matter how small his role, I always knew his movies were worth watching. Relive the magic of the Old West. Works throughout the 1970s moved in a similar direction deconstructing the mythology. A full list of Weird Western titles can be found here Westerns Archives, Alien Showdown: The Day the Old West Stood Still, From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Films That Make Dubious Claims to Being Based on True Stories, Coming of Age Stories in Fantastic Cinema, Films About Cryogenics and Suspended Animation, Disturbed Psychology as Portrayed on Film. Lists; westerns; About The Author. Remember when Halloween was a … It was attacked from every angle at the time and its commercial failure was linked to Cox’s subsequent exile from Hollywood, although the reaction to Walker’s incredibly rare lampooning of American history’s depiction on-screen looks a lot more like blacklisting from a modern perspective. An American Tale: Fievel Goes West (1991), Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002), Home on the Range (2004) and Rango (2011) are animated talking animals films that play out in Western settings. There was also the genre of the Acid Western that briefly popped up in the 1970s, which imported many ideas from the counter-culture movement of the day to depict surrealistic, tripped out Westerns. RELATED: The 15 Best Civil War Westerns Of All Time. In recent years, the entire month of October has been commandeered by All Hallows traditions, with new horror flicks at the bijou and scary movie marathons on television. There was also the Star Trek episode Spectre of the Gun (1968) where aliens force the Enterprise crew to replay the Gunfight at the OK Corral. A standard black-hat-versus-white-hat story is played out by a cast of 60 little people, led by Billy Curtis, who later appeared as a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz and Clint Eastwood’s sidekick in High Plains Drifter. Sam Peckinpah was a roguish force in American cinema and his own works in the Western genre are considered as fundamental facilitators of many of the films on this list. The first adjective most critics jot down for Johnny Guitar is “Freudian.” For those who didn’t take Psych 101 in college, the term is shorthand for visual expressions of sexuality. Weird Western? One that’s quite clearly inspired a number of great cult Westerns from the following decades. Set in a then fabulously expensive—$1,000 a day—Western-themed amusement park, the feature film was more lighthearted than the HBO miniseries, but raised the same questions: How would we behave without consequences? A rogue’s gallery of Western TV faces starred in this 1959 Gothic feature. At first the visual gags are amusing in a politically incorrect way — the cowboys ride Shetland ponies and enter the saloon by walking under the swinging doors — but when it becomes apparent that Tiny Town has nothing else to offer, the film quickly becomes tedious before mercifully ending after 62 minutes. Considering how iconic Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder have become in their lead roles as Sheriff Bart and the Waco Kid, it’s strange to think that neither actor was Brooks’ first choice. The idea was inspired — take a 1940s singing cowboy star and transplant him to a real rough-and-tumble Western town; imagine Roy Rogers riding Trigger into the HBO series Deadwood. Black Noon (1971) features a preacher who wanders into a town where nobody can leave due to a bargain with the Devil. RELATED: 10 Things In Western Movies You Didn't Know Were CGI. Corporate Gunslinger was published by Harper Voyager on June 16, 2020. Next Tick Tock Man: 10 Things You Never Knew About Jason Mantzoukas In John Wick. Mel Brooks’ beloved comedy is debatably his greatest work and a perfect example of a more crowd-pleasing–but no less biting–version of a satire on American history’s depiction in media. The Western has been blended with horror tropes on a number of occasions. Gastón’s singing sidekick, Squirrel Eyes, may be one of the most annoying characters in movie history. 1977) when the character was promoted to his own eponymous series. The Aurora Encounter (1985) purports to tell the true story of a UFO landing out West. But, truthfully, the genre has produced some of the strangest and most significantly revolutionary films to ever grace the screen. This Halloween, you can watch some particularly fine recent Weird Westerns (a blend of Western with Sci-Fi and Horror): HBO’S Westworld miniseries and the independent feature Bone Tomahawk. The White Buffalo (1977) is a retelling of Moby Dick (1851) that pits Charles Bronson’s Wild Bill Hickok against a mythic white buffalo. Bird would claim that this familiar experience of Hollywood backstabbing would inform her understanding of Ted Griffin’s screenplay about cannibalism in the Sierra Nevada and, despite Bird feeling locked out by producers in the end herself, Ravenous came out as weird as a big studio movie ever can. It's an experience that could comfortably be called timeless. Sergio Corbucci’s remarkably bleak Spaghetti Western is remembered in popular culture either for its nihilistic ending or for the influence that it’s had on the genre as a whole. Moviegoers saw David Carradine and his band of vampires learn the value of sunblock in 1989’s Sundown. Instead of a serial lady-killer hiding out with his unsuspecting family, Francis Lederer’s runaway Count Dracula blends in with an American household. Eric Fleming, just prior to landing the role of trail boss Gil Favor on Rawhide, plays Preacher Dan, a cattle town man of the cloth who investigates when young women start dying from massive blood loss. There have been other Westerns incorporating vampires since such as Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter (2000) and Bloodrayne: Deliverance (2007). When not writing or editing, he can most likely be found complaining about movies on Twitter. The genre created numerous tropes from the town dominated by its raucous saloon filled with dancing girls and gambling games, the quickdraw shootout on the main street at high noon, the stagecoach journey and so on. Menu. You’ll certainly see a lot of it in Quentin Tarantino’s. (Or if you just really like good movies.). In The Phantom Empire, the singing cowboy discovers that his famed Radio Ranch sits on a radium deposit that is coveted by unscrupulous land speculators. The title tells you the plot. Its unrepentant weirdness and unabashed politics have, however, caused it to endure and find greater appreciation over the years. A rogue’s gallery of Western TV faces starred in this 1959 Gothic feature. James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) played President U.S. Grant’s agents, using futuristic weapons to fight off villains bent on world domination. The Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter (1973) is remarkable for turning his tight-lipped Man With No Name persona on its head in an ending that reveals he is a supernatural figure come to exact justice on a town for their crimes. Tolkien’s sense of quest and magic but set against [Sergio] Leone’s almost absurdly majestic Western backdrop.”. Weird Westerns Westerns refer to the genre of films that take as their setting the American West (also known as the Wild West). Truth be told, this is a cult movie more popular among those who laugh at westerns than those who embrace them, but it’s worth a look to watch two scenery-chewing divas tear into each other. Hammer Films had one of their few flops with the much ridiculed but not entirely uninteresting Moon Zero Two (1969), which relocates the elements of a Western on The Moon. Future Western? Westerns featured black-and-white heroes (it was often literally the case that the hero wore a white hat and the villain a black hat) in simple horse adventures on the frontier, saving the damsel, tracking down the outlaws, fighting off incursions of the Indians. Jazz drummer Elvin Jones, who played with saxophonist John Coltrane among others, plays a gun-slinging bad guy as well as the fastest drummer in the West. The Western is an inherently non-fantastical genre (unless one considers its rewriting of history). At a stretch one could include here Dudes (1987), a modern punk film with the characters on a Western quest joined by ghost cowboys. You’ll want to see 1969’s The Valley of Gwangi, which showcases thrilling and convincing dinosaur animation by Oscar winner Ray Harryhausen, acknowledged as the finest stop-motion animator in the history of the art. The animated tv series’ The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers (1986-9), the softcore film Petticot Planet (1996) and the tv series Firefly (2002) also transpose aspects of a Western into outer space. The popularity of James Bond films led in 1965 to the first Sci-Fi, Spy Western series on television, The Wild Wild West. The 1960s saw a lessening of the popularity of the Western with works such as The Wild Bunch (1969) – a violent work that showed the heroes as outlaw killers. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s hugely influential Western from 1970 is often credited as the first-ever ‘Midnight Movie’ and it became a byword for controversial weirdness in a legacy that endures to this day. Full of action and atmospherically photographed, the movie echoes, A Weird Western made while the producers, director and head writer were on hiatus for ABC’s. The Phantom Empire (1935) Before Flash Gordon battled supernatural creatures in the golden age of … NEXT: 10 Western Masterpieces You've Probably Never Seen. It is best known for featuring the adventures of Jonah Hex until #38 (Jan.–Feb. A similar mix appears in the tv series’ The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993-4), a tongue-in-cheek take on the genre featuring advanced Steampunk gadgetry and outrightly science-fictional devices like alien artefacts and time travel, and Legend (1995), which featured a similar tongue-in-cheek tone and a series of advanced inventions.
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