Tag: westerns

Comic Thirteen: High Noel

Posted on December, 2025 by JS

Hello fun-slingers,

December! A busy month for most, and that includes me!

Firstly, happy whatever-you-celebrate to all yinz. The holiday season means different things to different people, and not everyone finds this to be a celebratory time o’ year, but regardless, try to use this period to do something nice for yourself and others. Spread the joy, damnit!

Speaking of, I want to note All-True Outlaw’s one year anniversary, which fell on the debut of our newest comic, “High Noel”. It’s been a helluva year, lots of lessons learned, victories achieved, losses felt, connections made and friends acquired. Happy to be in the fight, and looking forward to Round 2!

Anyway, onto our new comic…

You folks ready for a mash-up?

We did Western/Horror in “Horror on Hogger Hill” and Western/Sci-fi in “Glistening Scar” — this month we did a Christmas Western set in 1904.

Klaus by Grant Morrison and Dan Mora is one of my all-time fave comics. It’s a re-imagining of Santa’s origin and early years and it really made me think of the jolly old saint in a totally different way. “High Noel” tries to conjure some of that magic by placing the X-mas stalwart in a setting of harsh terrain and bad actors. I had a lot of joy in toying with the yuletide conventions we experience every holiday season.

Naturally, I need to do a bit of holiday cheering for my collaborators, Jess Lipinsky and Marco Della Verde. Jess did a wonderful job nailing the look and tone of this piece. I thought this story could fall basically anywhere on the realistic-to-animated spectrum, but once I saw her portfolio I knew I wanted it to be a little more light and toon-ish. At the same time, she really married that style with the more rugged aspects of Westerns and the rest of the ATO catalogue. Marco came in clutch with a quick and proficient lettering job. His thoughtful choices, and openness to collaboration gave this comic the polish it needed to be a complete work.

I’m really happy with how this story came out, it’s a bit of a different pace from other ATO offerings but hopefully it hits the beats in a very satisfying way.

 

Westward!

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Twelve: The Stranger Wore a Gun; Kansas Pacific; Old Henry

Posted on November, 2025 by JS

Hello Westerinos,

Welcome back to Project: 100 Westerns! I’m still scuttling along, watching Western movies from across a hundred years of Hollywood.

I ran short on time this month and only eye-zapped three pictures. Two from 1953, the height of Western mania, and one candidate for the best, most-recently released genre offering.

#44. The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953)

Based on a short story by John W. Cunningham (who also wrote the story in which High Noon is adapted from), this quick-hitter Western is mostly forgettable despite the notable cast.

Fan favorite Randolph Scott plays Jeff, a former spy in the Middle West theater of the Civil War. Becoming disillusioned by William Quantrill’s unsavory actions, he enlists as a regular solider for the Confederacy, and when the fighting’s over he fuck offs to Arizona to reinvent himself. The following plot is frankly, a bore: Jeff (going by “Mark Stone”) seeks redemption for his sordid past and attempts to thwart a criminal businessman in his attempt to rob a local stage coach operation. 

The Stranger Wore a Gun is a morally confused movie that is too flat and conventional to hold this viewer’s attention. The cast keepsit together, Scott, who frankly I haven’t been too impressed with in the handful of his Westerns I’ve watched, is a capable leading man, and the heavies, played by Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine in their baby-face era, approach “interesting”. There’s a hazy romantic thread with Claire Trevor’s character in this too, but it gets sorta hijacked by Joan Weldon’s townie role. 

The quirky element of this film is that it was originally filmed for 3D, so there’s a bunch of jarring shots of actors throwing punches or shooting lead straight toward the camera lens, which his essentially lost in the modern 2D print. The project as a whole serves as a time capsule of both Westerns and the film industry, which is basically true of a lot of the films I’ve reviewed, but hey, I’m trying to be gracious here.  

#45. Kansas Pacific (1953)

Here’s another film from 1953, and another use of William Quantrill as an antagonist, which is at least the fourth time a Project: 100 movie has featured the radical guerrilla fighter. Sort of weird how some names drop from the zeitgeist, right?

This is technically a Western, but also more of a political thriller. A Captain in the Army Corp of Engineers (Sterling Hayden) is sent (undercover) to Kansas to help oversee a railroad that will be instrumental in the inevitable Civil War. Upon arrival, he is tasked not only with the hiring of workers and the logistics of a huge infrastructure project, but must also contend with Southern sympathizers seeking to destroy the railway.

Hayden plays the lead stiffly, which sort of works as he’s a direct military guy with the narrow mission of building a thing quickly and proficiently. The plot ramps steadily, first the Captain needs to survey the thorny situation, recruit and retain railmen, and then tamp down the pro-South saboteurs. There’s some neat maneuvering between the two factions as they attempt to achieve goals without heavily exposing their motives or members. It’s not until the last portion of the movie that we get some (welcomed) explosions and gunplay.

It’s a pretty inane movie, plainly. Director Ray Nazzaro does a fine enough job: the camera work carries this for the most part, but there’s very little for the actors to do, overall.

#46. Old Henry (2021)

“You have no idea the hell storm you’re about to let loose”.

If you’re looking for the best Western released in the last five years, you’ve found it.

Tim Blake Nelson, a top-tier character actor in the modern age, stars as Henry McCarty, a farmer in Oklahoma Territory who lives with his teenaged son. When an injured stranger wanders into their life, Henry is confronted by a trio of lawmen who threaten his homestead , demanding the return of the alleged outlaw.

That’s all I can give you on plot specifics, because wow, this one takes you for a ride.

What immediately leaps out at you from the screen is the effortless way the script relates the intelligence and savvy of its characters to the audience. Henry is a seasoned guy, from his folksy bits of poetic advice, to how he handles a shovel or gun, it’s apparent this guy has been around and is pretty much over all of it. His counterpart, the villainous Sheriff Ketchum (Stephen Dorff), is equally as astute and clever, making for a perfect foil.

Writer/director Potsy Ponciroli achieves all he set out to do, and more. It’s a well-shot movie, featuring dynamic horizons and ferocious bursts of violence. The rolling hills of the Tennessee (posing as Oklahoma) locale makes for a defining setting, and lets the viewer know this tale is far from the dusty valleys of the Southwest, which is mentioned frequently as a place the characters are familiar with.

I had heard this movie was a gem, and it did not disappoint. A testament that you can still make an awesome genre film on a budget.

Be sure to check back in on December 2nd 2025! We’ve got a special holiday Western that I’m itching to show yunz!

 

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Comic Twelve: Eternal Vengeance

Posted on November, 2025 by JS

Salutations street-toughs,

Last week, we premiered “Eternal Vengeance”, which marks the 12th short comic in as many months! I want to take a moment to bask in that — we successfully started, completed and published a short comic every month for an entire year. That’s a labor that would make even Hercules blush.

I’m extremely proud of this accomplishment. When you’re in the trenches with your art it can be hard to see the clear wins, and even harder to celebrate them, so I’m using this moment to take inventory and flex a bit.

Of course, I would not be able to be a bona fide Comic Book Writer without a talented team of artists. I stand on the shoulders of giants and can’t deny it. I thank them all for their talent, creativity, affability, patience and professionalism. (Even the one who blocked me on socials!)

Publishing this anthology was a lofty goal that has been in the works for nearly a decade. It’s incredible seeing my ideas in “print”, and if all goes well over the next few months, you’ll have an opportunity to see it in real-life print soon.

And of course, a big, BIG thank you 🙏 to the readers, likers, commenters and sharers out there. I’m so humbled by the support; the audience makes it all worth it!

Anyway, on to “Eternal Vengeance”, a tale of time and justice.

Justice is something we all understand but struggle to collectively define. It’s a feeling, a state of being that society strives towards and has developed systems to achieve as best as we can in this messy, unfair world.

A lot of Westerns zero in on the concept of justice and revenge as a focal point. Whether it be drifter, gunman, law officer or townsperson, it’s pretty typical for a character to have unresolved beef with another character, and to seek a way to rectify that wrong, sometimes within the bureaucratic system, but typically outside of it.

Whereas “Taking a Life” follows the tack of intense anger as the impetus for revenge, “Eternal Vengeance” (with art and letters by Diego Guerra) slants in a different direction. What happens when the aggrieved is no longer fueled by fiery emotions? Time may heal wounds but does it balance karma?

This story sprints at a slightly different speed than others in the genre but hopefully provides a fresh POV of one of the lynchpins of Western fiction. We hope you enjoy it!

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Eleven: Red Sun; The Ride Back; Outland; Oblivion

Posted on October, 2025 by JS

Whoa Riders,

Ride along in High-Concept Country, we’ve got some more Project: 100 Westerns for yawl!

I typically use this space to tell you I selected movies at random, but this time, I was pretty purposeful in my picks — mash-ups and mindbenders!

Westerns are great fodder for mixed-genre stories. We see it all the time in sci-fi, but it appears in manga/anime, big-budget action, crime television, cartoons and so much more. I thought it might be neat to leap headlong into these types of movies and see how successful they can be through the iterations.

#40. Red Sun (1971)

“Now we’re even, though I’m a little more even than you.”

Sporting a cast of some of the biggest international stars at the time, Red Sun is an ambitious cultural mashup that explores the relationship between two men on different ends of the honor spectrum.

Charles Bronson plays Link, a scoundrel who is only redeemed by the nastiness of his partner, Gauche, played by Alain Delon. The two decide to rob a train teeming with gold, but in the process Gauche betrays Link and leaves him for dead, whilst also stealing a prized samurai sword from a Japanese ambassador. Upon awakening from his brush with death, Link is tasked by the ambassador to accompany his bodyguard Koruda (Toshirō Mifune) on the retrieval mission, to which Link reluctantly capitulates.

The cowboy/samurai adventure that ensues is a playful but sufficiently grave affair that uses the central tension of the two leads to keep the plot churning. Link and Koruda maneuver around each other while using their wiles and strengths in entertaining ways, and of course the theme of Mutual (Brotherly) Respect emerges toward the last act. Delon plays a fine baddie, sinister but with enough humanity to make his next action unknown and his beau, Christina (Ursula Andress), slips into the “prostitute with a heart of coal” role very well, too, adding to the turmoil and danger.

Additionally, like any Western worth its salt, the action/fight scenes are well done, as I’d expect from a Bronson-led movie. There’s some neat-o set pieces here, including the bloody final sequence in a burning cane field. The only real knock I have against the movie is the choice of a horde of Indians as the final antagonist. They present more as a force of nature than a group of humans, and there’s a real lack of agency since there are essentially no Native characters in the film.

This movie maybe is a little too cute for some, but I thought it was smart and well-made, and considering the close relationship between the Western and Samurai genres, it makes a lot of sense. I recommend simply on the cast and concept alone.

#41. The Ride Back (1957)

“When you ask questions you gotta wait for answers.”

I’m finding the “two frenemies go on a short trip together” trope to be quite popular in the Western genre. It makes sense, the conditions on the fictional frontier are hazardous and the populace generally untrustworthy. It works in movies like Red Sun and The Deadly Companions, though all three suffer from the same weak-tea “faceless Native” threat to inject danger into the plot.

The Ride Back, written by Antony Ellis (adapted from a Gunsmoke radio show by the same author) and directed by Allen H. Miner, follows a predictable tune but hits the notes hard: Hamish (William Conrad) is a sad-sack lawman tasked with returning accused murderer Kallen (Anthony Quinn) back to the town of Scottsville to stand trial. The two, both on missions of self-preservation, clash routinely, which transforms into reluctant camaraderie in the face of danger.

Despite lots of Spanish (sans subtitles) in the first half, this movie is easy to follow and enjoy. The story points are minimal, but where the film blossoms is in the performances and dialogue. Conrad plays the battered Hamish with a low-simmering intensity, closed-off but increasingly fidgety in the face of complications. Quinn shows off his acumen with a charm and bravado that fills the screen. This is another one of those films that portends the genre’s Revisionist era by switching up conventions and subverting expectations. The “hero” is somewhat pathetic in his determination and his opposite almost has you cheering for more crime. There’s a underlying humor to the adventure, as well, with the two sniping at each other freely.

I liked this cozy movie — a brisk Southwestern trek through the psyche of the Western protagonist/antagonist dynamic.

#42. Outland (1981)

In this Space Western loosely based on 1952’s High Noon, a Marshal assigned to a mining facility on a moon of Jupiter is the lone opposition against the corrupt heads of said facility. Sean Connery stars as W.T. O’Niel, a man trying to find his purpose in a morally depleted world. We’re not told too much about O’Niel, he’s a petty stereotypical cop-dude, but the nuances from Connery’s performance colors the edges of the character well.

As a Sci-fi movie, Outland falls short of “good”, its concepts are too dated and not overly imaginative. This is very much “hard” sci-fi — a work of fiction with firm roots in actual science — which, compared to the tales of aliens and time-travel, is tough to pull off in an entertaining way. As a Western, it barely qualifies, the fantastical cosmic imagery is diametric to the very earthen shots of ground and grass. But as a Sci-fi Western it soars. The isolation, the danger, the lethal indifference of the citizenry and the setting, it’s all there, and done very well.

Connery shines as the curt and direct O’Niel, and he has two great scene partners: the ornery Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) and Con-Amalgamated boss Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle). Lazarus is mostly used to drop exposition and to talk through ideas, but damn are her cutting one-liners golden. Sheppard is the prime antagonist, the figurehead of corporate greed and apathy, and you can almost see this character/actor flourishing as a Bond villain in Connery’s previous cinematic endeavors.

The specter of dystopia and the cruelty of the environs infuse the movie with a sense of dread that is felt in the halls of the mining rig and found in the tired eyes of our characters. I think of this movie existing in the same universe as the Alien franchise, it shares the sooty retro-futuristic look and the themes of a dreary corporate bureaucracy which gobbles up the common man’s soul. Writer/director Peter Hymans massaged a fantastic remake out of a classic Western, and it amounts to one of my favorite Project: 100 viewings.

#43. RiffTrax: Oblivion (1994/2017)

Imagine all the conventions and imagery of a sci-fi movie violently blasted onto the canvas of a quaint horizon depicting a sun setting over the Rockies. That’s Oblivion.

“Ambitious” is a kind way to put it. There is just too, too much going on in this movie which lists least people five under the “Story By” or “Written By” credits, including fame scribe Peter David. I can’t even succinctly relay it here, it’s so jumbled in focus and feel and leans so heavily on the language of its parent genres it feels insincere.

Of course, I expected a bad product when I fired this up because it’s a project by RiffTrax, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 offshoot that roasts poorly assembled movies as they unfold. The boys do not disappoint in their savagery. George Takei never stood a chance!

From the poor acting (you’ll cringe toward infinity from Julie Newmar’s belabored cat noises), to the absurd set design (ceiling fans count as futuristic, right??) there’s fertile ground here to mock. Even more transgressions: random ass side characters with paper-thin personalities, grueling meandering in and around low-budget locales, off-brand Muppets, boring stereotypes, random ass quotes from other movies and the gall to flash a “To Be Continued” message before the end credits.

That said, there’s a nugget or two of a good idea here, but as comic writer Dan Slott has put it: this suffers from “too many mojos”. It’s like a slapdash campfire story where each kid around the circle adds a little bit of their own favorite lore and passes it to the next. Lizard-man banditos? Empath lawmen? Robotic justice-bringers? Focus on one of these ideas and maybe it works. Throw them all in a pot and forget the seasoning? That’s how you fuck up a meal.

We’ve got another new short coming debuting on November 4th, 2025! Please make a return trip at that time, and remember to pass along our comics to likeminded Western fans!

 

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Comic Eleven: First Angry

Posted on October, 2025 by JS

Giddy up gang,

Stories are life experiences filtered though characters and plot and setting. An author’s job is to make shit up in order to relate some truth or idea. While a lot of All-True Outlaw stories are quick shot comics on a specific theme or high-concept flicker, “First Angry” is a gestalt of funky brain-thoughts. Here’s some of what’s smooshed into this 7-page short:

Back in 2023 during a trip to Arizona, all my senses took an adventure as I traveled for the first time from the leafy Appalachian biome to the land of cacti and aridity. It was awesome experience of seeing mountains and vistas and feeling warmth of the winter sun karmically balanced again vicious nosebleeds and acute sinus pressure.

Naturally, I took in the food and art scene as best I could – nature as well! (Saguaro National Park was flat incredible!). I saw a lot of neat stuff at the botanical gardens. One animal I took particular note of was a coyote in the wildlife preserve. I was intrigued by its wary behavior, keeping its distance from humans, pacing the fence line, watching with a sort of relaxed attentiveness. I’d always been intrigued by the animal’s relationship with America’s Native peoples, which led me down the path of researching trickster gods, mythology and creation lore.

I’ve covered the subgenre of Acid Westerns a bit in Project 100, which are pretty niche and are part of a sparse catalogue that shares hazy similarities. Acid Westerns are firmly in the Revisionist category: claustrophobic, dire and occasionally odd. We tried to style “First Angry” in this way, it should give you a sense of dread and worry, with a tinge of Wild West to keep it thematically appropriate. Throw in a lacquer of 1990s counterculture attire and a scofflaw protagonist and you got yourself a stew going.

This meaty mess is emulsified with art by Jordan Kroeger and a lettering confection by Marina Leon. Jordan’s art serves as the perfect medium to channel the vibe of the script. His line work walks a path between realism and fantasy, which is the path walked by Hamish, the main character. His eye toward page design and panel composition hums the story along, keeping things together until it all begins to rumble apart.

You may remember Marina’s work on “Taking a Life” from a few months back. She fulfilled the requirements of the story very, very well – including a tight turnaround. Marina captured the retro vibe in the font choices and made sure things slouched into the psychedelic, when appropriate.

So that’s a bit how a story is assembled over at All-True Outlaw, forcing big ideas into a misshapen vessel and making sure it’s drawn well!

Appreciate your patronage.

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Ten: Slow West; West of the Pecos; Jonah Hex; Dead Man

Posted on September, 2025 by JS

Dear gunfighters,

Four more movies have been compiled in Project: 100 Westerns!

While in past write-ups I’ve claimed that I don’t really have a methodology of the movie picks, I realized that’s a bit of a lie. While I don’t normally select based on subgenre or the talent in front of or behind the camera, I definitely try to divvy my choices up by decade. I like to get a cross sample of the different eras of Hollywood, and Westerns are a fantastic time capsule for this.

In this group I definitely slanted toward newer releases… Let’s see how it went!

#36. Slow West (2015)

In 1870, a lovesick boy and a bounty hunter travel through Colorado to find the boy’s crush, but the bounty hunter has other plans…

It’s sort of wild this movie has been out for ten years, as it still feels somewhat new to me. Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender, this wandering low-budget Western with a revisionist slant is methodical in its gait. Not a whole lot happens plot-wise, but it somehow feels full and complete nonetheless.

A lot of the drive behind the endeavor is fueled by the interactions between the naive but determined Jay and the wise but jaded Silas. This is hardly the first Western to team up two disparate souls but the reluctant camaraderie between the two provide the plot with enough juice to reach the end goal. The central tension of Silas tracking down Jay’s object of affection, Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius), while the younger man tries to wrangle his emotions is a pretty damn good hook.

While there at lot of aesthetics that feel ripped from Spaghetti Westerns, including wonderful accents and wacky, messy characters, what differentiates this movie from most others is the choice of color palette. There’s sort of this oversaturated thing going on here. The brightness and severe tone of everything are dreamlike and almost nauseating, there’s a certain unnaturalness to it that goes counter to the drab and muted style that the genre is known for. It’s a daring choice but sways well with the mismatched duo of Jay and Silas.

Slow West is a pretty good film, and a quick watch too. It was sort of a critical darling there when it came out but doesn’t get the flowers it deserves as one of the better modern Westerns.

#37. West of the Pecos (1945)

A young Robert Mitchum stars in this Texas-set story about a wealthy man and his daughter moving West and getting caught up in the drama of the frontier. Frankly, the beats of this movie are neither compelling or original. There’s a stagecoach robbery that happens in the beginning and it drives some story movement but really it serves as the branch for the foliage of love to sprout.

There’s a hardy comedic bend to the going-ons here. This Zane Grey adaptation kicks off in Chicago where Colonel Lambreth (Thurston Hall) is convinced by his daughter Rill (Barbara Hale) to move West to ease his deteriorating health. Quickly upon arrival, they are pulled into the life of Pecos Smith (Mitchum), a charming cowboy with a hardened edge. What stirs the drink is that Rill, after being harassed in town, decides to disguise herself as a man which creates a humorously tense relationship with Pecos as she flirtatiously challenges him at every turn. There’s a sort of a queerness to the story that works really well, even by modern sensibilities.

I do want to note here the role of the comical Chito Rafferty, played by Richard Martin. When I was looking up the background on West of the Pecos I discovered Chito appears in over 30 different movies, all played by Martin. The Mexican-Irish sidekick not only appears all over the West and abroad, but in several different time settings. Whenever gripes about comic book movie reboots or re-castings of legacy characters I can now point to the Chito Cinematic Universe as an example of the intelligence of audiences, even way back when.

The movie does a good enough job – it’s got the lightness of a classic Western with a dose of peril to keep the viewer on their toes.

#38. Jonah Hex (2010)

Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender (again), Michael Shannon, Lance Reddick, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Yep, this is one of the most squandered casts of all time.

DC Comics’ Jonah Hex is very likely the premiere comic book Western character (and a huge inspiration for the All-True Outlaw comics). Created in the ‘70s, the adventures of the ex-Confederate bounty hunter were catalogued in comics All-Star Western and Weird Western Tales. Later, cementing his appeal, Jonah was catapulted into increasingly odd scenarios, like post-apocalyptic futures and zombie-horror jaunts. The character always has had a slick relationship with the amazing and the occult, but absolutely can excel in more grounded realms too.

This concept was lost on the production team behind Jonah Hex, where nearly every aspect of the movie is dialed up to eleven. In an attempt to invoke the spectacle of the four-colored world, Hex can (somehow) speak to corpses, gunshots propel victims across rooms and explosions rupture from seemingly nowhere. The tropes of the West are overly baroque and severe. It’s like the European Western on Super Soldier Serum. This flick somehow learned the wrong lessons of Wild, Wild West, all while hitting a lot of similar story beats. Probably the most egregious thing, though? It’s set in the South! There’s this underlying post-Civil War commentary that does not land at all.

It’s essentially Red Dead Redemption: The Movie, which coincidentally debuted the same year. The actors move sort of like stiff NPCs, the internal physics are bombastic, and there’s outlandish oddities like an underground fight club featuring a snake-man from “halfway across the world”.

It’s pretty much universally understood to be a very bad movie, and going in knowing that…I actually sort of like it more than I did seeing it for the first time about fifteen years ago. It’s just an absurd piece of art, a twistedly misguided homage to both films and comics, and with generally good performances across the board, you could do worse in the genre.

#39. Dead Man (1995)

“Every night and every morn’, Some to misery are born, Every morn’ and every night, Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.”

The cult classic Dead Man, directed by Jim Jarmusch, is sort of a herald of the type of Western that would be popular for the next couple decades. Artsy, thoughtful, with a heavy swath of weirdness, it marries the old films of the American frontier with modern technique.

This is where the descriptor labels before the word “Western” gets muddled. The term “Acid Western” applies here, for sure – it’s very likely the epitome of that subgenre. But it also skitters into “neo-Western” territory. From casting choices to soundtrack to literary allusions, it’s a piece that portends the future of filmmaking. There’s a lot to admire here, but also, damn this thing is just a bit full of itself.

Scenes drag on a great deal longer than they need; the tone whips you around like a ride on a bucking bronco; the characters pontificate and monologue just for the sake of filling the air with sound. There’s a lot about Dead Man that I didn’t “get”, which in some ways makes it an fantastic Acid Western, but not a great movie.

Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, a numbers-man from Cleveland who relocates to the West for a job but quickly finds himself in peril when he murders a man in self-defense. He takes a shot to the chest and flees, only to be found by Nobody (Gary Farmer), a sorta-exiled Native brimming with thoughts of wisdom. Nobody informs Blake that the still-lodged bullet will kill him soon enough and the pall of death hangs over Blake in every step and action. The audience is on a ride along toward his inevitable death.

The movie is littered with a heap of good-to-great performances. Most notable is Robert Mitchum, in his final film role, as the town boss, but we also get great (albeit brief) stuff from Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina, Michael Wincott, Crispin Glover and others. Depp is pretty good, as well, though he’s so confused and reactive in this that he’s more a good scene partner for the other actors than a leading man.

Neil Young provides the soundtrack with the very improvisational approach of riffing on his electric guitar, which adds a lot to the overall disjointed, stumbling nature of the whole affair.

I didn’t love this movie, but also think it’s a near must-watch for Western fans. It does a lot with a little, even if it has you checking your watch occasionally.

We’re chugging along like a brand-new locomotive here. Return to our pasture on October 6th, 2025 for a Western comic much in the build of some of these movies we just reviewed.

 

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Nine: The Deadly Companions; Joshua; Mannaja: A Man Called Blade; News of the World

Posted on August, 2025 by JS

How yah henches?

We’re at the one-third mark in Project: 100 Westerns! It feels like I’ve watched way more than 30-something old(ish) movies since the beginning of the year, but the numbers don’t lie.

Again, the methodology of these picks is basically “vibes” (and maybe a cursory googling). Although we’ve learned by now that Westerns are seedy, dour affairs, this was a particularly shadowy batch of films.

#32. The Deadly Companions (1961)

Sam Peckinpah is considered one of Western’s most influential directors, which is pretty much predicated on his helming of The Wild Bunch, a beloved movie in the genre’s vast catalogue. Peckinpah is known for his brutal depiction of frontier life, one of the flagbearers of the Revisionist age. The Deadly Companions is his first feature as director, and though he reportedly had very little say-so over the film’s script or staging (to the point that he was only allowed to direct the female lead via her brother-in-law), this has Sam’s fingerprints all over it.

Based on an A.S. Fleischman novel, the movie follows Yellowleg (Brian Keith), a scalped former-soldier-turned-criminal, as he enters a Texas(?) town along with his outlaw compatriots, Billy and Turk (Steve Cochran and Chill Wills). Tragedy strikes when Yellowleg accidently kills a young boy during a shootout, and in his subsequent guilt he offers to escort Kit (Maureen O’Hara), the boy’s mother, to an abandoned town to bury him next to his father.

That general plot creates immediate tautness in the movie, with the added danger that Billy is revving to assault Kit at the first available moment. The ugliness of a Peckinpah Western is woven in from the first thread, and initially you have a hard time feeling good about any of these characters, though you certainly sympathize with them.

The general quality of the movie’s print, as well as some glaring technical mistakes, mar the interesting premise. The visual and audio qualities are shoddy, to say the least, and demonstrate the learning curve of a first time director. Good luck seeing anything during the scenes shot at night or inside caves!

Keith and O’Hara save this from being a disaster though. Despite a sagging second act that basically wanders in the wilderness, the two offer very good performances as a couple of despondent souls in need of any glimmer of hope. Yellowleg and Kit trauma-bond a little too fast, but at the same time these two fuck-ups make a believable couple.

In the end, an enjoyable film about joylessness, I guess.

#33. Joshua (1976)

Ah, so the quality of this movie makes The Deadly Companions look like celluloid gold.

Alternately titled Black Rider, Joshua the Black Rider, or Revenge, this tale is super straightforward and without frills: Joshua is a soldier returning from war, but when arriving at the homestead in which his mother works, he finds she’s been murdered by a roving sect of assholes.

Blaxploitation movie stalwart Fred Williamson wrote and stars in Joshua, and does a fine enough job moving through the story like the hardened killer he’s supposed to be. Josh rarely speaks, and explains his actions even less. He’s driven by revenge and misses his momma, and that’s all we really know about him. This type of character can work, and even thrive, in the Western setting, but when the world around the silent mercenary type is devoid of richness and texture, it makes the shortcomings of the main character’s whole deal all the more glaring.

It doesn’t help that this is one visually fuzzy movie, and it’s brimming with some of the worst acting I’ve seen yet during Project: 100. The movie’s pack of villains are cartoonish, freakishly rotten and stupid, and just about anyone with a speaking line sounds like they’re in 5th grade reading a book report about something they barely skimmed. Additionally, the movie’s score is like this New Wave inspired twangy thing that just doesn’t know when to fade out.

I wouldn’t say this was an absolute struggle to get through, it’s got enough action and violence to offset the bland parts, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone outside of Williamson fans. The most interesting part may have come at the very end, when Joshua decides to kill the homesteader’s abducted wife (who is literally nameless) after the movie sorta indicated he was on a rescue mission. It reinforces the central conceit that this guy is hollowed out by wartime murdering, and has almost nothing left to live for.

#34. Mannaja: The Man Called Blade (1977)

 

“For twenty years, my only dream was to face you down and kill you for what you did to my father. And you know, you are not worth the brass of my seven petty cartridges.”

A crafty and properly violent Italian Western, this one follows the same verve as Joshua, but to better affect.

Maurizio Merli plays the mercenary Mannaja, a standard gunfighter type that we’ve seen in dozens of these films. He’s smooth, handsome, rugged and has little time for your bullshit. Using his preferred weapon of a tomahawk, he’ll slice through you to get what he wants.

Ultimately, Mannaja is driven by a mission of personal vengeance and the occasion for this story is that he finally finds McGowan (Philippe Leroy), the businessman who killed his father and stole his land. The plot turns when the now old man commissions the merc to rescue his daughter from a turncoat foreman, which then turns out very badly for Mannaja. This development helps evolve a fairly trope-heavy movie into something a little different in its final act.

There’s a nice balance of Spaghetti trappings and originality here. The action you would expect is all here — prolonged gunfights and powerful explosions and brutal fistfights — but also thoughtful dialogue and nonphysical obstacles for our protagonist to overcome. The rotation of villains is also engaging, as Mannaja deals with several different calibers of baddie. Right on the good/bad fulcrum is the soundtrack, which is anchored on an interesting ballad by Oliver Onions, but is then repeated like five different times during the course of the 90-min affair.

The flavor of Mannaja: A Man Called Blade is quite spicy. Merli does his job transitioning from one badass mannaja into periled antihero, and expected elements of a hearty Western are all there. The movie won’t blow you away, but fine enough for a lazy watch.

#35. News of the World (2020)

After all the rough edits, blurry visuals and ear affronts, I needed to cleanse the palette with a modern production and an A-lister star.

Set in Texas during Reconstruction, this movie about loss and reclamation is beautifully shot, and smartly paced, literally and figuratively. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) is a former Confederate turned newsreader, a job that makes him sort of a precursor to late night show hosts. The drama begins when he comes across a twice-orphaned girl in the woods, a child abducted from a German couple then raised by native for six years. The story follows Kidd as he shepherds her back to her only living relatives near his hometown of San Antonio.

You can really tell the script is based off of a book (by Paulette Jiles), its choice of narrative flow and switching locales is novelistic. Kidd and Johanna (Helena Zengel) encounter many dangers, from abductors to militias to dust storms, and through those trials we discover their respective unhealed wounds. There’s a lot of The Deadly Companions in the spirit of this story, two damaged individuals on a journey, but executed better in nearly every way. Turns out, a huge budget helps!

Hanks is Hanks, just simply very good as the main beast pulling the wagon. Zengel shines as his primary scene partner, playing a complicated part of a child of two worlds entering a third. Also I just love how this movie looks, as well. The set pieces and costuming is top-notch.

Debuting during a pandemic year certainly hurt this movie’s distribution, as I rarely see it mentioned in discussions about quality contemporary Westerns, but it’s up there.

I think in the next installment, I’m going to at least try to pick something lighter…if that’s even possible in the Western world!

Check back on Sept 1st, 2025 for a new Satterwhite & Fosgrove comic!🔍🤠

 

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Eight: Last of the Wild Horses; Stars in My Crown; Shanghai Noon; China 9, Liberty 37

Posted on July, 2025 by JS

Salutations street-toughs,

Welcome back to Project: 100 Westerns!  We’re approaching the one-third mark in my endeavor to watch 100 Westerns, and I’m starting to get a little more adventurous in my picks. This quartet might be the most dissimilar group I’ve tackled yet.

Read on, loyal reader!

#28. Last of the Wild Horses – MST3K Version (1948/1994)

“Here’s where the sepia tone really pays off.”

Since we slid a bit in Sci-fi with this month’s release of Glistening Scar (by Dan Lauer, Amal Desai and myself) I thought it apt to rope in one of my all-time favorite TV shows: Mystery Science Theater 3000.

If you’re not in the know, MST3K stars the literal captive audience of a normal human dude and a pair of robots, documenting their mockery of a real-life bad movie. The features very often tilt toward science-fiction realms, but not always, as is the case of Last of the Wild Horses.

It’s a sloggy movie, gray as hell with terrible audio quality. It follows Duke (James Ellison), a bandit on the path to reform after his recruitment onto a horse farm. There’s a romance with the farmer’s daughter somewhere in there, and a smattering of frontier (in)justice, for good measure. This is a paint-by-numbers Western in just about every way. Except the palette is gray, light-gray, almost white, storm cloud and ash.

For fans of the show, this episode is famous for a Star Trek inspired switcheroo: in a multiversal accident, the series’ villains, Dr. Forrester and his sidekick TV’s Frank (aka The Mads) are the ones in the theater mocking the film through the first segment. It’s a treat for the aficionados, and a hidden gem in the deep catalogue of “experiments” constituting the show’s run.

In terms of the movie inside the TV show, I think one needs the MST3K enhancements to get through this piece of cinema. As Crow complains about halfway through: “The movie’s just starting to mosey now! The pace is rough sledding, and this viewer can only handle so many transition shots of people walking someplace before the scene even bothers to start.

#29. Stars in My Crown (1950)

This is labeled Western but is more of a “Southern”. It slants way more toward “historical piece” than “adventure story”.

For the creative conglomerates that produced a film like this, something like Stars in My Crown are the tales of their (great-)grandparents, the happenings still in the living memory of their elders. And indeed, it’s based off of a novel by Joe David Brown, inspired by the memory of his preacher grandfather.

The movie sort of starts out like a traditional Western: a parson named Josiah Gray (Joel McCrea) saunters into the town of Walesburg, Tennessee and immediately enters the local saloon to give a sermon. When the unruly patrons scoff at this attempt, Gray pulls out two handguns and continues to preach at gunpoint. This sets up the parson as a no-nonsense type with a bit of a jagged edge, but honestly, this aura of gruffness dissipates quickly through the first act. Guns and power play only a small part in this story.

Rather, the film revolves around the challenges of Gray to bring more morality and kindness to Walesburg. The slow building A-plot concerns freed slave Uncle “Famous” (Juano Hernandez) as he fends off a wealthy mine owner looking to obtain his land; the B-plot turns on an outbreak of “slow fever” that pits the parson and the town doctor (James Mitchell) against each other in an ideological spat.

The story overall is a bit Pollyanna, but pleasant and put together well. Gray continuously inspires the town through his good nature and the adherence to his values and teachings, and the final scene or two are quite charming and earned. It also gets a few bonus points for one of the best character names I’ve ever seen – Chloroform Wiggins.

#30. Shanghai Noon (2000)

 

There’s a large bracket of folks who were raised during the Age of (Cable) TV, which I would loosely define from the 1960s until about a decade ago. For these watchers, certain movies or programs seem to be stalwarts of the medium. The reruns were constant, and the stuff that played repeatedly become ingrained into the cultural zeitgeist.

Shanghai Noon certainly fits into that category, for me, at least. This movie appeared in the scrollable channel guide a whole lot in my teen years, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I ever really watched it front-to-back. It was definitely one of those movies you sort of flip on and play in the background until you find something better to do.

Honestly, I forgot the reason a station would put a movie like this into heavy rotation is because it’s actually pretty good.

In the current age of Western, where the current offerings slant generally into either “low-budget” or “arthouse” we need more movies like Shanghai Noon. The movie follows the buddy flick formula, teaming two oddballs on a mission full of action and humor. We have Owen Wilson’s Roy O’Bannon – who we discover in the last minute is also somehow Wyatt Earp – a womanizing thief recently expelled from his own gang, and Jackie Chan’s Chon Wang – a play on “John Wayne” – a Chinese Imperial Guard on a mission to save an abducted princess (Lucy Liu). This plot and casting is pretty obviously trying to catch and harness the magic of Chan’s mega hit Rush Hour, and it comes very close to achieving that vibe.

The movie plays off of a lot of the Western tropes for comedic effect, but stops short of satire or parody. It’s an absurd movie, and the tonal quality is just right, for the most part. There are amazing comedic sequences (of note is the scene where Roy and Chon get blitzed in bathtubs) and Chan’s action choreography injects a super fun element into a fairly average series of plot churns.

This is a good popcorn flick, and it almost makes me want to take back what I’ve said previously about the Comedy Western’s effectiveness. There’s a lesson here about what tenor and inspiration this subgenre should take on, and generally the Western needs more high concept ideas and a more high-flying atmosphere if it wants to attract mainstream audiences again.

#31. China 9, Liberty 37 (1978)

“I need you tonight, and I hate you for it.”

No, you’re not reading the score of an odd football matchup. This methodical Western (with a heavy tint of love story) is led by Fabio Testi and directed by Monte Hellman. It was released in 1978 under the title Amore piombo e furore (“Love, Lead, and Fury”) but didn’t reach the US until 1984.

Basic plot rundown: Mere minutes before his scheduled hanging, gunfighter Clay Drumm is tasked by a railroad company to kill a man whose property they covet. After spending a few days with Matt (Warren Oates) and his wife Catherine (Jenny Agutter), Clay decides against murder…but does engage in an affair with the wife, which leads to the pair fleeing a scorned Matt and his clan. Bullets fly, the damsel changes hands a couple times and the guy on the horse tries to save the day.

The movie leans heavily on extended takes, cheesecake/beefcake and a lively soundtrack. The flavor of the Italian-Spanish Western is as thick as Testi’s accent. It takes a long, long while for the audience to feel the friction of the plot. Maybe a third of the movie is spent introducing us to the characters and their surroundings, and in formulaic fashion, the last third pops with gunfire and sex. What normally keeps a movie like that afloat is either compelling camera work or inspired repartee, neither which isn’t exactly crackling in this. The dubbing and audio is a speck slipshod, as well. I try not to watch with captions but this time I just had to.

The romance at the heart works via the effort of Testi and Agutter. The atmosphere of syrupy lust is sometimes too thick, the attraction between Clayton and Catherine is prominent and immediate. It’s not until much later in the film, after danger has entwined them even further, that you feel their genuine connection and a fear for their romantic future.

I liked China 9, Liberty 37 more than the other Hellman (Ride in a Whirlwind) and Testi (Dead Men Ride) films I’ve previously reviewed for this column. It has a jumbled morality and a bare plot but the steady quality provides enough juice to get you to the ending credits.

Good movie! Though, I would still like to see The People’s Republic of China and Liberty University play football.

This was maybe my smoothest group so far. Nothing felt like a chore.

We have a new comic release on Aug 4th, 2025! A revenge story gone wrong!

And remember to follow on the social accounts: Instagram, Bluesky, X and Facebook! Every like, comment and share helps us exponentially.

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Seven: Black Patch; Hombre; Noose for a Gunman; Quantum Cowboys

Posted on June, 2025 by JS

Hi homesteaders,

This is another post for Project: 100 Westerns, where I watch anything under the genre umbrella and tell if you rocked or sucked. I’m fixin’ to watch 100 Westerns, no matter how long it takes me.

In this group of four, I took in a trio of movies from the heyday of Western filmmaking, and one that is very modern, both in production date, subject matter and technique.

#24. Black Patch (1957)

In a different era of Hollywood, there was no blueprint. Nowadays, the blueprint is coda.

What I’m cleverly trying to say is: things are way, way too formulaic now. Studios are taking few chances on anything “new”, while still trying to catch and retain “flashy”. This doesn’t just manifest in the bevy of franchises that hit the screens each year, but in the way these stories are told, as well.

Black Patch isn’t a great movie, but at least it’s interesting in structure and pace. There’s an element of it that feels novelistic, with its squishy characters wrestling with real consequences. We’re quickly introduced to “Black Patch” (George Montgomery) nicknamed so for the garb he wears over his eye lost in war, but in a previous life he was known as Clay Morgan. That past saunters into his present when his old Army pal, Hank (Leo Gordon — also the script writer!), enters the town with Clay’s former flame, Helen (Diana Brewster), as his wife. There’s another hitch – both men have new careers. Clay is a town marshal, and Hank a thief.

This stirs the drink well, and leads to some interesting plot dynamics that had me guessing until the very end. Side character Carl (also known as Flytrap), whom I previously known as Marv from High School Big Shot (a classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode) ascends from goofy side character to interesting menace, which helps kick the story along, even as other elements sputter by the end.

I liked this one, it’s got a different speed and plenty of pathos, even if it could have been a deal better in the third act.

#25. Hombre (1967)

Dr. Favor:
“That’s something you’ll learn about white people. They stick together.”

Hombre:
“They’d better.”

This is very likely the best film I’ve seen yet in Project: 100.

“Methodical” is the one word descriptor, applying to both pace and lead character. “Hombre” (née John Russell) is a smooth bro, calm in words and gait, and really doesn’t have time for any of your bullshit.

To dub this one of Paul Newman’s best performances would be a spicy take, his legendary filmography stands tall, but considering I’ve never heard of this film I’m going to say it’s an underrated entry in his catalogue of roles. Hombre is not a man pleased with the general nature of the “white world”, having been raised by Apache Indians from a young age, however when his adoptive (Caucasian) father dies and leaves him a piece of land, he ventures back into civilization.

Hombre surprisingly sells the boarding house property, catching the mild ire of acting landlord Jessie (Diane Cilento). They both catch the next stagecoach out of town and a bulk of the story is then told on the desert road. We get an interesting mix of characters in the horse-drawn vehicle, a host of personalities that clash and sway together extremely well from the jump. Also on board are a young couple unsatisfied with their time in the West, an affable Mexican driver, a doctor and his young(er) wife and a gruff, obliquely dangerous feller played by the always fabulous Richard Boone.

When this group of strangers find themselves in sudden danger, Hombre is compelled, reluctantly, to step up and lead them out of the desert. The most capable of the clan is hardly the most affable, and it leads to a lot of snappy dialogue with plenty of snips. The movie’s script is fantastic, and I’m curious how much dialogue is pulled straight from the 1961 Elmore Leonard book it was adapted from.

It’s got the blood and brawn of a standard Western flick, with some heart and guts to go along with it. A really good movie that boasts a blend of styles from the dying Tradition age and the forthcoming Revisionist era.

#26. Noose for a Gunman (1960)

The Steve Fisher short story “The Fastest Gun” was adapted into film three times over nine years. This is the second such attempt.

It’s fascinating that this movie was made within a decade of Hombre, the two films are so stylistically different it was jarring watching them so close together. That’s one of the neat things about this Western watching venture – witnessing the evolution of Hollywood and the medium of film. Whereas Paul Newman’s movie was “methodical”, Noose for a Gunman is plainly “stiff”. The actors spit out their lines like regimen, the action is tight, the personalities are narrow and direct. Early Westerns had this idyllic vibe that later iterations seemed to have shunned completely. Purposely so.

Jim Davis plays Case Britton, a hired gun who returns to his hometown of Rock Valley five years after murdering the sons of its biggest rancher and benefactor. Rock Valley balks at his sudden appearance, some even call for his immediate arrest and hanging, but Case still has friends in town, and is determined to meet his future bride, Della (Lyn Thomas), when she arrives via stagecoach.

Case deals with antagonism on many sides, from the rancher, Avery (Barton McLane),  to his hired muscle Link Roy (Leo Gordon, again) and gang leader Cantrell (Ted de Corsia), this keeps the movie churning and interesting enough to grab this watcher, but right around the time Case becomes the town’s new marshal, I sort of checked out a bit. I do give credit to the climax however, which provides a bit of fun gunplay and the impressive choice to allow Della to play the hero in a tense moment.

I’m curious as to how the other two films adapted “The Fastest Gun”, it’s got the bones of a decent, though super formulaic story, but I didn’t see much to brag about in Noose for a Gunman.

#27. Quantum Cowboys (2022)

One of those “what the hell did I just watch?” movies.

A metafictional Western that uses several animation styles as well as live-action, Quantum Cowboys challenges the viewer to keep up, even as it scuttles ahead at warp speed. It’s the brainchild of Geoff Marslett, and commendable in its subject matter and technique, but at times I found it a little too wonky and unfocused to be a winner in the genre.

The movie oscillates between several viewpoints, from the co-lead cowboy types, to a narrator akin to Utau the Watcher, and a voyeuristic film crew seemingly manipulating some events. As you may glean from the title, there is an element of time travel in the plot (and themes!) and heady ideas about memory and reality are poured onto the audience within the first few minutes.

The basic gist: Frank (Kiowa Gordon) and Bruno (John Way) are a pair of friends who get wrapped up in temporal hijinks, and bump into a host of weirdos, including a lady drifter-type played by Lily Gladstone. It takes a long while for the plot to adjoin the puzzle pieces, but the psychedelic, cartoony cinematography kept me into it as I waited for the story to cohere.

The third act delivers some payoff, but also falls victim to the tropes of time travel stories, and then sort of just ends without a direct resolution. There’s a notation that this is the first part of a larger story, though given how off-the-wall the themes and editing are, I almost feel like the abrupt final moments were an intentional troll.

Lots of points for ambition here, and I could even be convinced to watch it again.

An interesting bunch, to say the least. I’m realizing now I maybe should have group some of these thematically. It certainly would have been easier to write!

Please return July 7th, 2025 for a brand new All-True Outlaw comic! That’s eight in eight months, if you’re countin’!

Westward!

 

~Jamil

Project: 100 Westerns: Part Six: Organ Trail; Dead Men Ride; The Fighting Westerner; The Magnificent Seven

Posted on May, 2025 by JS

Ciao cowpokes,

We’re six deep into Project: 100 Westerns! If you’re just joining us, I’m gonna watch 100 Westerns and provide a mini review on each.

This edition features a couple of newer entries, as well a super old one, and a fourth that’s slotted right betwixt those two eras.

#20. Organ Trail (2023)

Playing off of Xillennial nostalgia, The Organ Trail harkens back to the age when schools had computer labs with rows of bulky monitors and noisy printers. Many of us in a certain age bracket remember the popularity and fun of the classic PC game, The Oregon Trail, where the player would take on the task of navigating the famous passage in a digital world, including shooting pixelated game, forging rivers, buying digital goods and avoiding dysentery. This movie lures in a certain age bracket on title alone. 

Set in 1870s Montana, Organ Trail is presented as a “horror” but probably slots better into “thriller”, despite the promotional vibe of the poster, tagline and trailer. There is sufficient violence, and does have some slasher movie vibes, especially toward the end, but frankly, the plot swerves and vibrates so much that its more defined by its unsteady nature than the antagonistic elements. 

The movie relies heavily on sudden developments and shocking turns, so I am hesitant to get too much into the specific details. I will give kudos for the ambition in the writing, it certainly honors the brutal nature depicted in many Westerns and punches it up to 11. This volatility helps define the tone, but also is detriment when it comes to a cohesive story arc. The shifting concentration and drastic plot maneuvers are like a sugar high – they entertain for a moment and then you crash as you reorient to the new situation/characters/danger. 

I’ve said before: We’re in a bit of a hidden renaissance of Westerns, with a trove of D-list actors starring in low-budget affairs that are relegated to streaming services like Tubi and Plex. Many are not good, about the quality of a Lifetime movie, and Organ Trail sort of slots into that feel, but overall it’s got a fairly good production quality and actor pool. 

What mars the effort are some absolutely unbelievable sequences that break immersion. Despite the inherent historical elements of Westerns, I do not expect them to adhere to reality at all times, but some of the things that happen in the movie will take you out of it. In one scene, a villain fires his gun straight into the air as a warning, only for the bullets (all of ‘em) to zoom down and strike his body with extreme force. There is some debate about the fatal velocity of bullets shot into the sky, but the depiction of this scene is insane. In the next segment, the protagonist jumps into a frozen river and comes out mostly unscathed several minutes later. In a moment during the final act, one antagonist draws his guns within a foot of another baddie, only for them to be wrestled away and used against him. These little moments of poor choreography and wonky physics salt away most of the good will the movie generates.

All in all, it’s a fine snowy Western, has a few good performances and does just enough to keep the audience engaged until the very end. I’m not sure I liked it, but you could do a lot worse in the age of the Streaming Western. 

#21 Dead Men Ride (1971)

“We are all at fault, we old ones even more.”

This Italian-Spanish Western wastes no time setting up its main character and central premise: escaped prisoner Roy (Fabio Testi) stumbles across a small mining community and decides to ride into town to confront their exploiter, a wealthy man by the name of Redfield (Eduardo Fajardo). As the plot unwinds, we gain context on what drives Roy to take up this hero’s task, and there are some surprising layers to this at-times brutal film. 

All in all, this is a straightforward and competent movie. t’s not super ambitious, but possesses enough action and swerve to propel the viewer through the hour-and-a-half minute runtime. A lot of the tension in the movie relies on the actors’ long stares and a solid soundtrack, but that works in the realm of spaghetti. In typical European fashion, the drama of the whole thing is enhanced through intense standoffs and baroque masculinity – Roy is the typical gunslinger type, short on words but extremely capable with a gun or blade, and his bent toward justice frames the rest of the character’s motivations. The ridiculously good looking Testi helps shift the film along, and the side actors do their job as well. 

If you’re looking for something that apes the Sergio Leone style, this is it. 

#22. The Fighting Westerner (1935)

When this movie, based on an unfinished Zane Grey book, originally released in 1935 it was titled Rocky Mountain Mystery, which is more appropriate for the atmosphere it evokes. The 1930s were the heyday of the hardboiled detective story, and The Fighting Westerner (retitled upon rerelease in the ‘50s) is a murder mystery set in the rural mountainland. Randolph Scott, who would go on to be one of the stalwarts of the Western genre, plays Larry Sutton, a mining engineer tasked to replace his disgraced brother-in-law at a radium mine. Upon arrival, he meets a host of furtive characters, from the mine-owner’s children, to the housekeeper and a Chinese servant, and all become suspects in the string of murders at the estate.

The movie straddles the Western genre line in interesting ways. Larry has a Southern drawl, and looks the part, but doesn’t immediately come across as an avenger of justice. The actual law, Deputy Tex Murdock (Chic Sale) is the hillbilly side character type, almost played for laughs but not quite. The setting is obliquely modern, there are cars and telephones, but apparently rustic as well. There’s a cloaked killer roaming the household, and a big reveal in the final act, just like some of the more spooky PI tales of the era. It’s a fascinating mashup of genres before that was really even a thing, and I’m here for it.

Given the movie was produced 90 years ago, it doesn’t completely hold up to the modern eye. Some of the acting is rough, and there’s naturally some dated stances toward certain groups and concepts. Still, it builds the tension well, including through the pounding of mining equipment that portends an ominous ending for anyone on the wrong side of it.

#23. The Magnificent Seven (2016)

A remake of a remake, that’s what this is, and it ain’t too bad.

Westerns are tricky endeavors nowadays. Ask Kevin Costner. While there’s an appetite for the genre, its popularity is a whisper of what it once was. You need serious star power to get asses in seats for these movies, which is why all those stream darlings titled “Guns and Whiskey” and starring a niche country music star and a bunch of dayplayers are so low budget.

The Magnificent Seven 2.0 boasts a very strong cast, headlined by Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt and further supported by Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and Peter Sarsgaard, among others. The original, and its inspiration, Seven Samurai, basically popularized the “dream team” format, where a hyper capable guy recruits other super skilled individuals for a seemingly insurmountable task. The 2016 version hits those beats very well, giving us a diverse and fun group that make the movie worth watching. Aside from a few key differences, the plot of “badass dudes protect a small town from a megalomaniac” is intact and executed well. There’s nothing really mind-blowing about this script, its steeped in homage and convention. When you consider that the Nic Pizzolatto, creator of True Detective, co-wrote it, that’s sort of amazing.

Where the movie sings is in visual quality. It’s just well-made, from shot quality to stunts, set detail and editing. Director Antoine Fuqua delivers a strong product, balancing the talented cast against a wagon-full of action. There’s an interesting swirl of Golden Age heroism, the sensationalization of the Euro Western and modern day action movie methodology, and he mixes it well.

I doubt this movie would blow the hat off of any standard Western fan, and it’s not better than the original, but 2016’s The Magnificent Seven is easily one of the better genre offerings of the last decade.

I’m going to be honest, watching (old) movies for the purposes of review is tougher than it looks. I spent nearly a decade as a critic for comic, TV and movies, but most of the films I wrote about were things I saw in a theater, so I was forced to sit and watch. Having the power of pause is dangerous thing!

Please return June 2nd, 2025 for the newest All-True Outlaw comic drop. I’m proud of all my babies, but this next one is particularly special.

Westward!

 

~Jamil