Year Of The Western! #30 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

And here we are, the last film on the list for my journey into the western. I would say it has been long, but it really hasn't been. I have torn through this list of 30 at a pretty breakneck pace and it was a lot of fun. I am glad that I will now get the opportunity to watch other things that aren't westerns but I don't begrudge any of the time I have spent expanding my knowledge in an area that I was only superficially familiar with. This has been a fun experiment and I might try it again with another genre soon. 

Let's mount up for one last ride and see where Clint Eastwood takes us. 

Film #30 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) 

Here is the imdb.com cast listing (and a surprising amount of trivia about Clint Eastwood's sex life). Here is the wikipedia page about the production.

This film starts off with Josey (Clint Eastwood) tilling his soil with his son. His wife calls the son to get cleaned up, and shortly after Josey sees smoke in the distance and runs home to see his house ablaze and that his wife is being taken forcibly out of it by a bunch of men in with red leather leggings. He tries to fight back but is knocked unconscious. He wakes up to find the ashes of his house and his family. He buries his wife and child and just sits at their graves, broken.

Soon a large group of Confederate soldiers appear and tell him that the men that destroyed his home and killed his family are Union raiders, called Red Legs, and that they are going to go look for them. Josey joins them and fights for the Confederacy. He fights along side these men until the Civil War is over and the has South lost. The North is saying they are giving them full clemency if they just swear their allegiance to the Union. Most of the men leave to do so, Josey stays back, his war is not over.

One of the men to surrender, Fletcher (John Vernon) was given the word of the Union leadership and a leader of the Red Legs, Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney), that his men would be unharmed. As his men take the pledge, the Union army open fires on them and kills them all except for Fletcher and Josey, who is watching in the distance and sees Terrill and other member of the gang that killed his family. Josey rushes the camp and lays waste to most everyone and then goes on the run. He is a wanted man for the shooting of Union soldiers and for not surrendering. 

Josey is trying to get to the Indian nations so that he can lay low and figure out his next move and Fletcher is being forced to assist Terrill to hunt down Josey. As Josey stays free of the army and the law, the legend of The Outlaw Josey Wales grows. People in equal parts are trying to hunt him down for the bounty or are assisting him because they hate the government for what the war has done to them as well.

As Josey travels, he starts picking up people along the way. He is joined by an older Native American who is fed up with the government trying to make him civilized while they keep taking his land, a younger Native American woman who was ostracised by her tribe and was working under duress at a trading post, a family of Kansas folk who think they have a better life ahead of them based upon the promises of a wayward son, and a roughed up dog that just happens to show up along the way. Slowly Josey is starting to care about those that are following him and it almost seems like he is finding a life after the one he lost, but violence is always looming on the horizon as Terrill and his men and bounty hunters are trying to take out Josey.

 After the mind bender ending of High Plains Drifter, I was wondering if I was going to get another genre challenging western from Clint Eastwood. This film is pretty straight forward in its story telling and it is does feel more in line with a traditional western. The characterization of Josey is a little different as in he is driven by revenge but he still will stand up and fight for decent people when he sees them being abused. He will kill when he needs to, and without hesitation, but that doesn't mean that he wants to. He will survive until Terrill pays for what he did. I don't know if Josey is a true anti-hero, as he does do right by people and it isn't always for his own gain. I think that moments of his previous humanity rise to the surface from time to time. This is what keeps him from just being another grim bastard dealing out justice. Giving him a little complicated personality makes this a better story.

This film is really about family. The one he lost and the one he found. When you finally get to the homestead that was promised to the Kansas family and you see such an odd band of people all working together, you do feel like they are all home; even Josey, but he is uneasy about it. "When I get to likin' someone, they ain't around long," he tells the older Native American. "I notice when you get to dislikin' someone they ain't around for long neither," he replies back. Josey feels like violence will follow him wherever he goes, so he doesn't want to endanger anyone else, but he does like these people. 

This is a great scene where he has come to talk to Ten Bears, a Indian leader that was planning on attacking the Kansas family homestead in retaliation due to an earlier situation where Josey took care of some Comancheros. Josey's talk about his words of death and life to Ten Bears show that he is a man that can bring death but is tired of doing so and just wants to make peace.  

Clint Eastwood is great in this role, but that is not really a surprise. He gets some great badass line deliveries, some sarcastic one liners, and he gets to punctuate a lot of his statements with a spit of chewing tobacco (more on that later). And like I said before, he gets to show some vulnerability here that you didn't see in the other westerns I have watched for this list. This is the most human character I have seen him play and it was great. 

John Vernon as Fletcher was also great. He didn't have the largest role but I really enjoyed his resigned approach that he had while tracking Josey. He knew that Josey would be smarter and more cunning than Terrill's men, and he would try to tell them them but to no avail. Josey was a friend and he didn't want to do this, but he also had no choice. I could have watched a whole film from Fletcher's perspective and I would have been entertained. 

The Outlaw Josey Wales is a good film that provides depth and character to a story that could have easily just been about blood for blood. With the twists and turns of adding people to follow him in his journey, it gives the film a sense of  hope that I have not seen in other films. 

In the end, Josey is given a head start, as he is owed that much. Maybe he will finally outrun his past and get the peaceful future that he wants. Maybe there are army troops waiting over the ridge to take him down. We are left with no clear answers. I reckon that is the way Josey sees it too. You just got keep riding forward. Dyin' ain't much of a livin.'

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific): 

• Weird gang member names? The leader of the Confederate soldiers at the beginning of the film was named 'Bloody Bill' Anderson. That's a badass name. Especially if his real name isn't Bill. 
•  Did a house catch on fire? Oh, my yes. At the very start. It looks like they set a real home on fire.
• Any terrified horses? This is the mother lode of horse scares. There was one or two that fell of a ferry into a river, multiple ones tumbling down a rock hillside, and a couple were dragged down after being shot. Not a friendly horse film at all.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? I am going to give this to John Vernon. He was later cast as Dean Vernon Wormer in Animal House. 
• How many things/animals did Clint Eastwood spit on? He spit on a scorpion, the dog twice, probably a horse, some snake oil salesman's white coat, two dead bodies, and one spittoon. There were other things he spit on too, but I lost track. He was just as accurate with his spit as he was his guns.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but the score by Jerry Fielding (he also did the score for The Wild Bunch) is quite good. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 4.5 out of 5 tin stars. Good performance by Eastwood, interesting story of man continuing on with his fight after the war is over, good ensemble cast of characters, and an ending that didn't go the way you would expect. Highly recommended. 

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Year Of The Western! #29 Keoma (1976)

I know I have talked a lot about the original Django and how it compares to other films on this list and I have had the pleasant experience of seeing Franco Nero in more light hearted comedic westerns, but I haven't had a chance to see Nero in another serious film. I am glad that the last spaghetti western on this list is a serious Franco Nero one.

Film #29 Keoma (1976)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts off with Keoma (Franco Nero), a half-indian/caucasian ex-Union soldier, returning to his home town to see that the things are not the way he left them. A rich businessman named Caldwell, bought the nearby mine and has slowly taken over the town. The mine started polluting the local water supply and this caused a plague to breakout among most of the townspeople. Seeing some of Caldwell's men taking a wagon of infected people to the mine, including a very pregnant woman named Liza, Keoma frees her and takes her into town in order to get medical treatment. 

Keoma soons finds out that his three half brothers are working with Caldwell in running the town. Through a series of flashbacks it is revealed that due to Keoma's half-breed status, his brothers hated him and made his life hell. His father, William (William Berger, last seen as Banjo in Sabata), loves all of his sons equally but the other three think that he loves Keoma more, which is why they punish him.

Keoma could just leave the town to its misery and just drift across the land, as his brothers point out that he comes and goes as he pleases, but he decides that he is going to help the town, punish Caldwell, and hopefully in the process, find his reason for existence. 

Oh, and there is an old lady, referred to as The Witch in the casting notes, who may or may not have supernatural powers. And the sound track tells the story of the film as it goes on.

Reading up on the film after watching it, it is appears that this was one of the last major spaghetti western productions out of Italy. Its a shame because I feel like they were getting stranger and more interesting as they went along. I am glad that if this was to be one of the last ones that it went with a more serious and surreal tone as opposed to the more outrageous buddy comedy kinds that were more prevalent in the later half of the sub-genre's life cycle. 

Keoma feels like it took at a look at what came before it, and not just with other italian westerns because it clearly has some of The Wild Bunch in its DNA, and tried to bring some of the best qualities forward. I am not saying it is entirely successful, but it is evident it had a large bag of tricks and techniques to pull from. There are Leone style flashbacks with some good long tracking shots, Peckinpaugh style slow motion violence, and Corbucci's quick action cuts. Its a good blend of what makes those other films work really well.

I appreciate that Keoma wants to do some good but he isn't sure why. He doesn't really want to face off against his brothers but he will if that means helping the townspeople and Liza. I believe Keoma is trying to atone for his actions during the war because he wasn't sure why he was fighting in it to begin with. Below is a wonderful scene between Keoma and his father discussing war, love, and life. Check out that camera movement. 

I also liked the idea that a number of the townspeople were suffering from a plague as it brought a little different element to the story. It could be seen as a metaphor for how the town let the rich man take over and take their lives from them slowly, like the disease is doing to them as well. They don't know how to deal with it so they would rather suffer in silence than try to fight back. It also brought a bit of body horror to the film and that made the whole situation seem more desperate.

The look of the town itself felt like it was out of a nightmare. None of the buildings were in good repair and most were in the slow collapsing decay that you see in a ghost town. This is a place that had better days and will never see them again. It looks as diseased and worn down as its people. 

Franco Nero was really good as Keoma. He carried a haunted look through almost every scene. You got that he really felt like he belonged nowhere but he was going to try and fight the good fight. When the pregnant lady asked him why he saved her, he tells here 'Everyone has the right to be born.' You have a right to get to here, but you shouldn't expect anything else to be handed to you. He was just trying to give her child the same opportunity he was looking for: to figure out his purpose. 

There is a point later in the film when someone very important to him is taken away and in slow motion you see Nero break free from his captors and run with pure shock and rage towards the person who did the taking. It is an epic moment for the worst reasons and Nero commits so fully to it that you feel his rage as well. 

I forgot to mention another character in the film, George, played by Woody Strode. I want to speak about him for a moment because this isn't the first film on the list he has been in. He was in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as John Wayne's sidekick and he was also one of the three gunmen at the train station that were waiting for Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. Here he has his biggest role in the films I have seen and I glad I got to see more of him. George was an associate/worker for Keoma's father and you can see in the flashbacks he always had a smile on his face as he played his banjo, taught Keoma how to shoot a bow and arrow, and just took care of homestead. There is a legitimate warmth to him in those brief scenes. When the film begins, he is a broken down alcoholic with no bow and just three strings left on his banjo. He has been made a free man due to the war but people still treat him the same. His freedom didn't change people's attitudes and now he just drinks to deal with it. When finally given a purpose, to help Keoma fight back, George starts to perk up, even enjoying the shootout at the end saying he feels alive again. Strode never plays stupid or into any kind of stereotype. He is very sympathetic and when he meets his end, he doesn't stop fighting those that kept trying to hold him down. It is a great performance.

I can't say I completely understand the purpose of The Witch. She felt like she belonged more in a Shakespeare play than this film, not with her dialogue but due to her semi-omnipresent ability to be around Keoma and directly question his motivations. It was an interesting touch but I feel that it needed a little more substance or definition in order to have a better impact on the story.

The final showdown with the three brothers and Keoma is haunting as it is set against the sounds of Liza giving birth. There are moments where it is just her screams of pain while you see the brothers trying to stalk Keoma through dry rot in the shape of a barn. As lives are taken, a new life is closer to coming into this world. It shows the pain and cost involved in just surviving, just living.

I also have to say that I equally love and hate the music in Keoma. The instrumental parts are very cool and have some synth notes that are very mid to late 70's that I really dig. The vocal portions are challenging. Mainly there is a female voice that comes in at various points in the film and sings about what is actually going on in the story (this also feels oddly Shakespeare like, or more specifically a Greek chorus), and she is fine but the lyrics don't always fit the pace of the music. Also, she sings in a high warbly pitch that works sometimes but other times is grating. Then, every so often, there is a low gravely voice man that sings as well. He is just terrible. When they sing in tandem, it is... odd. I appreciate taking the chance, and I love the idea of an ongoing song within the film (Jeremiah Johnson kind of does the same thing to a much better effect), especially a western as they already have a different texture to them than other genres, but man I wish they would have chosen different vocalists or something.

Keoma is a interesting movie with some great characters, wonderful camera work, and some awesome shootouts and fights. That it struggles with the nature of one's place in the world and the cost of freedom takes what could have been a simple tale of taking back a town and makes it something more.

If this was the last of the Spaghetti Westerns, then it was a very good one to go out on. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? All the brothers had the last name Shannon, but that's not that weird.
• Beautiful landscapes? A few lowland hills that I have seen in other Italian films that are pretty but this film was purposefully ugly. 
• Any terrified horses? Yeah, it looks like two get shot back to back. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? Woody Strode would get the nod here. He is great.
• Any buildings catch on fire? No, but a stiff wind would have knocked most of them over. Seriously, that town looked wrong.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes, kind of. Like I said before, there is a running song through the film about the story. Here is a little bit of it below. You will see what I mean about the actual signing.

Rating:

I am going to give this film four out of five tin stars. Franco Nero is awesome as a man that has no place in the world but is still trying to fight for it. The desperation of the town and the sickness of its people give this film a slight horror edge that I was not expecting but appreciated. The music might be the reason why this doesn't rate higher for me and that's a shame. In spite of that, Keoma is still a really good film and it's worth the time to watch. 

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Year Of The Western! #28 Breakheart Pass (1975)

So here we are, three films to go in the mad rush that has been the Year 3 Months Of The Western! and I had to call a slight audible. Of the remaining three films on the list that was given to me, two are from 1976 and one is from 2000. While I am interested in the one from 2000, I wanted to stick within the relative time frame the list has gone with so far. I started in 1954 (well, technically I should have started in 1953, but I can't read a calendar) and am finishing with a range of 23 years of films. I have appreciated the evolution in presentation and the subject matter. So I wanted to keep that train rolling (very appropriately so) and picked a film that I thought would hold some interest.

I chose Breakheart Pass for 4 reasons: 1.) It has Charles Bronson in it. 2.) It is a film set in the time of the old west that I have not seen. 3.) It was made before the last two films on the list. 4.) It has Charles Bronson in it.

So let's see if the one film I picked out of the 30 belongs in the list.

Film #28 Breakheart Pass (1975)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts with a train stopping in the small 'town' of Myrtle. It looks like it has 5 tents, one bar, and one telegraph office. It is a private military train with one car for the Governor of Nevada (Richard Crenna), and they are on an urgent and secretive mission. While waiting for the train to get filled with water, soldiers and the other passengers get off and head into the town. A United States Marshall (Ben Johnson) is trying to gain passage on the train as he knows that it is headed to Fort Humboldt and they have a prisoner that he wants to escort back south. The head of the military, Major Claremont (Ed Lauter) doesn't want to take on additional passengers and the Governor has not told him what is actually going on at the fort. Enter John Deakin (Charles Bronson) a man with a past in medicine and a price on his head for committing a crime against the US government, who just happens to be caught cheating at cards by the marshall. Seeing as Deakin is now a federal prisoner, the Major will allow him and the Marshall on the train.

Once on the train, the Governor and a doctor on board (David Huddleston... I just have to mention him because he was the other Lebowski in The Big Lebowski) tell the Major and other important members on the train, and Deakin who happens to have his hands and feet tied while sitting on the floor, what their mission is: Fort Humboldt is devastated by Diphtheria and they are bringing a large number of medical supplies and fresh troops to staff the fort while the outbreak is being treated. The doctor excuses himself to go check the supplies. 

Soon after the doctor is found dead in his room. Deakin examines the body and shows everyone that the doctor was murdered. Things are not what they seem on the train and in Fort Humboldt. People start dying, secrets come out, and the danger grows with each mile traveled. 

To really to get into too much more would be to give away what fun there is to be had in this film. This is not a character study, it is a quickly paced thriller that speeds along as fast as the train the characters are all on. Sometimes you just need a jaunty ninety minute plot in which there are fist fights, people get thrown down into mountain passes, and many train cars getting destroyed.  

This film does do something similar to 3:10 to Yuma (aside that both have trains central to the plot) in the sense that it is a ticking clock with a confrontation that is coming one way or another. It also keeps the main characters in close vicinity of each other so that way it can build tension. 

It is decided that it is fine to have Deaken wander the train freely for most of the story as there is no place for him to go. The snow covered area they are traveling through has nothing but train tracks and frozen death. If he tried to escape, he would die. It gives Bronson a chance to start piecing together what is going on and it works to keep the moving going even if it does stretch believability a bit. 

Giving Bronson's Deakin a background in medicine and science was a smart move as it also let you believe that his deductive reasoning was grounded. When he starts explaining how he knows certain things based upon the evidence presented, it does make sense. Also, it helps that he has a secret of his own that you don't find out until about two thirds of the way through the film. It doesn't take away from what you have seen previously and does add credibility to his beliefs about what is going on.

Bronson was 53 at the time of this film and he was hitting that grizzled Bronson look we all know from his later films that would make him iconic. I mention his age because he has a train car roof top fight that according the to trivia, he did all of his own stunt work for. Check it out below. Just the portions of where he and the other actor are hanging off the side of the train as it crosses a bridge are terrifying. 

There is also a stunt earlier in which a number of train cars are let loose from the rest of the train and they start heading backwards and picking up speed. In slow motion you see them jump the tracks and break apart against the hillside below. Like I said about Duck, You Sucker, you don't see stunts like that anymore. No matter how I may end up feeling about a particular film, I will always take my hat off to good practical effects and stunt work. 

Breakheart Pass feels like it would be a film that I would see on a lazy weekend afternoon on a local affiliate channel, or on TNT's Movies For Guys Who Like Movies. If nothing else was on, you would leave this film on, flipping back to after the commercial breaks. It has no lasting impact but it is enjoyable while you are watching it. 

I don't know what else to say about this film other than this: the plot unfolds at a good clip throughout so you keep wondering what is going on until close to the end, the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains is beautiful, Bronson Bronsons it up, and the score by Jerry Goldsmith is really quite good. It could have maybe stood to have a little more time to let the characters breathe but that would have slowed down the pace. 

There is nothing wrong with Breakheart Pass, but there is nothing that would eagerly bring me back either. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Someone in the cast is named Jebbo. Sounds like a Star Wars name to me. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Yes, the snow covered mountains in northern Idaho where this was filmed is really pretty. Some of the helicopter shots of the train were really nice.
• Any terrified horses? Horses only showed up in the last 15 minutes or so, so not that many to be scared by things. David Huddleston playing dead in a few scenes made me laugh as his body would jiggle as the train rocked. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? I will give this award to Ed Lauter. I didn't realize how many things he was in that I knew him from. He was in Gleaming the Cube!
• Any buildings catch on fire? No, but how about a train car full of ammunition exploding? 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, like I said above, the Jerry Goldsmith score is great. Probably my favorite thing from the film. I will be revisiting the music again. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 3.25 out of 5 tin stars. Good story hook about a train full of secrets and people who are not what they seem. Bronson getting to be a badass is always a plus. It says something that I am already forgetting parts of this film even though I watched it just a couple of hours ago. Recommended to watch while napping on a lazy Sunday. 

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Year Of The Western! #27 The Stranger and the Gunfighter (aka Blood Money) (1974)

A western set in America that is filmed in Spain and Hong Kong? An attempt to split gunfighting action with martial arts action? An established genre star with a fast rising action star? An attempt to squeeze in a lot of goofy exploitation and shots of women's butts? Did I enjoy this film?

Film #27 The Stranger and the Gunfighter (aka Blood Money) (1974)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts off with Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) riding under a train into Monterey. He has his eyes on a bank vault and what may be inside of it. As he open the vault door, he finds a black and white photo of a woman, close to being fully nude. Another door, another photo. Soon he has four photos, a fortune cookie, and one final door to open. He lights a stick of dynamite and hides from the soon to be explosion. Suddenly, the owner of the vault and the photos, Mr. Wang, rushes in to stop the explosion but dies in it instead. Dakota is immediately arrested. 

In China, a warlord that has fronted Wang a large deal of money to invest in America, hears of his death and lack of fortune. The warlord summons Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh), Wang's nephew. He tells Ho that he has one year to go to America and find Wang's fortune or else the warlord will kill Ho and his family.

Dakota is sentenced to be hanged and Wang wants to speak to him about the robbery on the off chance he knows what happened to the fortune (no one believes Dakota when he tells them all he found was just the nude photos and cookie). While talking to Dakota and going over the photos, they open the fortune cookie and the message inside states 'At bottom of every woman is fortune.' Ho believes that his uncle left clues on the asses of the four women in the photos. Ho saves Dakota from the noose (he needs a guide in America) and soon they are off to go look at four women's asses to find clues to Uncle Wang's fortune.

Misunderstandings happen. Cultures clash. Hilarity ensues. Oh, and eventually a bible thumping, verse spewing, man in black with a realllllly wide hat and his Indian strong man side kick start chasing Dakota and Ho, as they know about the money too. 

That's your film. A very over the top (not in a great way) East vs West clash of styles and a lot of looking at ladies' asses. I am pretty sure if I had told people that I had a really weird dream and described the plot of this film, people would tell me I have really stupid dreams. 

I didn't hate this film. There are bits I enjoyed, some of the comedy does work. A lot of it doesn't though and it is a shame as I think a martial arts master and an aging gunfighter is a great set up for a movie. It is interesting to know that as the American West was going through its growing pains, China and Japan were going through some interesting transitions of their own. Traditions were changing do to technological and societal advancements. What is considered honor in one land may not be the same in another. Maybe that western film exists. I understand that this film did not have its eyes set on such lofty explorations of men, culture, and history. It had its eyes set lower, like around the butt area.

I appreciate that Ho's character had no sexual interest in the women when they were tracked down. He was simply completing his task. I didn't need everyone in the world turning into a cartoon wolf and howling at the moon (pun intended?) whenever a pretty lady had to reveal the next clue in the puzzle. Dakota seemed to enjoy it a bit too much at times, but that at least felt in line with his rowdy by the skin of his teeth character. 

At first I was excited at the idea of incorporating kung fu into a western. That is a cool mash up idea. The kung fu in this is very light and ridiculous. What I mean by that is that there are clearly times when they reversed the film to make it look like Lo Lieh was jumping to very high ledges instead of him actually dropping down. I want to see the reality of fluid hand to hand combat and the film never really got there. I think you can get away with a person being an amazing shot with a gun (ala Van Cleef in Sabata) as you don't actually see them making the shot due to trick photography. I don't think you get away with hand to hand fighting where you show your character flying through the air in an almost Mortal Kombat style arc. 

Maybe I am being too harsh on this portion of the film, but I think it is a fair point to make. Just because you are making a martial arts/western comedy, the action part of it should at least hold its own. Even the brawling Wrestlemania-like ending to They Call Me Trinity showed some fun moves. The Stranger and the Gunfighter had an opportunity to really leaves its mark as a genre hybrid and it faltered in its execution. 

Some positives:

1.)  Lo Lieh had a genuine kindness around him and an easy smile. You believe that his character is 100% confident in his ability to beat anyone but fighting was never his first choice. I liked that he was never played stupid or stuck into any stereotype. 

2.) Lee Van Cleef is always great. Here he isn't a bad bad guy (though he did rob a bank and blow up a guy by accident) and is more along for the ride. Its a role he could probably play in his sleep but he brings enough charisma to it. 

3.) The adventure/journey aspect of the film. It is a trope that the heroes need to find multiple pieces of an item/puzzle in order to complete their task but it is a decent enough structure to get the two main characters together and to keep them working together. It also set up different scenarios that that they needed to figure out how to get to each of the four women and their... information. 

This is where I would normally post a video that is of a particular scene I like, but aside from the trailer, there appears to be no individual scenes I can find. However, the entire film is up for 'free' (wink) on a few different streaming platforms. So I can't show you a single scene, but you can go find the whole film to watch if you feel inclined. There are worse ways to spend 105 minutes. 

The Stranger and the Gunfighter is a film that tries to serve a number of masters and doesn't quite end up serving any. There are parts to enjoy but I don't think this is one I will be coming back to. If I need an outrageous Lee Van Cleef western with crazy jumping and unbelievable shooting, I have Sabata.

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? A guy with a whip was named Calico. You don't want to pet him though.
• Beautiful landscapes? The temple by the water in Hong Kong was pretty. It was not something I was expecting in a western.
• Any terrified horses? Probably but I do have to mention there is a scene by a creek where Dakota and Ho are talking while their horses drink in the background. One of the horses decides to lay down and roll around in the water and have a grand ole time. He stole the scene. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? It was mainly an Italian and Chinese cast. I can't speak to any one person's further works.
• Does Lee Van Cleef have his shirt off for the last 20 minutes of the film? Yes. I will never look that good at any age. 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, and here is the best video I can find of the score. Someone just pulled the music directly from the film so there are stray bits of dialogue and sound effects over top of it. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 3 out of 5 tin stars. It was not terrible but not great. The two main leads have decent chemistry and there are a couple of decent laughs in it. For an actual quest for booty involving booties, it could have been way worse. 

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Year Of The Western! #26 High Plains Drifter (1973)

It is fair to say that I shouldn't judge a film by its first half until I see the second half. What may seem lazy and self-indulgent at the start can suddenly snap into crystal clear focus and become wickedly purposeful once all of the cards are on the table.

I wasn't feeling High Plains Drifter at the start. Once it was over, I was consumed by it completely.

I normally will tell people to watch the film before I get to far into the plot as I don't want to ruin the experience of discovery that I had watching the film fresh. If you have any inkling at all about wanting to see this film, do not read any further and go watch High Plains Drifter. It is available on HBO Go as of this writing and it is $2.99 to rent on Amazon, Vudu, and Youtube. It will be 3 dollars well spent. 

So let's talk a long ride into a small town and see what the hell is going on in High Plains Drifter.

Film #26 High Plains Drifter (1973)

This is one of the worst put together trailers I have ever seen, but I do appreciate the 'Aim to see it!' at the end.

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

The film starts off with The Stranger (Clint Eastwood) riding into the town of Lago. It is a small town that appears to be growing rather quickly with freshly built buildings and some currently being built that are lining the dirt and sand covered main road. As the Stranger rides through town, seemingly everyone is suspiciously staring at him. He passes them in silence. Two men with a wagon and horses start to leave, cracking a whip loudly to get the horses going. 

The Stranger gets off his horse and heads into the saloon, ordering a bottle of booze and a beer. Among the men in the bar are three hired gunslingers. For whatever reason, they do not take kindly to the Stranger drinking in the bar. When it appears that the conversation is going to turn violent, the Stranger leaves them in the saloon. He heads across the road to the barber shop for a shave. With a face full of lather, the three hired guns attempt to threaten the Stranger. He immediately shoots all three, not in self defense, as they hadn't pulled their guns yet. 

As he is heading to his horse, a local woman gets in his way on purpose to let him know what she thinks about people like him. The Stranger grabs her, drags her to the stable nearby, and rapes her. (Needless to say, the Stranger is not a good man.) He then goes and gets a room at the hotel nearby and quickly falls asleep. He dreams of three men with bull whips, whipping, striking, and strangling a man while the townspeople of Lago watch on silently. He pleads for help and no one comes forward. They dying man tells them they are all going to hell. 

The town of Lago does not want the Stranger there, but it now have a bigger problem. The three hired guns were there to protect the town from three other gunslingers that the town had hired previously. The town has a few secrets. A marshall had come to town and found out that the nearby private mine was on government property and was going to tell the proper authorities. The original hired guns whipped the marshall to death. The town then framed them for the theft of a gold ingot and got them sent to prison. Perfectly enough, their sentence is ending today. So the mayor, sheriff, and other leaders in the town decide they need to try and hire the Stranger as he is clearly good with a gun.

The Stranger is not really interested in helping them, but they tell him he can have whatever he wants. Anything? Anything at all. This sets in motion the bizarre tilt the rest of the film takes.

The Stranger does take whatever he wants. Boots, a saddle, a handful of cigars, but then he starts making bigger requests. He orders the saloon owner to buy everyone a drink. The bartender asks for payment and the sheriff tells him its on the house as the Stranger gets whatever he wants. The Stranger makes a small person named Mordecai (Billy Curtis) the new sheriff and mayor. The Stranger tells the owner of the gun store that everyone should get a new rifle as they are all a part of the local militia that he just created. He tells some local Mexican laborers to start making a large table for a feast. When they ask about where they will get the lumber, he tells them to tear down the stable that is owned by the same guy who owns the Hotel. He then tells the hotel owner to remove everyone from his establishment so the Stranger can stay there alone. The Stranger then insists on having a meal with the same woman he raped earlier (She has been trying to kill him, first with a hand gun and then with a knife). He is turning the town upside down simply because he can.

After some more chaos and cruelty (people try to kill him in his hotel room, but he is a step ahead and tosses a stick of dynamite into the room as they enter and he leaves), he ends up taking the hotel owner's wife against her will into their bedroom and rapes her too. She tells him about the marshall that the town has killed and put in an unmarked grave outside of town. She believes he is unable to rest in peace. 

The Stranger then orders that the town be painted red. Every building. He has them put up a banner that reads 'Welcome Home Boys' with big red letters, a sign for the three gunslingers when they come to town. As he heads out to see where they are currently, the Stranger paints the word 'Hell' on the sign for Lago. 

The Stranger locates the gunslingers and takes a couple of shots at them, just to let them know they are being targeted and then returns to town, knowing they will be there soon.

Soon after, everything comes to a head. The gunslingers enter the town. They start shooting the townspeople. The townspeople start shooting back. Buildings catch on fire. The blood red town is in flames with violence and death everywhere. It has become Hell. The leader of the gunslingers, Stacey (Geoffrey Lewis), seeing that his partners are dead, hears a voice in the darkness, 'Help me. Help me.' It sounds exactly like the man who he whipped to death. As the Stranger faces off with him, Stacey is yelling, 'Who are you?!' He gets no answer, the Stranger just shoots him. 

The town is in ruin, the gunslingers are dead, and the Stranger rides out of town. He passes Mordecai as he is putting a proper grave marker up for the killed marshall. When he says to the Stranger, 'I never did know your name.', the Stranger replies, 'Yes, you do.' and then rides off. 

I honestly didn't know how to get from A to B in talking about High Plains Drifter without discussing the story. Is the Stranger the marshall himself? Is he the personification of vengeance? Is he the actual Devil, sent to Lago to punish everyone for their sins? The film doesn't tell you and it is equal parts amazing and frustrating. Let me explain a little. I love that the this film doesn't give you an easy answer, because if it did give an explanation then it would take away some of the chaotic feel that the last 20 minutes or so delivers. What is frustrating is that Clint Eastwood cast his stunt double, Buddy Van Horn, as the marshall with the purposeful intent of clouding the waters of who The Stranger actually is. As Buddy Van Horn looks almost exactly like Eastwood, I did not realize that it was a different actor until after I finished the film and read about the cast and production, so that left me a little confused during the run time of the film. Wouldn't the town recognize the guy they watched get murdered in front of them? I was wondering when someone would just straight up identify the Stranger as the marshall. It is hinted that when Mordecai has a flashback to the night of the whipping, so I figured he knows who the Stranger really is and that is why he was so eager to help him. But if the Stranger isn't the marshall, how did he have a dream about the whipping and how did he know to say 'Help me' to Stacey? 

Also, if he wasn't the ghost of the marshall or the reanimated body of the marshall (ala The Crow), then his appearance in Lago is weirdly suspect. He did not enter the town to start a fight. The three idiot gunfighters picked a fight with him first. I really don't know if he would have caused much trouble by drinking his beer and getting a shave. I suppose you could argue that if he is the Devil or an agent of chaos, then trouble would always brew around him. 

Like I said, I really love the idea of the sins of the past coming back to destroy the very thing you sought to protect, and it is here two fold, with the original crime of the whipping and then framing of the original hired guns to get them sent to prison, but I feel like if it had just hammered out just a smidge more logic in the narrative, it would have been perfect. 

What I said at the top about judging a film on the first half isn't fair speaks to how I was feeling about this film until the Stranger's plan to turn Lago into Hell came into view. The first half of this just felt wrong for wrong's sake. The Stranger not saying anything until seven minutes in the film feels like Eastwood was pushing for the Man with No Name vibe again, and while it works, it didn't feel fresh. Eastwood's dialogue was also low and through his teeth, usually with a cigar clenched between them. It is the distinct Clint Eastwood snarl but since most of what he said were macho one liners, it didn't feel genuine to me. It felt like Eastwood playing Eastwood in a film that he directed and produced. When the Stranger shoots the men first before they draw shows you that he doesn't really care about the law and that makes him morally gray, when he rapes the woman immediately after, it just piles on that he is a bad guy, and it felt gratuitous. Once you figure out that he is there to punish the entire town in whatever way he sees fit, his actions make more sense (I get they were going for the point that the woman watched without action as a man was whipped to death in front of her, so that her being violated without no one really caring makes some narrative sense, but I am sure there was a better way of handling that). The wife of the hotel owner says to the Stranger, '"I knew you were cruel but I didn't know how far you could go." He calmly states, "Well you still don't." And we don't either until the very end of the film. In hindsight, the end does support the beginning, thankfully so, or else this would have just been a cruel film with nowhere to go but down.

Much like the dark weirdness of Django Kill ...If You Live, Shoot!, High Plains Drifter keeps bending your expectation of what is going to happen next until it breaks. This is not a bad thing. The last third of both films is so off the rails from how you expect a western would end that it forces you to stop thinking and just dive into the deep end of the madness until the credits roll and then allow yourself to come up for air and sanity. 

This film also reminds me of Day of Anger in the way that the main character of the story isn't a good person and they are able to use their position to get what they want out of a town and don't care who they destroy along the way. It makes me wonder how Lee Van Cleef would have played The Stranger and I kind of wish I could have seen him play a character so purely chaotic and dark. Lee Van Cleef as the Western Devil? How did this not happen? 

Clint Eastwood directed this film and you can see here that he already had a confidence in his ability to tell a story. There are some wonderfully long tracking shots of him riding through Lago and his handling of the whipping death of the marshall is so matter of fact that it makes the whole thing more gruesome. The close ups on individual townspeople's faces as that is going on tells a number of stories with no words. The night time finale with the buildings on fire and him in the foreground do make the whole town feel and look like it went to Hell. Having this dark twisted story take place along a bright blue lake with cloud dotted skies just makes what's going on feel worse. How can such terrible things go on in a place that looks this damn beautiful? This is God's country, right? Eastwood did a good job of presenting what at first looked like a run of the mill western and then twisting it into a nightmare. 

The score by Dee Barton is hypnotizing. It feels like an Ennio Morricone score went to Hell along with the town of Lago. It is darkly beautiful with its surface level angelic strings and chimes but a haunting harmonica joins it along with a rising drumbeat that gives the whole piece a harder edge. It is a really great score that compliments the film very well.

As you can tell, I am conflicted on some of the story beats and decisions made in High Plains Drifter, but I am not conflicted in saying that this was a really interesting film that I did not see coming. The title tells you nothing about what you are getting into and I am glad for that. Had I even the slightest idea of what this film was about, I don't think I would have been as floored as I was in the last twenty minutes. A town literally painted red waiting for their past sins to return.  

High Plains Drifter is a hell of a thing. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Clint Eastwood is billed as The Stranger. Can't get any more weird and badass than that. 
• Beautiful landscapes? The lake, Mono Lake, is pretty but I wouldn't recommend drinking the water.
• Any terrified horses? One of the returning gunslingers shoots a horse. Hopefully not for real.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? Robert Donner played the preacher in this film. He was Exidor on Mork & Mindy.
• Any buildings catch on fire? A lot on screen and the rest were burned down as soon as production wrapped.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but here is the score from the beginning of the film. So good. 

Rating:

I am going to give the High Plains Drifter 4.5 out of 5 tin stars. The last third of the film really brings it all together but the first part felt like the Clint Eastwood Gravely One Liner Show (with some rape), but when the plan becomes clear, this film elevates to another level. Very recommended!

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Year Of The Western! #25 Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

So it is fitting that I get to another snow based film as we head into December. It's about that time of year where a film like this can hit harder as you can't easily walk out into warm sunshine and try to remember that you have things a lot better than Jeremiah Johnson did. 

Jeremiah Johnson could also be hitting me harder than some other films would normally due to the recent scarring that The Great Silence did that left me raw. The harsh winds of the Rocky Mountains blow cold... and they blow sharp. And this film cut deep into me in a few places.  

Film #25 Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film is a story of a man in three parts. We first meet Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford) as he is getting off a boat and is about to start a new life being a hunter and trapper in the mountains. It is implied that he is an army veteran from the Mexican-American War but he doesn't really ever comment much about it. Honestly, you never really learn Jeremiah's history and that's perfectly fine. This isn't about that man, it's about the man he will become once he climbs the mountain.

Early on, he has very little success catching fish or even keeping a fire lit. When he comes across the frozen body of trapper it is a bit of shock as it shows just how perilous his decision to become a mountain man is. The frozen trapper does leave a will stating that any man (hopefully a white man, as the letter puts it) that finds him can have his gun. Johnson, seeing it is the kind of gun that he was looking for, takes it and moves on. 

Johnson draws the attention of an older trapper and hunter,  'Bear Claw' (Will Geer), who sees that Johnson is terribly inexperienced and takes him under his wing to teach him what he knows. He shows Jeremiah how to hunt elk (by walking behind their horses, 'Elk don't know how many legs a horse's got') how to bury warm embers from a campfire under your sleeping roll to keep you heated through the night, and how to build traps for other game. 

Bear Claw also teaches Jeremiah about the local Indian tribes. How to identify what arrow belongs to which warrior and how to get along to get along. It is their land and the trappers tread carefully on it (or well they should). 

Soon Jeremiah is out on his own and this starts the second part of his story.

He comes across a settler's cabin and sees a woman in front talking to herself. She is trying to put shoes on a dead body. Jeremiah sees that her family has been brutally killed by Indians and she has lost her mind with grief. He approaches her cautiously and tells her he is a friend. She threatens him with a gun and he just tells her, 'There's graves to be dug.' After helping her bury her husband and child, he discovers there is another living family member in the cabin; a young boy who does not speak due to the trauma he just witnessed. After fixing the door of the cabin and deciding he should be on his way, Jeremiah tries to convince the woman that her and her boy should go with him to town. She grabs her son and tells Jeremiah to take him. He does not want to do it at first, but the desperation in her facesconvinces him. So he and the boy leave.

While traveling with the boy, who Jeremiah names Caleb as he never speaks or says what his actual name is, come across a bald head in the sand. It belongs to a French Canadian trapper named Del Gue (Stefan Gierasch) who was put there to suffer by some Indians. Jeremiah and the boy free him and try to help him get his horses and furs back.

Del Gue screws up their quietly planned night raid on the Indians that took his things and ends up shooting them. Jeremiah is disgusted as he had no qualms with the Indians and didn't see the need to do that. 

This leads to the three of them coming across a different tribe of Indians, the Flatheads, that see that they killed some of their enemies and welcomes them to their camp. Through a misunderstanding from Jeremiah, his offer of the enemies' scalps to the Flatheads' leader was taken as to be a large gift that must have a larger gift offered in kind, Jeremiah ends getting married to the leader's daughter, Swan (Delle Bolton).

So Jeremiah now has a son that is not his and a wife he didn't want. A family he must care for that he never intended to have in the first place. Over time, she learns a little English, he learns a lot of Flathead, and they build a cabin, their home. Life is nice. He starts to care for her, she for him, and the kid is smiling. 

This is where the third part of the story takes place. Spoilers ahead.

The Army comes through and convinces Jeremiah to help them get to some men stranded in a valley that he knows the way too. He reluctantly does this as they try to make him feel guilty for leaving those men stranded. Along the route, he realizes they are about to enter an Indian burial site. He tells the army leaders that they will need to circle around (which would involve miles of backtracking). They don't really respect the ground for what it is, and when they ask Jeremiah if he believes in their magic, he replies that he doesn't believe in it but the Indians do. So they strike a compromise, head through the site, slowly, single file, no noise, and no disruption. 

Jeremiah leads them to their stranded men and immediately heads back to his home and family. Crossing back through the burial ground, he gets a bad feeling and forces his horse to run as hard as it can. He arrives back to the cabin (and the life) he built, and finds his wife and adopted son murdered by Indians, supposedly as revenge for sullying the burial ground. 

Distraught, he burns the cabin down with the two of them placed peacefully side by side on the bed, and then starts actively hunting and slaughtering every Indian he can find. Eventually, the Indians start sending individual warriors to ambush him at random times. This is because they believe they are only as strong as their strongest enemy and Jeremiah Johnson is the fiercest.

I did go over about 95% of the plot. I am going to leave the last 5% for anyone that wants to watch this. It was a bold (and ambiguous) decision to end the film the way they do and I don't know if I want to go into it and honestly don't think I could really do it justice. 

Jeremiah Johnson is so much more about the journey than its ultimate destination. Jeremiah himself doesn't know what he is going to find in the mountains and wanders from point to point, dealing with each new situation as it develops. Its about sympathizing with him when he can't catch fish at the very start or being excited for him when he learns to hunt elk, or feeling the terror of hearing his horses panicking in the distance when a pack of wolves attack them while he is away trying to hunt buffalo. You see this harsh world through the eyes of a man that decided he wanted to be there but didn't understand what he would need to do to stay there. I believe at one in the film, Bear Claw tells him that the mountain always takes. It is a lesson that he learns over and over again, with each time it taking more. When Jeremiah is wearing a bear head as a cap at the end, you can see that there is more mountain than man at that point. 

Robert Redford as Jeremiah is interesting. I have not see Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid so I can't speak to his previous work in a western, but I can say that I am glad that he had the role versus some of the other solidary silent strong male actors I have seen in other films on this list. Per the trivia, Clint Eastwood was originally attached to this but left the project, and as much as I am sure that he would have given a fine performance, I didn't need to see Western Clint Eastwood in this role. Yes, Jeremiah is tough, but he also is inexperienced. Redford has a vulnerability at the start that works so well that when the harsh events happen, you buy his transition. 

This scene is from early in the film. Bear Claw finds Jeremiah because he ruined Bear Claw's grizzly hunt. See if you could imagine Eastwood playing somewhat naive like Redford does here. Also, there is a sweet tracking shot at the end that follows the action from the outside of the cabin.

I honestly wasn't sure what clip to post because the film does change its emotional tone with each passing season as it goes on. I didn't want to color the film as Jeremiah on the path of vengeance killing Indians, as while that is important to his story, that is not what defines this film. 

Jeremiah appears to be a good man that is trying to forget about what he was before, but he still has his principals and inherent kindness when he first treks up the mountain. It is equal parts interesting and sad to see those things get stripped away from him. The moment he chooses to aid the army, he chose to acknowledge the man that he left behind, and by leaving his family he was leaving the man that he had become. 

Redford doesn't have to say a word as he is traveling back through the burial site to know exactly what he is thinking and you hope against hope that he is wrong and that he can go back to Swan and Caleb. His agony tears you apart. He suddenly is not unlike that grieving widow he first encountered at the start of his journey, putting his family to bed the same way she was trying to put shoes on their dead feet. It is a devastating performance. 

A word about the violence in this film. It is treated bluntly and brutally. There are no showdowns with tense music playing. When the violence does happen on screen (a lot is just the quiet aftermath that is disturbing in its own way) it is quick and efficient. This is not about style points but killing to stay alive, or out of pure rage. It reminded me a lot of The Wild Bunch and The Great Silence in how matter of fact the deaths were. It is uncomfortable because it feels real. It is hard to look at the stark red of splattered blood on the pure whiteness of the snow. 

Sydney Pollack's direction is very defined and focused. Like the above the scene I linked, there are multiple times where there are sideways tracking shots that add a sense of momentum to what is going on in the story at that time. There was some beautiful crane shots as well. It doesn't have the flair the Leone brings to his films, but this isn't a film with flair. It is trying to show that life on the mountain can have many vast quiet and beautiful moments and sudden savageness. Knowing they shot on location in Utah in areas that were really hard to access by road makes me appreciate the effort that went into how this film was shot. You could easily watch this with the sound off and still get how it feels just from the shot selection and the camera movements.

Speaking of sound, the score/soundtrack for this film feels ahead of its time. It is a mix of traditional orchestral instrumentation and then moments of  just a piano and flute or a nice mix of strings (with violins that turn into fiddles and back again). Per my reading, the score was not an afterthought, but the budget was so tight that they couldn't go the normal Hollywood large score route. Having Tim McIntire and John Rubenstein compose the score was unusual as they were mainly known as actors but they gave Pollack a tape of their music, and he gave them the job. The score works very well and I don't know if it was intentional or not to have the more traditional music give way to more of the folk sounds as a way to demonstrate the way Jeremiah was leaving society and heading into to the wild, but it feels like that. 

Jeremiah Johnson is a great film that pulls no punches. I could easily see this being made 10 years earlier and have a happy ending and that would have taken away some of the needed hurt that Jeremiah went through. If he didn't have scars at the end, the journey would have felt cheap.

This is great a great film. Just make sure you have a blanket to wrap yourself in. For warmth and to hide your manly tears. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? There were a few Indian names that stood out. Paints-His-Shirt-Red, Chief Two-Tongues Lebreaux.
• Beautiful landscapes? YES. The whole damn film.
• Any terrified horses? I am sure there were a couple. That one grizzly bear in the clip above didn't look too happy. Also, there was a wolf fight here that I wished had been in The Grey.  Side note: Come to think of it. I could go for a Liam Neeson mountain man western. Granted, all the animals would flee in terror when they saw him approaching, but I would still watch it.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? The only person I know from this film other than Robert Redford is director Sydney Pollack. He had a small role in a decent episode of the Twilight Zone. Oh, and won Oscars and such, too. 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes, but not how you think. It is was more of accent to his story, like a signing narrative, versus a straight up song. Check it out below.

• And here is more of the score. I had to link more of it because it is lovely.

• And here is a link to a piece of music that you can't convince me that was not inspired by Jeremiah Johnson for an alpine snowy mountain zone in World of Warcraft. I really do love the music of Grizzly Hills. Lots of Grizz to hunt there, too (Its in the name!).

• And now I finally know where this .gif comes from. It will forever make me smile. 

Rating:

I am going to give this 5 out of 5 tin stars. Jeremiah Johnson is a beautiful but brutal film about what it takes to survive in a land that has its own rules. Robert Redford gives a great performance that makes you sympathize with him all throughout the film. The direction/cinematography are great and the score fits like a warm bear skin coat. 

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Year Of The Western! #24 Duck, You Sucker! (1971)

I was trying hard to find a poster that felt more in line for this film. Normally I have looked for some interesting overseas posters for the other films I have watched for this list because I really enjoy some of the way those films have been presented in those markets. Plus the art tends to be more visually interesting than those of their US counterparts. This poster is trying to sell this film as something it is not and I feel like that might be the reason why this film is not in the same conversation as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West with Leone's best films. 

Film #24 Duck, You Sucker! (1971)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts off with Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) robbing a stagecoach full of wealthy people. His whole family helps in the robbery. After sending the coach passengers away (naked, in a wagon rolling down hill), they see some large explosions nearby and a single man on a motorcycle passes by them. Juan shoots out the rear tire and brings the cycle to a stop. The man, John (James Coburn) that gets off of the motorcycle, calmly walks over to the coach that Juan had recently appropriated and throws an explosive in it and tells Juan, 'Duck, you sucker,' and blows a hole in the roof of it. 

Turns out that John is a former member of the Irish Republican Army and is an explosives expert. Juan sees this as a sign from God that they should team up and rob a bank located in Mesa Verde. John does not want to join Juan and help him. Juan shoots through the gas tank of John's motorcycle and leaves him no immediate choice but to join Juan.

On the way to Mesa Verde, John uses a distraction of a passing train to get away from Juan. Undeterred from his goal to now rob the bank, Juan and his family continue on. Once they arrive in the city, they learn that it is under military control and that it is covered in troops. Juan finds John in a local restaurant across from the bank and confronts him. John said he has been waiting for him and wants to introduce him to some people. Turns out that there are a number of people trying to start a revolution in Mesa Verde and they are planning a coordinated attack of a few specific locations. 

The Mesa Verde bank is one of them. Juan, having no interest in a revolution but having a lot of interest in money, agrees to strike the bank with John.

Once the plan is in place, Jaun and his family go in to rob the bank. Every vault they open is full of townspeople that were being held captive by the military and mayor of the town (John knew this but didn't tell Juan). As they exit the bank with over a hundred freed people, Juan is now considered a hero of the revolution. A revolution he never intended to join but now has to play along as his family is with him and he is looking for the right time to escape.

John has his own reasons for going alongside the revolution. There is a series of flashbacks to his time in Ireland when it shows him with a woman he loves and his best friend. Its implied that the friend got him involved in the Irish Republican Army and that would lead to a deadly day when the friend was captured by the government and forced to point out other rebels. John kills the guards and then after a moment of hesitation, he shoots his friend. It appears that John will always be at odds with 'the uniforms' no matter what uniform they are wearing. 

So the remaining film is John and Juan's relationship and their own relationship with the revolution that is happening around them. 

Here is a great scene where Juan tells John what he thinks of revolutions. 

  

Steiger's boiled over frustration at explaining that revolutions rely on the poor and uneducated is very honest. His Juan at the start of the film isn't a good man, but he is never played as stupid. He is short sighted and thinks about himself and his family but he is constantly aware of his place in the world. He doesn't want to fight a war that will never be about bettering him or his people. Coburn's introspective pause and then throwing his book about Patriotism in the mud is earned. A man who had believed in a revolution once is starting to see that it doesn't amount to much. When John says later that he believes only in the power of dynamite, you believe him. 

The scene below is where John draws a line in the sand and is going to take the fight to the uniforms. He tells the rest of the people with them they can hide in the caves but he is done running and hiding. Juan thinks he is bluffing, winking when he tells his family he will miss them because he thought he and John would bolt and get away from the fight. Juan realizes shortly after that John means business and is making it a point to keep the troops from crossing the bridge. 

Leone knows how to make explosions look beautiful and epic. 

So we have the bulk of the images from the poster above: Juan firing the machine gun, a fairly accurate representation of the action at the bridge, and we saw John earlier in the film in the jacket full of dynamite riding his motorcycle (the fuses weren't all lit while he was wearing the jacket... that seems really unsafe no matter how good with explosives you are). The poster's tag line is "Rod Steiger and James Coburn will blow you apart." Followed by "By the master of adventure Sergio Leone." The poster promises a rip-roaring adventure with two loose cannons. It looks like a action-adventure thrill ride. 

It isn't. The first half leans a little into comedy (Juan forcing John to join him, Juan accidently becoming a leader in the revolution), but after the explosion of the bridge, the film pivots into a drama that just happens to have a massive train loaded with dynamite running full steam into another train later on.

Spoiler alert here: Juan's family was in the caves while he and John were taking out the bridge. The opposing troops found the caves and killed everyone in them. All six of Juan's kids were killed. Upon seeing this, he loses the smile that has been mainly on his face for the whole film, and picks up a machine gun to face the army. As he walks off, the film stays with Coburn as he stares at all the dead bodies and the camera travels over the massacre like a ghost, its attention being drawn to many different faces as it glides over. Meanwhile, you hear the sound of gunfire and violence as Juan is taken captive off camera. Coburn slowly turns his back and walks further into the cave, to another exit. 

To ruin the rest of the film and the further motivation for why John did what he did in Ireland would be wrong. The ending is spectacular and hits hard. And that is not just a joke about the trains hitting each other, but that has to be seen to be believed. It is not something you will see a film studio even attempt to do today. 

Steiger as Juan was an interesting choice. Per the trivia, this role was suppose to go to Eli Wallach, Tuco from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but Rod Steiger owed the production studio another film and they wouldn't fund it unless he was involved. Also, Steiger was playing Juan completely straight and serious initially and this frustrated Leone. Whatever happy medium they eventually came to really did give the character some depth. Had Juan been too serious, the impact of losing his family would not have been the same. He, much like Tuco, was always trying to see his situation in the best light even if it wasn't 100% accurate. I liked his performance, especially each time during the bank robbery, the doors would open and show more people and no money, and he would get more and more defeated. 

James Coburn as John was great. His performance was a little surly at times and he was easy to piss off but he would always get the job done. Juan calls him Firecracker and it fits. His John doesn't belong in the west. He would prefer explosives and a motorcycle to handguns and horses. Per the trivia, Clint Eastwood was offered this role and he turned it down (for Hang Em' High, see my thoughts on that film in that particular post) and I am glad he did. Coburn brought just something different to this role. I really enjoyed it.

This film exists on the same far edge of the western like the Wild Bunch did. While the Wild Bunch was more about finding your place in a world that is moving forward, Duck, You Sucker! is more about wondering if you even want a place in that world. Juan wanted money so that he and his family could live well. John wanted to escape a political atmosphere that cost him dearly and just go get drunk and blow stuff up. John says early in the film, "Where there's revolution there's confusion, and when there's confusion, a man who knows what he wants stands a good chance of getting it." I don't know if either believe that at the end. 

You get the feeling that Leone was done with westerns and really wanted to do something different. While he deconstructed them with Once Upon a Time in the West, he blew it up (phrasing intended) with Duck, You Sucker! I can respect that. He wrote the book on epic westerns, so why not write another about moments that shape a country and the men that exist in it? 

The poster for the film shows a movie that never truly was and after having seen Duck, You Sucker! I am glad for the movie it actually is. It is a great way to part ways with Leone on this list. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Actually, not really. Everyone had a pretty regular name. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Yeah, even the explosions looked beautiful. 
• Any terrified horses? Maybe. I do know that James Coburn snaps the neck of a rooster (off camera). 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? There wasn't anyone that stood out to me. 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but the score is by Morricone and it has some amazing parts in it. Check it out below. It's as wide in scope as Once Upon a Time in the West. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 5 out of 5 tin stars. There is just something about the detail that Leone puts into his films that really makes them work for me. Great performances from Steiger and Coburn take this film and make it outstanding. Highly recommended.  

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