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Western Wednesdays: ‘The Quick and the Dead’

by Elisabeth Rappe, May 12 2010

If you’re hearing the ominous sound of clinking spurs, hissing rattlesnakes, and squeaking saloon doors, well, you’re probably crazy. But it also means it’s  Western Wednesday, and you’re just really excited!

I’m afraid I have to be a bit of a no-good yellow cheat this week due to a previous embargo engagement with one Mr. J. W. Hex.  (He just rides into town so rarely ….) but it never hurts to visit an old favorite, especially one that’s as much fun as The Quick and the Dead.

But first, I have to take you back into a sepia-tinted time of 1995.  I was 13, and I hated Westerns. I was all about sci-fi and fantasy, and no history was interesting to me unless it was medieval and European.   Westerns were a dusty, dull genre where everyone just drank whiskey,  had silly shoot-outs, went on cattle drives,  and visited brothels.

My family rented The Quick and the Dead, and my world was rocked. This Western starred a woman — a mysterious woman with no name.  She rarely spoke, and when she did it was always snarly.  She smoked a cigar.   It was the most original character I had ever seen. If more Westerns were like this, I thought, I would like them all.

Well,  I wasn’t always very film literate. Clint Eastwood was just a cranky old man who had made too many Dirty Harry movies, and had frightened me by taking his shirt off that same year in The Bridges of Madison County. And I hated Westerns, remember?

Though I’m wiser, and I know Sharon Stone is doing an extended Eastwood impression, I haven’t lost my fondness for this film.   If anything, her cigar-chomping impresses me even more.  After all, this movie is over ten years old, and we have yet to see another female gunfighter like this. (Frankly, we could use a few more women imitating Eastwood characters, and fewer imitating Carrie Bradshaw.  But that’s another story).

But over the years, I’ve found a lot of people disdain The Quick and the Dead for that very reason.  Fans of the Western find it corny and derivative, and many Sam Raimi fans seem unaware it exists, or ignored it because they hate Westerns.  In my experience, the film is  a redheaded genre stepchild, unloved by everyone, forgotten by the years.

That should change.  This is a fun film that embraces Leone’s “fairy tales  for grown-ups” ethos.  It’s pure pulp Western that gleefully lifts from everyone, and then pits all those caricatures against each other for the pleasure of Gene Hackman.   (I truly believe Hackman’s Herod is the really evil twin of Unforgiven’s Little Bill Daggett.)

There’s no social commentary,  there’s no eulogizing, there’s just killing, banter, and more killing. It’s not even possible to draw your gun in Raimi’s West without cockily twirling it, even if you’re devoting your life to good works and pacifism. (I often wonder if Russell Crowe’s tormented Cort is a nod to William Munny, but I suspect that’s just fanfictioning it).

This is a Western for people who hate Westerns, or for fans who really want the genre to be fun again.  We Americans know by now that the Wild West wasn’t really all that Hollywood and grade school history portrayed it as.  That self-realization made us freeze, and worry about making movies that played games with our country’s mythology.

But now we seem to have hit a point where we can again be comfortable exploiting those spurs, chaps, and six-shooters for fantasy. Heck, France and Korea don’t worry about it, why should we? Sam Raimi was ahead of his time with The Quick and the Dead — and it’s about time fandom caught up.

(The Quick and the Dead is available on Netflix Instant Watch, as are nearly all the Western Wednesdays before it. Save it for your weekend.)

Posted in: Features · Movies · Reviews · Western Wednesdays
Tagged: Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Movies, Russell Crowe, Sam Raimi, Sharon Stone, The Quick and the Dead, Western Wednesdays
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One Response to “Western Wednesdays: ‘The Quick and the Dead’”

  1. KB says:
    May 15, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    I agree that this was always a fun western to watch and it is a good time for people to rediscover how good it really is. It does have a lot of quirkiness and strangeness that may have turned viewers away from it when first released, but that is what makes it so fun. I think it is still one of the most enjoyable films Sharon Stone has ever been in and she does a pretty good job in her role. I saw this on AMC not too long ago, so it seems that there are more people that are giving this movie a chance.

    I like to watch westerns of all different shapes, sizes,tastes and textures. Films that range from “McCabe and Mrs.Miller” to “The Good,the Bad, and the Ugly”. As long as it’s engaging and has a good story to follow like “The Quick and the Dead”.

    Another quirky and fun western that I recently rediscovered is “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” starring the young blue eyed Paul Newman. I watched this many years ago and thought that it was too weird for my tastes at the time. Now, I do believe that it is one of the best westerns of the 1970’s. Not to say that it is better then “The Outlaw Josey Wales”, which is in my opinion to be the best of the 70’s. Give “Roy Bean” a chance and help bring back a lost classic that was “The Quick and The Dead” of its day. Somehow, I have this sinking suspicion that Sam Raimi must have seen “Roy Bean” at some point.

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