Western fans: What is your favorite western film?

My favorite two are "Ride the High Country" from 1962 with Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott as two old timers who get one last chance at glory.

My second favorite western is "High Noon" from 1952 with Gary Cooper as the Marshal who seeks the help of his town against a gang of killers but the town turns their back on him (the film has more than a little bit to do with McCarthyism).

I quite liked "The Shootist", actually.

especially since he was in reality dying when he shot it.

Plus, a great cast....Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, Richard Boone, Ron Howard.

Wayne should have won two Best Actor awards: Chilling and brooding Ethan in "The Searchers," and for "The Shootist." Not for being a clown in "True Grit."

Made as Howard Hawks' response to High Noon, as Hawks was incensed by the townspeople deserting Gary Cooper. Plus, what a quirky cast! Walter Brennan, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and a ridiculously young and miscast Angie Dickinson (but hot).

The other one was ElDorado, with Robert Mitchum and James Caan.

Exact same movie. Never understood that...

RL

i liked el dorado better, personally.

Greatest. Western. Ever.

If I can ever choose how I die, I want to die in a recreation of the final 20 minutes of that film, complete with a Gatling gun and Ernest Borgnine.

the film's brilliant, especially when viewed as a coda to the Man With No Name trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, Few Dollars More and Good, Bad and the Ugly)

:thumbsup:

and I loved GBU as well.

It's my favorite film period.

Although I'm not really a Western fan.

"They Call Me Trinity" and "Trinity is Still My Name".


You give me a dollar and I give you a plate of beans.

Clint Eastwood movie in which he paints the town red and puts up a sign that says "Welcome to hell". Can't remember the name.

is the Eastwood movie.
I love Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, I've watched it about a hundred times.

Old Hollywood -
1)The Searchers
2)The Magnificent 7 All props to Akira Kurosawa but, the Western is better.
3)The Treasure of Sierra Madre

Modern
1)Unforgiven
2)Tombstone
3)The Outlaw Josey Wales

collection is "Tombstone". I grew up with the legend while living in Sierra Vista, AZ. And I thought the movie did a pretty good job of showing not just the criminality of the Cowboys, but also the moral ambiguity of the Earps.

I was never crazy about those black-hat, white-hat, hero kisses his horse but NEVER his lady movies.

alot. "Unforgiven" was a great movie, too, but "Tombstone" was more entertaining. For a "modern" western it's "Hud."

film about the O.K. Corrall ever produced.

While it left out the political rivalry between the Cowboys and the Earps, it showed how they were not so much criminals vs. lawmen as much as gangsters warring for control of the lucrative Tombstone market. The famous gunfight was portrayed relatively accurately in the film, although at nearly a minute it was twice as long as the actual firefight. The weak Billy Claiborne and the cowardly Ike Clanton got their best screen portrayals ever.

You want accuracy, check out Kevin Costner's "Wyatt Earp."

Tombstone had more historical inaccuracies than I can possibly name, from the phony story that introduces Doc Holiday (he never stabbed a man in Fort Worth), all the way through the dozen or so revenge killings following Morgan's death. Wyatt and his band only killed Frank Stilwell and Florentine "Indian Charlie" Cruz before fleeing Arizona for Colorado. They wanted to get Pete Spence too, but he turned himself in to Sheriff John Behan to avoid being murdered.

The entire latter half of the movie is almost completely fiction.

That said, it is definitely a hugely entertaining film! :thumbsup:

did see didn't impress me. To save money, he filmed Dodge City and Tombstone on the same outdoor set in South Dakota. The flat prairie plains worked fine representing Kansas, but was totally wrong for mountainous Tombstone. "Tombstone" got that right at least. The movie was filmed only about 30 miles or so from the actual town, in amongst the Huachuca Mountains.

Also, in "Tombstone", the scene where Doc Holliday stabs his poker opponent wasn't set in Fort Worth. It was set in, I believe, Prescott, Arizona. That DID actually happen, I think. Anyway, entertaining flick, you're right. Kurt Russell did some fine acting in it, and Dana Delany...oh mercy! What a woman! :wow:

near the end of her life. And she was a very self-aggrandizing woman. Interestingly, of all the characters in the movie, she outlived them all in real life, if I recall correctly.

I agree that the plains setting looks strange in "Wyatt Earp," but as far as a historical representation of the actual events, Costner's movie comes closer to the truth.

As for Holliday, aside from the OK Corral, there are only four documented instances of him firing a gun at anyone. In three of them, he wounded his "opponent" (I use that in quotes because in one instance, his opponent was an unarmed barkeeper) and in the fourth, he missed entirely. The real Doc Holliday was probably a very dangerous man, granted. But he was also probably too drunk to hit the side of a barn most of the time.

Tombstone, even though it's total historic crap and the all-time

True Grit, which contains one of my all-time favourite lines
"Fill yore hands, you sunuva bitch!"

Favorite line " Mr Rat, i have a writ here that says your to stop eating Chin Lee's flour forthwith" I know its not verbatim, its just been a long time since I watched it.
Favorite western if you could call it that was Jeremiah Johnson

the opening scene where the children stage a war between the red ants and the scorpions is the perfect distillation of what we're about to see. Of course, to end the game the children set the whole thing on fire.

if they made the film today would they get in trouble for burning up ants and scorpions? Cause that ain't no CGI of the incineration.


a distant second: "Gunfight at OK Corrall" and some of its spawn.
And most of the Clint Eastwood westerns.

"Go ahead and shoot her. She ain't my woman."

I heard you were a low-down, lyin' Yankee.

Technically it might be a Civil War pic, but I think of it as a Western. I also love The Quick and The Dead and The Shootist.

Pretty much all of Eastwood's westerns are very good. Dating back to his work with Sergio Leone to his work on High Plains Drifter, Josey Wales, Pale Rider and finally Unforgiven. The Outlaw Josey Wales is right on par with Unforgiven, imho, and Eastwood says he believes so too.

Jimmy Stewert and Marlene Dietrich

The Searchers, Unforgiven, and Once Upon a Time in the West (Henry Fonda's character is one of the all-time great villains).

It just doesn't get any better than Howard Hawks' epic cattle drive story, with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. John Ford's comment upon seeing Wayne's performance: "I didn't know the big sonovabitch could act."

Closest runner-up: "The Wild Bunch."

With Alex Cord, Ann-Margret, Van Heflin, Bing Crosby, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, Bob Cummings, Stephanie Powers, Red Buttons, and Mike Connors.

Best opening sequence of ANY western movie, ever, in my opinion.

My gawd, the opening scene in that movie is breathtaking. It is absolutely stunning!
Great photography, good music, and the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in any opening scene in any movie, western or not.

I went to this movie as a little kid and sat in the 2nd row!
I sat through the Saturday matinee showing twice!

Henry Fonda was sooo evil in that one!

Thanks for reminding me of it, though.

Jason Robards was awesome in that movie.
As was Charles Bronson.

I know that John Wayne was a right-winger and I probably wouldn't have liked him personally, but that scene in the open field with Robert Duvall is classic.

Ned (Duvall): What's your intention, Rooster? You think one on four is a dog-fall?
Rooster (Wayne): I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned, or see you hanged at Fort Smith at Judge Parker's convenience. Which'll it be?
Ned: I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!
Rooster: Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!

Reins clamped in his teeth, Winchester in one hand and Colt revolver in the other, Rooster charges the bad guys. Classic.

Tombstone, High Noon.... damn, I am drawing a blank....

Yeah it's a great genre, lots of wonderful films. Oh, The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Actually any Hopalong Cassidy movie.

And I like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Though I now turn a blind eye to the anachronistic Rain Drops... interlude.

Jim Jarmusch = awesome.

2)"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"
3)"High Noon"

Two noted opposite-ends-of-spectrum political actors beating the shit out of each other has to be taken metaphorically on some level. Kick his ass, Atticus!

I bought an 1860 (modern replica) Colt because of that movie.

Yeah, its still up there with my favorite Western/Comedy spoofs.

El Dorado.
Sons of Katie Elder.
Big Jake.
Dances with Wolves.
The Shootist.
McLintock!
The Comancheros.
The Searchers.
The Cowboys.
The Sacketts.
The War Wagon.
How the West was Won.
Once upon a Time in the West.
Silverado.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
Fort Apache.
Angel and a Badman.

RC because I love any movie with Katharine Hepburn in it. I thought John Wayne was fun in that movie, too.

With John Wayne....

It's perhaps one of the best movies ever made...

Two Mules for Sister Sara (Shirley MacLaine, Clint Eastwood)
The Professionals (Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Woody Strode...)
The Outrage (Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey)
Will Penny (Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett)

George C. Scott and Karl Malden were also in it. I saw this on TV when I was a kid and God I cried.

I wish I could see this film again as an adult. It has become mythic in my mind and I don't know if would have the same effect on me now, all these years later. Whatever happened to this film?

they really took the western and wrung every possible subplot out of them. My particular favorites (by favorites I mean, I watch them WHENEVER I see them on TV or I have them in my DVD collection).

The Good the Bad and the Ugly
Fistful of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More
The Great Silence
The Big Gundown
Fistful of Dynamite
Django
My Name is Nobody
They Call Me Trinity
Trinity is Still My Name

As for American produced westerns, I almost always watch these when I stumble on them -

The Magnificent Seven
Pale Rider
Shane (I love it, Mrs. McLargehuge hates it)
Stagecoach
Outlaw Josey Wales
Unforgiven
High Noon
The Man who Shot Liberty Valance

and "the warden of red rock", "the cowboys" and "silverado"

One-Eyed Jacks, with Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.



Another that is in a category all by itself --- Cat Ballou.

Western, Comedy and Musical.

the fistfull of dollar series gets a runners up

i have never gone voluntarily to see a western so only see those i've been taken to -- and i now realize my little circle of influence is really big on clint eastwood!

you may hate the man but he's a good actor and there are some good films there