Posts by B5Erik

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  • King Of The Pecos (1936)

    So there I am at Wal Mart, and I run across a copy of King of the Pecos in the $5.50 DVD bin - well, while I had previously held off on buying it at $10 (after all, it's just a 56 minute B-Movie, right?), I went ahead and picked it up.


    Well, I watched it last night and WOW! It was noticeably better than the Lone Star movies from the same era. The plot was solid (if fairly simple), the acting was decent, the script was actually fairly well written, and the direction was good.


    If you haven't seen this one, and get the chance, I highly recommend you watch it as it is a great example of a 30's "B" Western done right.

  • Last Non Western You Watched

    Ringo, I've watched "He Walked By Night." (Actually, I own the DVD released by MGM - the best DVD release of this movie by far.)


    Very good movie- great cinematography by John Alton. Anthony Mann also worked on it uncredited.

  • Broken Trail

    I haven't seen it yet, but I'll probably check it out on DVD when it comes out (and it will). I have a feeling it will play better in one sitting without commercial interruptions than over 2 nights with commercials.


    It should be noted, however, that this did HUGE ratings for AMC - their best ever by far! If just one thing can come out of this it is that I hope we will see more Westerns produced in the years to come. Hopefully the studios can see that between the ratings for this and the surprising box office for Open Range a few years ago that there is still a strong market for well made Westerns.

  • What Was The Last Western You Watched?

    Gunfighter's Moon with Lance Henriksen.


    It was actually pretty darned good - kind of a cross between Open Range and Unforgiven stylistically (not as good as either one of those, but not horribly far off, either) with a bit of Shane and High Noon's stories thrown in. Well worth watching.

  • What Was The Last Western You Watched?

    I watched 3 Westerns over the weekend...


    The Sundowners (1950 with Robert Preston) - very good small studio Western.


    The Proud Ones (1956 with Robert Ryan and Jeffrey Hunter) - underrated reworking of the High Noon premise.


    Yellow Sky (1949 with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark) - very good Western with some beautiful black & white photography (and the usual very good performances from Peck and Widmark).

  • John Ford

    I just finished the set yesterday (man did I go through that set quickly - did it in about a week!), and I've got to say - WOW!!!


    I had never seen Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Wings of Eagles, or The Long Voyage Home before, so this was a great treat for me.


    The only one that I was a little let down by was The Long Voyage Home. The Duke really seemed miscast, and Ford didn't really use him all that much in it. The movie itself was erratically paced (which makes sense since it was based on 4 separate short stories), and the last segment was painfully slow and obvious in spots. The movie had it's moments, though (I don't want to give anything away, so I won't give specifics), and it was very well acted.


    As for Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon - Grade A+ movies to be sure. Fort Apache is definitely darker - a real precursor to the tone of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - and it more Henry Fonda's movie than John Wayne's (although both are great in it). Both of those movies were worth the wait. No letdowns there at all (and I had HIGH expectations going in).


    The "Ultimate" edition of The Searchers is the real prize in the set. $29.99 on it's own at Target or Best Buy, but I got the entire set from Amazon for only $55!! While I was a little let down by the extras on The Searchers (I thought that for an "Ultimate" edition it should have had more), it is still a VERY classy set, and the movie itself is one of the best ever. I liked it more the third time. (I had seen it twice before - loved it the first time, liked it a lot the second time, and really loved it the third time - I "get it" now.)


    The two disc set of Stagecoach has the kind of extras I was hoping that The Searchers would have - more in depth and informative stuff. Of course, Stagecoach is Stagecoach - 'nuff said!!


    This is just proof that Warner Brothers releases the best classic box sets of all the major studios. A fantastic job.


    If you don't have the set, and can swing the $55 or so - get it!!

  • John Ford- Biography & DIscussion

    I just finished the set yesterday (man did I go through that set quickly - did it in about a week!), and I've got to say - WOW!!!


    I had never seen Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Wings of Eagles, or The Long Voyage Home before, so this was a great treat for me.


    The only one that I was a little let down by was The Long Voyage Home. The Duke really seemed miscast, and Ford didn't really use him all that much in it. The movie itself was erratically paced (which makes sense since it was based on 4 separate short stories), and the last segment was painfully slow and obvious in spots. The movie had it's moments, though (I don't want to give anything away, so I won't give specifics), and it was very well acted.


    As for Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon - Grade A+ movies to be sure. Fort Apache is definitely darker - a real precursor to the tone of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - and it more Henry Fonda's movie than John Wayne's (although both are great in it). Both of those movies were worth the wait. No letdowns there at all (and I had HIGH expectations going in).


    The "Ultimate" edition of The Searchers is the real prize in the set. $29.99 on it's own at Target or Best Buy, but I got the entire set from Amazon for only $55!! While I was a little let down by the extras on The Searchers (I thought that for an "Ultimate" edition it should have had more), it is still a VERY classy set, and the movie itself is one of the best ever. I liked it more the third time. (I had seen it twice before - loved it the first time, liked it a lot the second time, and really loved it the third time - I "get it" now.)


    The two disc set of Stagecoach has the kind of extras I was hoping that The Searchers would have - more in depth and informative stuff. Of course, Stagecoach is Stagecoach - 'nuff said!!


    This is just proof that Warner Brothers releases the best classic box sets of all the major studios. A fantastic job.


    If you don't have the set, and can swing the $55 or so - get it!!

  • What Was The Last Western You Watched?

    I watched The Tall Texan the other day. Llyod Bridges is the star in this one - a low budget film from Lippert Productions (it just came out on DVD from VCI). It actually has a good cast and a fair script. The money ran out at the end of production, and the ending of the movie suffers just a little bit because of it - but overall it's a decent movie. Think of Stagecoach meets Lust for Gold on a very small budget.

  • Brannigan (1975)

    You're both right - in reality JW was WAY too old to be playing a cop, but on screen it worked. It was sheer force of will and personality. He just came across like he could still kick your ass if you gave him too much guff.


    I'm glad he did both of these movies (Brannigan and McQ), because it showed just how good he COULD have been in that type of movie had that type of movie been made ten or fifteen years earlier. As it was he was still damn good in those two.


    It's funny, he made great movies in each decade of his career - and the 70's sure had their share!

  • What Was The Last Western You Watched?

    I watched Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid last night. It's a pretty good movie, and I love James Coburn!


    Recently I've watched 7 Men From Now (VERY good), The Wild Bunch (good), Ride The High Country (very good), Ten Wanted Men (poor), and Sabata (not bad).

  • Brannigan (1975)

    I finally got around to watching Brannigan a couple weeks ago, and I've got to say that it was better than I expected. The setting in England worked very well, and that was a surprise to me. I expected the clash between the Duke's style and the British actors to be a negative. That turned out not to be the case as JW just made himself at home in England and did his thing.


    The script was fairly well written, and the movie was well directed. I was really impressed. I'd have to rate Brannigan higher than McQ, although I thought the Duke made a great cop in both.


    It's a shame that the cop movie explosion didn't happen a decade earlier, because while JW made one hell of a cop he was a decade too old to really be completely believable. Still, it's nice to see that even in his 60's JW could hold his own against Clint Eastwood as a tough guy cop.


    Very few actors get to play the lead in as many good movies as John Wayne did in his 60's when they were in their 60's - Sean Connery comes to mind, but no one else does. Chisum, The Cowboys, Brannigan, The Shootist - all examples of good to great movies that JW starred in at that age.

  • Randolph Scott Westerns

    With the release last month of Seven Men From Now, and the release this month of Ride the High Country, Randolph Scott is riding high (not a bad feat for a guy who passed away almost 20 years ago).


    Scott got his start in the early 30s in such films as To The Last Man and Rocky Mountain Mystery (The Fighting Westerner). His career almost mirrors that of John Wayne as he spent most of the 30's as a "B" movie cowboy, and then graduated into "B+" or "A-" movies by the end of that decade. He starred in Westerns, Dramas, Shirley Temple movies, and in the 40's added War movies to his resume.


    But by 1950, unlike John Wayne, he concentrated SOLELY on Westerns, as he didn't make a single non-Western movie from 1950 to the end of his career in 1962.


    Many of Scott's Westerns were clearly low budget affairs, but many of them were quite good, including Abilene Town, Hangman's Knot, Man in the Saddle, Rage At Dawn, etc. Scott even got into the movie production business, co-producing several movies with Harry Joe Brown. Some of those movies were less than spectacular (Ten Wanted Men suffered from a weak script and very poor editing), but others were quite good (the aforementioned Man in the Saddle; Hangman's Knot; The Tall T, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station - those last 3 directed by Budd Boetticher).


    Many of Scott's films are available on DVD, but some of his best are not (The Tall T, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station, etc), and some are available only on poor quality DVDs (Abilene Town), but hopefully that continues to change in 2006.


    Scott, of course, made a couple movies with The Duke, most notably The Spoilers in 1942 - where the usually likeable Scott played the villain!


    If you haven't picked up many (or any) of Scott's movies on DVD I highly recommend 7 Men From Now, Ride the High Country, The Spoilers (which many of you probably already have), Man in the Saddle, and The Desperadoes (with Glenn Ford). Another good one is Rage at Dawn, which I recommend only in the version from the Roan Group (the Roan version looks pretty decent, and is in anamorphic widescreen - the other versions all feature pan & scanned prints with faded color).


    There are few actors as synonymous with Westerns as Randolph Scott (John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and only a few others come to mind), and 2005-2006 looks like a renaissance for Scott with several of his movies seeing release on DVD for the first time.

  • Seven Men From Now


    You could say that, in a roundabout way, 7 Men From Now IS a Duke film. The Duke co-produced it, and suggested Randolph Scott for the lead. Some people have even said that he wished that he could have taken the lead role in this one after he saw the film.


    It is a fantastic movie, and one of Randolph Scott's best. Lee Marvin gave arguably his best pre-60's performance in this one (one his best ever, actually), and Boetticher did a fantastic job directing it.


    The people hired by Batjac did a great job rescuing the movie, too, as the master print had faded so badly that 7 Men From Now was almost lost.


    It's a quick movie at about 79 minutes, and is well worth watching. I am very glad that Paramount put this one out - and I hope that Sony releases the old Columbia Scott/Boetticher movies this year.

  • What Was The Last Western You Watched?

    I just picked up a couple more on DVD today, and the one I watched was Four Faces West with Joel McRea. Very good movie, and a very nice print on the DVD.


    (I also picked up Branded with Alan Ladd, but I haven't watched it yet...)

  • My Darling Clementine-alternate Version

    It's a shame that some of the footage is missing for the "alternate" version. (For those who haven't seen it some of the footage is missing in a bar scene during a song.)


    It's a shame that the complete John Ford version wasn't saved - some of the changes made the film better, some didn't - but it would be interesting to have both versions available. The "alternate" version is a middling version with a bit of the new footage and some of Fords footage already edited out.


    It's a great movie either way - even if it was historically VERY inaccurate.

  • Anyone Here Also A Big Fan Of

    I love Bogart - he was one of the all time greats!


    Bogart movies that I would recommend:


    The Petrified Forest
    Black Legion
    High Sierra
    The Maltese Falcon
    Casablanca (duh)
    Sahara
    Across the Pacific
    To Have and Have Not
    The Big Sleep
    Conflict
    Dark Passage
    Key Largo
    Deadline USA
    We're No Angels


    As for Cagney, I'm a fan, but I haven't seen as many of his movies as I'd like - but these are great:


    Blood on the Sun
    The Roaring Twenties
    Angels With Dirty Faces
    White Heat