One of my biggest misconceptions going into this feature was that Westerns never tackled the topic of racism. (You may call me a brainwashed and judgmental liberal if you like. I don’t mind.)  I lumped them all in with The Searchers – which, incidentally, wasn’t as racist as I remembered but isn’t exactly condemning its characters’ biases either.

But a lot of Westerns tackle it.  They just tend to examine it through the dewy and sad eyes of the white man such as Jimmy Stewart’s Broken Arrow.    Hombre ups the ante by showing discrimination through the painfully blue eyes of Paul Newman.   How can anyone look down on those pool colored irises? You’d have to be really evil.  And boy, are the white people of Hombre evil.

Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, Hombre introduces us to John Russell (Newman), a white man who was raised by Apaches and considers himself one of them.  When his adopted father dies, and leaves him a boarding house, he bristles at the suggestion that he relearn to walk and talk as a white man.  He sells the boarding house, and is on his way back out via stagecoach, but he can’t escape prejudice that easily.

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As a general rule, Westerns tend to be what Sergio Leone labeled “fairy tales for grown-ups.” They may not always be sophisticated, but they reside in a quasi-historical land of cool where even the dust, sweat, and blood seems to be part of the fun. Very few Westerns ever delve into the brutal realities of the frontier.

There’s a good reason for that – misery is not entertaining.  McCabe and Mrs. Miller is proof of the rule.  This is not a enjoyable movie. This is the bonechilling reality that underpins all your Western myths, Manifest Destiny, John Ford and Conestoga wagons.  Robert Altman’s unfortunates come before all that. They’re the desperate people scraping a town together for their own profit so that civilization can come in and build over the opium-addicted ashes.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a footnote-in-history movie, the kind of story that exists only in dusty judicial records. McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in a mining outpost and decides to build a brothel.  Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie, the most beautiful woman alive) gets wind of it, and arrives to muscle in with her superior knowledge. They’re a success, and of course big business gets wind of it, and wants to buy them out.  McCabe dissembles, and they send in the bounty hunters.  No, it doesn’t end well.

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Some kids find a magical creature — perhaps Frankenstein’s Monster or an extra-terrestrial — who sends them on a wild and magical adventure where they learn life lessons. Other kids find Lee Marvin, and embark on a wild and wacky adventure where they become bank robbers. Only one of these youthful scenarios has a happy ending. But what do you expect when you find Marvin copiously bleeding outside of your barn?

The Spikes Gang initially sells itself as a lighthearted, Cat Ballou type of Western. Will (Gary Grimes), Les (Ron Howard), and Tod (Charles Martin Smith) decide to be kindly and patch Harry Spikes (Marvin) up. They do the typical teen thing, and hide him away from their parents, bringing him clothes, food, and money.

He generously turns down the money, revealing that he’s a well-padded bank robber, and sells the boys tales of silk shirts, women, Cuban cigars, and expensive bourbon. They’re drooling. Who wouldn’t? Marvin could use that raspy voice to tell me the sky was green, and I’d ride off with him in a heartbeat.  (Or live in polygamy — but that’s another Marvin movie.)

But these are better boys than I, and they morosely watch Spikes ride off.  The damage has been done, though, and those tales of bourbon and babes prey on their young, impressionable minds.  Their grubby, poor, and sternly Christian lives seem more unbearable than before, and it takes only one belt-whipping before they ride out into the sunrise.   For farm boys, they’re woefully unprepared, and it isn’t long before they’re starving and desperate enough to do like Spikes would do, and rob a bank.

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“What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny’?  ‘Make yourself at home’? ‘Marry my daughter’? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.” — Blazing Saddles

But dang, did they cut a dashing figure in a gray uniform. I’m talking about you, Rock Hudson. Look at the rakish bend of your hat brim! Aren’t you just the handsomest Confederate I’ve seen since Bill Compton traded his uniform for a pair of fangs!

One of my new cinematic fascinations (if you’ll forgive such a pompous label) is the way Hollywood and pop culture imagines the Civil War. It’s not something I ever thought about beyond Gone With the Wind,  Firefly, and True Blood, but it’s an intriguing subset of American culture.

Since no cannonball has been left unturned when it comes to the War Between the States, I’m sure there are already twelve books about this very topic. If there’s not, well, maybe I will write one when Western Wednesdays is through.

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Before there was Avatar, before there was even Dances With Wolves, there was Broken Arrow.

I wasn’t expecting much out of this film. I picked it solely because it had Jimmy Stewart, and he’s been missing from this feature for too long. I knew from the description that it was about the wars with the Apache, who have always been the genre’s favorite villainous redskins. Again, I wasn’t expecting much.

If there was one thing that was pounded into my head in college, it was that no movie ever portrayed Native Americans fairly. They were all John Wayne propaganda pieces that justified our rape and pillage of the land over and over again. It was one of those little facts that justified my disdain for Western movies for years.

But it turns out my American history classes weren’t entirely right, at least in the case of one film. Broken Arrow was the first film to actually portray the Native Americans in a sympathetic and fair light, and while it stumbles in authenticity, it deserves an A for effort. The fact that it comes from one of Hollywood’s stauncher Republicans (Stewart was a proud conservative) is a nice surprise.

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The fun part of Western Wednesdays is discovering little gems like Rio Conchos that were lost in the shuffle of giants like John Wayne.  Lacking any big stars or cult iconography like Django’s coffin, they just sit on Netflix waiting for someone to dig them up.

Rio Conchos is a slow burn of a movie, more of a Western noir than a real shoot ‘em up. Everyone has an agenda, no one can be trusted, and you’re just not sure who is going to screw it all up and make off like a bandit. It also starts off rather typical with the usual trope of “There’s been a raid, a bunch of rifles are missing, and they’re going to wind up in the hands of Apaches!”

Naturally, a disparate bunch of men are assigned the task of tracking down the rifles — a bitter ex-Confederate (Richard Boone), a Buffalo Soldier (Jim Brown), an ambitious Army Captain (Stuart Whitman), and a smooth-talking Mexican mercenary (Tony Franciosa). Of course, they don’t get along. The ex-Confederate makes no secret of his dislike of blue coats or black men, and while they come to a grudging understanding and respect, they never really become friends.

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The Train Robbers has been sitting in my Netflix queue for ages, hoping every Tuesday night that I’ll finally pick it for a Western Wednesday.  It may have stayed there forever had not Justin Gray suggested it.  Gray, as you should know by now, is coauthor of the DC series Jonah Hex. If he says “You should watch The Train Robbers!”, you call up the Netflix queue, and then you apologize to John Wayne that you required someone to intercede on his behalf.

However about halfway through, I began wondering if I had picked the right movie.  Nothing was happening. The villains were a dustcloud shrouded bunch who just thundered around,  Ann-Margaret was getting on my nerves,  the sidekicks were blurring together, and Wayne was just being Wayne.  I checked the clock and was relieved to see there was only about 15 minutes left.

And in that 15 minutes, The Train Robbers becomes an epic, edge-of-your-seat Western that just beg the question “Why the heck did they save up all the good stuff until now?” There’s explosions, a dynamite-loaded mule, guns, a creepy town,  a train used as an entire weapon, and a big twist.  It’s really one of the best action pieces I’ve seen in a Wayne Western.

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“A Western like you’ve never seen before … An exciting new look at the Old West.”

Oh, taglines. I like when you do my work for me. You just described what Silverado isn’t!

I’ve had this one on my queue for quite awhile. I’ve anticipated it greatly. It was written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who is no slouch with pulp-oriented films like The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark to his credit. If there’s one thing Kasdan knows, it’s action adventure, right? Not when it came to Silverado, a film that misses the mark so often that I fail to see how it’s garnered 2-disc collector sets and such enthusiasm among Western fans.

I suppose it’s all due to Costner. Little baby Costner. This is the film that made him a star and a dreamy genre successor to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. They seem to have costumed him with that very idea, because he’s wearing a variation on every famous Western and cowboy look ever filmed.

At one point, he even wears a serape. He’s a weird, goofy character — I can’t tell if he’s special or just supposed to be extremely young — and the highlight of the film is undoubtedly when he decides his horse needs to wear a hat.  It just comes out of nowhere.  Costner walks down the street, happy as a clam, and his horse is wearing a cowboy hat.

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Is there a film you’ve tried to watch only to have Fate thwart your efforts again and again? Cat Ballou was on that list for me. I had it recorded on my DVR and lost it, and I don’t know how many times I’ve fired it up via Netflix only to be interrupted or decide I needed a movie with a bit more edge to it. But when I took on Western Wednesdays, I resolved I’d conquer Cat Ballou once and for all.

Perhaps all the build-up and fan enthusiasm (It’s been recommended to me so many times) raised my expectations too high, because Cat Ballou didn’t do much for me. It’s such a classic film I feel like the blame lies with me. I have this kind of abusive relationship with older films, you know. If I don’t love it, it’s my fault. I mean, the AFI ranked it as the tenth best western of all time. It has to be me.

I do have to give Cat Ballou credit for its swinging ’60s enthusiasm. Only in the 1960s could you get away with an action-comedy that features a rousing, continuous sing-a-long by Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye. I like to picture these production meetings. “How about Jane Fonda as a sexy gunslinger — and she leads a gang — and we’ll have this singing Greek chorus highlighting the action — and Lee Marvin will play two roles!” “Whatever! Sure! Go for it!”

Nowadays, studios freak out when Johnny Depp shows up on a pirate set with gold teeth and dreadlocks. But a silver nose for Marvin? Hell, why not! We may enjoy a lot more sex and violence, but our films have become far more bland when it comes to sheer wackiness.

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My Name is Nobody looms large among spaghetti western and Sergio Leone fans — and probably Henry Fonda’s too, since it was the last Western this legendary range rider appeared in. The legend of its creation is an amusing one, and a rare one among directors who are generally sensitive about the worlds they created. Leone, appalled at the spaghetti western industry that he had wrought, decided to gleefully destroy it with his protege,  Tonio Valerii.

If the Italian western was going to become a joke led by actors dubbing themselves Flint Westwood, then by Tuco they were going to make it the biggest joke of all. And the film certainly is. It’s like Mel Brooks by way of Leone — every sacred scene of Leone’s films is mocked and beaten dead of its coolness.

The only thing missing is that they never shoot a blonde fellow in a serape, or kick around a guy smoking a big yellow pipe. Perhaps they couldn’t quite bring themselves to do it. There’s a crying clown under all the pranks, and when Fonda’s character gives his grand speech about the dying West and its romantic gunslingers, you know that Leone, Valerii, and Fonda mean every word of it.

They also refused to slum it. They may be burying the genre, but Leone and Valerii couldn’t resist showing their country copycats how it was done. It may be a satire, but every shot is perfection. Leone personally directed the opening scene, and I think even a blind film fan could tell. It oozes the tension and raw sound that always made his openings a thing of epic, cruel beauty.

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Once upon a time, Jack Nicholson was a screenwriter. He has six films to his credit, and I’m not entirely sure why he stopped. Perhaps it took too much time away from being one of Hollywood’s most notorious bad boys.

Ride in the Whirlwind was his third script, as per IMDB, and his second collaboration with director Monte Hellman. It’s touted as being inspired by “actual frontier journals.” After sitting through the weird and lonely experience, I’ve decided that means Nicholson paid a lot of attention to how horses were saddled, how uncomfortable boots were, and how people ate a lot of biscuits.

Ride in the Whirlwind has a fervent cult following because of its sparse realism, and the fact that it feels like it could have happened. There’s truth to that. There are a lot of great little details here (cowboy boots being unfit for hiking), and it’s certainly devoid of epic shootouts, squinting close-ups, and prostitutes with hearts of gold. It has a lot of atmosphere on a tiny budget, undoubtedly due to the guidance of Roger Corman.

But I’m not convinced Ride in the Whirlwind is deserving of such lavish underground praise. This film is far from poetry. The characters aren’t interesting, the performances (except for Nicholson’s) are weak, and a lot of the dialogue is pretty corny. A lean script isn’t necessarily a brilliant one, and it doesn’t always make for compelling viewing.

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When I grow up, I want to be Claudia Cardinale.

There are plenty of beautiful women in movies, but few goddesses. Cardinale is a goddess. Even when she’s sunburned and running around in a rag, as she is in The Professionals, she has more charisma, beauty, and sex appeal than most actresses working today. I hesitate to call her “sexy” because that word seems so Maxim Magazine these days — but Cardinale is sexy in such a powerful and womanly way that it’s not threatening, but inspiring.

She also had great hair. What demon do I have to bargain with to end up with a perfect bouffant every day? Hers looks good even in the desert. It’s unfair.

Watching old movies can be a bittersweet experience. They don’t make them like Cardinale anymore, and you’d be hard pressed to find a Lee Marvin or a Burt Lancaster on the big screen these days. I cherish retro crushes on both (especially Lancaster — what a grin he had!) and The Professionals is so chock full of old time machismo that turning it off may actually cause you to experience symptoms of withdrawal.

Which is, oddly, what The Professionals is kind of about.   It’s the kind of movie I love in any genre — the adventure story that’s sandwiched in between the heroes’ misspent youth and their retirement.   These are men with pasts.  They’ve had near misses, they’ve experienced terrible tragedies, and they’ve woken up in their union suits with nothing but a pounding headache to remind them of the night before.   They’re men who die with their boots on out of a sense of nobility and because they have nothing else to do.

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