Chisum (1970)

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  • For a couple of months when it came to some of my movie nights, I decided to revisit the John Wayne Westerns of the 70’s. I started with the first one of the decade, “Chisum” from 1970.


    I really like this movie! It’s one of my favorite “Fun Westerns” of the 70’s. It came at the time of revisionist westerns, art-house movies and of course the Spaghetti Westerns; this is the old fashion style Western. It reminds of the old “Republic” Westerns of the 40’s – not the B-Westerns, but the movies like one Duke did 30 years earlier, “The Dark Command”; movies with good production values, but with enough of the B-Movie qualities to keep it fun! I even like how bad-guy Nodeen (Christopher George) looks like he rode in straight from the Spaghetti West!


    Some of my fellow history buffs criticize It for the way it rewrites the Lincoln County War, but in another movie from this decade, “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”, there’s a title card at the beginning that says, “Maybe this isn't the way it was... it's the way it should have been!” And I recently heard a phrase on the news about an upcoming movie; “Historic Fantasy!” Both of those phrases fit this movie perfectly! (Really any time history is turned into an action movie, those phrases fit!)


    Anyway, this is a movie you don’t take seriously; it’s the type that helps you escape from the seriousness for a while! The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, Billy the Kid is somewhere in between! Plus it has one of the most action packed climaxes of any John Wayne movie! Great showcase for the stunt performers!


    So maybe the real cattle baron John Chisum didn’t team up with Pat Garrett and “Billy The Kid” to fight the bad guys of Lincoln County. And maybe Chisum didn’t really stampede Murphy’s cattle through the streets of Lincoln and then beat him in a fight to the death… but that’s the way it should have been! Fun movie!


    (By the way, I have visited the grave of the real John Chisum; he’s buried in a park in Paris, Texas where the Chisum family ranch was, about an hour away from me.)