Underrated Westerns
by Slimxharpo | created - 09 Jun 2014 | updated - 24 Oct 2021 | PublicNo Duke, no Clint, and nothing by Ford, Leone or Peckinpah either.
These movies date mostly from the 1950s, in my view the best era for westerns, but many of them don't get talked about much these days. Fans of the genre will be familiar with most of them, however they deserve to be more widely known and appreciated.
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1. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Not Rated | 92 min | Drama, Thriller, Western
Broke small-time rancher Dan Evans is hired by the stagecoach line to put big-time captured outlaw leader Ben Wade on the 3:10 train to Yuma but Wade's gang tries to free him.
Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr, Leora Dana
Votes: 21,614
This is an almost perfect movie - brilliant script, fantastic performances, interesting characters and wonderfully paced and shot. It's basically a noir western, and it has bags of tension and atmosphere, in addition to the top drawer performances from both Heflin and Ford. Both main characters, their interactions and the various phases of their relationship are masterfully drawn. It's the best illustration of a man having to do what a man has to do, and what it costs him. And for my money, it's the finest western ever made.
2. Ride Lonesome (1959)
Approved | 73 min | Western
A bounty hunter (Randolph Scott) escorts a killer (James Best) to be tried for murder, but allows the man's outlaw brother (Lee Van Cleef) to catch up with them to have a showdown over a previous shocking murder.
Director: Budd Boetticher | Stars: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James Best
Votes: 6,583
Lean, taut and spare. Not a word or scene is wasted, and there are great performances from the whole cast, but particularly Pernell Roberts, who plays off Coburn and Scott expertly. Superb script by Kennedy, and the scenery of Lone Pine is beautifully shot. The final scene as the picture ends is wonderfully dramatic. The best of the Ranown pictures, which were clearly big influences on Leone and Eastwood.
3. Hombre (1967)
Approved | 111 min | Drama, Western
John Russell, disdained by his "respectable" fellow stagecoach passengers because he was raised by Native Americans, becomes their only hope for survival when they are set upon by outlaws.
Director: Martin Ritt | Stars: Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento
Votes: 13,813
There are some great Elmore Leonard adaptations, but this could well be the best. Newman is outstanding as the despised outsider forced to do the decent thing when no one else will. Diane Cilento also puts in a terrific performance in an interesting and unusual role, while Richard Boone shows why he is one of the great western bad guys. Reminiscent of Stagecoach, but tougher and much less optimistic, this is a masterpiece.
4. The Naked Spur (1953)
Passed | 91 min | Drama, Thriller, Western
A bounty hunter trying to bring a murderer to justice is forced to accept the help of two less-than-trustworthy strangers.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker
Votes: 12,652
Just who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this movie? You'll know by the end, but it's quite a tough journey, as is often the case when Mann and Stewart team up. It's a very good cast, but Stewart and Ryan stand out. The landscape (Lone Pine, the Rockies) is stark and pitiless, and its magnificence contrasts perfectly with the desperation and ruthlessness of the characters. An unusual twist on the revenge western too.
5. Ulzana's Raid (1972)
R | 103 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
After fierce war chief Ulzana and a small war party jump the reservation bent on murder and terror, an inexperienced young lieutenant is assigned to track him down.
Director: Robert Aldrich | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke, Richard Jaeckel
Votes: 6,475
A Vietnam allegory which features Burt Lancaster's greatest performance in a western. Here he plays an army scout who seems to have gone beyond mere cynicism. Really quite a difficult and bruising watch, it doesn't flinch from showing the savagery and the brutalising effects of the conflict on both the army and the Indians. You really do feel that the Old West was as grim as it's portrayed here. Probably the most downbeat Western ever made.
6. The Furies (1950)
Passed | 109 min | Drama, Romance, Western
A firebrand heiress clashes with her tyrannical father, a cattle rancher who fancies himself a Napoleon, but their relationship turns ugly only when he finds himself a new woman.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson
Votes: 3,896
One of Anthony Mann's very best westerns, which is certainly the equal of his work with James Stewart. Stanwyck and Huston (both excellent) dominate this picture, but the lesser characters are all very well played too - Anderson, Corey and Roland stand out in particular. The script is also superb, and manages the shifting dynamics of the characters' relationships with subtlety, while incorporating elements from Greek myth and tragedy. The cinematography is pretty impressive too, especially in some very striking exterior shots.
7. 7 Men from Now (1956)
Approved | 78 min | Western
A former sheriff blames himself for his wife's death during a Wells Fargo robbery and vows to track down and kill the seven men responsible.
Director: Budd Boetticher | Stars: Randolph Scott, Gail Russell, Lee Marvin, Walter Reed
Votes: 5,994
The first and one of the best Scott-Boetticher movies. Scott is out for revenge, looking for the seven men responsible for his wife's death during a robbery. It's a little more set-bound than most of the other Ranown movies, but it still packs a punch. It also has one of the best villains of the era in Lee Marvin, who is absolutely fantastic - a silkily menacing performance which keeps you on edge at all times.
8. Day of the Outlaw (1959)
Not Rated | 92 min | Drama, Western
Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.
Director: André De Toth | Stars: Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, Tina Louise, Alan Marshal
Votes: 4,420
A gem, and for me, Robert Ryan's best performance in any movie - even Bad Day at Black Rock. Here he's cast as a self-centred bullying rancher forced to risk everything for the greater good of the community when a bunch of deserters occupy the town. Burl Ives is also fantastic as the conflicted villain, and the picture conveys a real sense of threat and menace. The final act in the snowy mountains is particularly memorable. Andre De Toth's best movie by a distance.
9. Man of the West (1958)
Not Rated | 100 min | Western
A reformed outlaw becomes stranded after an aborted train robbery with two other passengers and is forced to rejoin his old outlaw band.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell
Votes: 9,149
A typically intense western from Anthony Mann. Although Coop is too old for the part (he was older than Cobb, who plays his uncle), this is a superb but harrowing movie. Lee J Cobb is quite terrifying as the unhinged villain, while Julie London gives a great performance which captures her character's toughness and vulnerability. Coop is great as usual as the man who can't escape his past.
10. Comanche Station (1960)
Approved | 73 min | Drama, Western
A man saves a woman who had been kidnapped by Comanches, then struggles to get both of them home alive.
Director: Budd Boetticher | Stars: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins, Skip Homeier
Votes: 4,420
The last and one of the very best of the Ranown series of westerns, but a little more downbeat than the others. This time, Scott is apparently a bounty hunter who negotiates with the Comanches to release a woman they've kidnapped. However, others have their eye on the reward money offered by her husband. Great villains and a clever twist.
11. The Man from Laramie (1955)
Not Rated | 103 min | Drama, Western
Newcomer Will Lockhart defies the local cattle baron and his sadistic son by working for one of his oldest rivals.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell
Votes: 12,000
"I came 1000 miles to kill you," says Stewart's typically driven character, out for revenge over his brother's death. And boy does he earn it. The scene with the mules on the salt flats, where his problems begin, is particularly memorable. Donald Crisp is excellent as the unyielding but ultimately honourable cattle man, but it's probably Arthur Kennedy who puts in the best performance. If you want a conflicted bad guy in a western, Arthur's your man. The only real weakness is that the women's parts are noticeably underwritten.
12. Station West (1948)
Approved | 97 min | Western
After two U.S. cavalrymen transporting a gold shipment get killed, U.S. Army Intelligence investigator John Haven goes undercover to a mining and logging town to find the killers.
Director: Sidney Lanfield | Stars: Dick Powell, Jane Greer, Agnes Moorehead, Tom Powers
Votes: 1,515
A really good western. Someone had clearly seen Dick Powell's (definitive) performance as Philip Marlowe in "Farewell, My Lovely" (also known as "Murder My Sweet") and got him to reprise it in this movie, which is really more noir than western. Although not particularly well shot, and a little set-bound, it has an absolutely cracking script, and terrific performances from Powell and Greer. Burl Ives puts in a pretty decent cameo too.
13. The Hanging Tree (1959)
Approved | 107 min | Western
Unusual western about a doctor with a dark past, whose life is complicated and ultimately redeemed by a young thief, and a pretty Swiss immigrant whom he nurses back to health.
Directors: Delmer Daves, Karl Malden, Vincent Sherman | Stars: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden, George C. Scott
Votes: 4,749
Coop plays a Silas Marner-esque doctor traumatised by past tragedy who's rescued by an unlikely pair of strays he reluctantly allows into his life. A somewhat melodramatic ending, but the whole thing works really well. Karl Malden makes for a damn good bad guy, and watch out for an early appearance by a deranged George C Scott.
14. The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
Passed | 75 min | Drama, Western
When a posse captures three men suspected of killing a local farmer, they become strongly divided over whether or not to lynch the men.
Director: William A. Wellman | Stars: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn
Votes: 24,941 | Gross: $1.64M
A brilliant but very dark and genuinely disturbing movie about the lynch mob and vigilantism. Fonda, as ever, gives an excellent performance as the reluctant moral centre, and he's well-supported by Harry Morgan as his partner. Dana Andrews steals the show though, despite an eye-catching performance from Anthony Quinn.
15. Monte Walsh (1970)
PG-13 | 106 min | Western
An aging cowboy realizes that the West he knew and loved will soon be no more--and that there will be no room for him, either.
Director: William A. Fraker | Stars: Lee Marvin, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Palance, Mitchell Ryan
Votes: 3,030
To my mind, the best of the elegaic farewells to the Old West, as redundancy, riding fences and petit-bourgeois respectability beckon. The film moves at a leisurely pace and takes its time to establish the characters and their relationships. Both Marvin and Palance are given the opportunity to show their range and they take it. Palance in particular is terrific, and I think it's his best performance in a western.
16. Yellow Sky (1948)
Approved | 98 min | Crime, Drama, Western
A pistol-packing tomboy and her grandfather discover a band of bank robbing bandits taking refuge in the neighboring ghost town.
Director: William A. Wellman | Stars: Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur
Votes: 5,752
Shakespeare's Tempest set in a ghost town on the edge of the badlands, but substituting gold for Prospero's books, Apaches for Caliban and Gregory Peck for Ferdinand. A very strong cast all giving great performances, but Baxter and Widmark stand out. The action seems to take place almost in perpetual twilight, and this gives the movie an otherworldly feel and a very distinctive atmosphere. A cracking movie.
17. The Tall T (1957)
Approved | 78 min | Western
An independent former ranch foreman is kidnapped along with an heiress, who is being held for ransom by trio of ruthless outlaws.
Director: Budd Boetticher | Stars: Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt
Votes: 6,139
Another Elmore Leonard adaptation, this starts off lighthearted but darkens quite quickly as Scott's character finds himself caught up in kidnapping and cold-blooded murder. Once again, Richard Boone is a terrific villain, and is a great foil for Randy Scott. Boetticher, Scott and Kennedy bring in another winner.
18. Vera Cruz (1954)
Approved | 94 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
During the Mexican Rebellion of 1866, an unsavory group of American adventurers are hired by the forces of Emporer Maximilian to escort a countess to Vera Cruz.
Director: Robert Aldrich | Stars: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero
Votes: 11,302
A blast. Coop is the wary former Confederate officer who teams up with Lancaster, the cocky, flashy soldier of fortune as they hire themselves out as mercenaries south of the border. It looks fantastic and the plot twists and turns again and again until the final showdown. Coop and Lancaster really know how to play off each other. Great opening scene too, and Lancaster's brilliant teeth merit a special mention. Leone and (particularly) Peckinpah very obviously learned a lot from this movie.
19. The Law and Jake Wade (1958)
Approved | 86 min | Western
Marshal Jake Wade aids outlaw Clint Hollister escape jail but Clint wants to know where Wade hid an old hold-up loot taken while both men were outlaws in the same gang.
Director: John Sturges | Stars: Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark, Patricia Owens, Robert Middleton
Votes: 2,763
Robert Taylor is great as the haunted, melancholic but honourable Wade, who's hounded and threatened by his fantastically unpleasant former partner. Widmark plays this bad guy role wonderfully, and he pretty much steals the movie despite Taylor's nicely understated performance. The Alabama Hills and Lone Pine are nicely shot too. A fine western.
20. The Gunfighter (1950)
Approved | 85 min | Western
Notorious gunfighter Jimmy Ringo rides into town to find his true love, who doesn't want to see him. He hasn't come looking for trouble, but trouble finds him around every corner.
Director: Henry King | Stars: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Jean Parker
Votes: 12,503
The best movie I've seen about the curse of the famous gunfighter. The cracking opening scene with Richard Jaeckel sets the sombre tone. It's perhaps Peck's best performance in a western as he tries to ditch his past and reconnect with his estranged family. Very atmospheric and nicely downbeat.
21. Two Flags West (1950)
Approved | 92 min | War, Western
Forced by circumstances,Confederate POWs and Union soldiers join forces against Indians but old animosities resurface during their fragile alliance.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Joseph Cotten, Linda Darnell, Jeff Chandler, Cornel Wilde
Votes: 1,200
An unusual Civil War western with Confederate POWs convinced to join the Union Army's war on the Indians on the frontier. Joseph Cotten's great in everything (including this), but Jeff Chandler's embittered Union officer absolutely steals the movie. Excellent cast of character actors too. This really should be much better known.
22. Will Penny (1967)
Approved | 108 min | Drama, Romance, Western
Aging cowboy Will Penny gets a line camp job on a large cattle spread and finds his isolated cabin is already occupied by an abandoned woman traveler and her young son.
Director: Tom Gries | Stars: Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett, Donald Pleasence, Lee Majors
Votes: 5,248
A flinty and downbeat movie with an unusually subdued and interesting central performance from Heston. It conveys quite a convincing impression of the loneliness, general difficulty and downright brutishness of life in the Old West. Joan Hackett is very good, and while Donald Pleasance and Bruce Dern make for fine villains, there's something slightly over the top about their performances which is at odds with the rest of the movie. However, it's a great picture, which draws very successfully on the best elements of 1950s westerns and anticipates many of the themes and approaches that would shape the best westerns of the 1970s.
23. Open Range (2003)
R | 139 min | Action, Drama, Romance
A former gunslinger is forced to take up arms again when he and his cattle crew are threatened by a corrupt lawman.
Director: Kevin Costner | Stars: Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall, Diego Luna, Abraham Benrubi
Votes: 78,064 | Gross: $58.33M
Costner's best western by a mile. This fine movie features a typically fab performance from Duvall, and the most realistic gunfights in any western. This is a minor masterpiece, but as is often the case, Costner miscasts himself (he just cannot pull off mean and moody) and doesn't quite match up to the rest of the cast. However, given that cast includes Robert Duvall and Michael Gambon, he can perhaps be forgiven.
24. Bend of the River (1952)
Approved | 91 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
When a town boss confiscates homesteaders' supplies after gold is discovered nearby, a tough cowboy risks his life to try and get it to them.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: James Stewart, Rock Hudson, Arthur Kennedy, Julie Adams
Votes: 9,886
Another uncompromising Mann-Stewart western with tough performances from the whole cast. Kennedy and Stewart have dark pasts but are taken on as protectors by a group of homesteaders in Oregon. Will they revert to type when faced with some hard choices? They're both very well supported by a large and excellent cast, including western stalwarts Harry Morgan, Jay C Flippen, Royal Dano and Jack Lambert. Also, it's a really beautifully shot movie - the Pacific North West has never looked more stunning.
25. The Ride Back (1957)
Not Rated | 79 min | Western
A troubled sheriff, a failure at everything in his life, tries to redeem himself by extraditing a popular gunfighter from Mexico to stand trial for murder.
Directors: Allen H. Miner, Oscar Rudolph | Stars: Anthony Quinn, William Conrad, Lita Milan, Victor Millan
Votes: 937
A really good chamber western. Impossible to pick which of the two leads is better, but although this is perhaps Anthony Quinn's best performance in a western, it's Conrad who has the more difficult role. He's the man haunted and beaten down by the need to prove he can do the right - and difficult - thing, while Quinn plays the charming outlaw to whom everything seems to come easily. The relationship between the two main characters is very well drawn, and bears comparison with the relationship between Glenn Ford and Van Heflin in the peerless 3.10 to Yuma. A minor masterpiece.
26. The Tin Star (1957)
Approved | 93 min | Western
A cynical former sheriff turned bounty hunter helps a young, recently appointed acting sheriff with his advice, his experience and his gun.
Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Betsy Palmer, Michel Ray
Votes: 6,533
Fonda, now a bounty hunter, was a lawman but quit in disgust. Perkins wants to be a lawman but needs a mentor. It works out in the end as both men learn from each other. Fonda's performance as the jaded and reluctant moral centre is reminiscent of the one he gave in The Ox-Bow Incident, and Perkins is also very good as the idealistic deputy. Great final showdown too, and shades of High Noon and Rio Bravo.
27. Johnny Guitar (1954)
Not Rated | 110 min | Drama, Western
After helping a wounded gang member, a strong-willed female saloon owner is wrongly suspected of murder and bank robbery by a lynch mob.
Director: Nicholas Ray | Stars: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady
Votes: 19,726
Operatic, melodramatic, histrionic, and unlike any other western. The normal gender roles are largely reversed, with the main standoff being between Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge , who is particularly good. As ever, Sterling Hayden is very watchable. Many hate this movie and I can see why, but somehow it works.
28. Silverado (1985)
PG-13 | 133 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A misfit bunch of friends comes together to right the injustices which exist in a small town.
Director: Lawrence Kasdan | Stars: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Rosanna Arquette
Votes: 49,345 | Gross: $33.20M
A great (and enormous) cast clearly having a great time. Dennehy, Kline and Glenn probably come out on top but really good performances from everyone, even Costner, who for once doesn't take himself too seriously. John Cleese's cameo as an English sheriff is a highlight, and the opening scene with Glenn is excellent. Ultimately, a surfeit of plot slightly overwhelms it but great fun.
29. Along the Great Divide (1951)
Approved | 88 min | Western
A U.S. Marshall and two deputies rescue a cattle rustler from a lynch mob led by a local cattle baron convinced that the rustler also killed his son.
Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: Kirk Douglas, Virginia Mayo, John Agar, Walter Brennan
Votes: 2,258
This is a pretty tense, unsentimental and hard-boiled movie, which could almost have been one of the Mann-Stewart westerns. I'm not a huge fan of Kirk Douglas, but he's really good in this as a marshall bringing Walter Brennan to justice after rescuing him from a lynch mob. Too often, Brennan is just comic relief but here he's at the heart of the movie and he does a terrific job.
30. The Lonely Man (1957)
Approved | 88 min | Drama, Western
Aging gunslinger Jacob Wade hopes to settle down with his estranged son, but his old enemies have other plans for him.
Director: Henry Levin | Stars: Jack Palance, Anthony Perkins, Neville Brand, Robert Middleton
Votes: 868
Similar in many ways to "The Gunfighter", this may be even more sombre and downbeat. Palance, Aiken and (particularly) Perkins all give textured and subtle performances, and the villains are genuinely disturbing. It's a beautifully shot picture too. Highly recommended.
31. Little Big Man (1970)
PG-13 | 139 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Jack Crabb, looking back from extreme old age, tells of his life being raised by Native Americans and fighting with General Custer.
Director: Arthur Penn | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George, Martin Balsam
Votes: 37,872 | Gross: $31.56M
Catch 22 comes to the West - funny and sad, and with a really great cast. This is one of my favourite Hoffman movies, although Chief Dan George almost steals the movie from him. Richard Mulligan is brilliant as the comic, cruel, self-regarding and deluded Custer. Fab.
32. Night Passage (1957)
Approved | 90 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A fired railroad man is re-hired and entrusted to carry a ten thousand dollar payroll in secret, even though he is suspected of being connected to outlaws.
Director: James Neilson | Stars: James Stewart, Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea, Dianne Foster
Votes: 4,536
One of my favourite Stewart performances in this slightly subdued movie. Originally meant to be another Mann-Stewart collaboration, it's a less fraught affair, perhaps because it concerns redemption rather than revenge. The life of the community in town and at the railhead is very well drawn and gives the picture some real heart and humanity. It may well be Audie Murphy's best western, and Stewart plays a mean accordion.
33. Forty Guns (1957)
Not Rated | 80 min | Western
Showdown in Arizona between the Bonnell brothers, U.S.Marshals, and Jessica Drummond, the iron-fist rancher who controls the territory.
Director: Samuel Fuller | Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Dean Jagger, John Ericson
Votes: 6,208
Operatic verging on Gothic, as Barbara Stanwyck rules the town with the titular Forty Guns. When the law arrives to bring her gunmen and brother to justice, an unconventional romance develops. Visually very impressive, and the two leads are very watchable. The slightly over the top central premise does require some suspension of disbelief, though.
34. The Grey Fox (1982)
PG | 92 min | Biography, Drama, History
When an aging, but gentlemanly stagecoach robber is released from prison, he decides to go to Canada to become a train robber.
Director: Phillip Borsos | Stars: Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burroughs, Ken Pogue, Wayne Robson
Votes: 2,488
Low key, sepia toned elegy to the Old West. Farnsworth is very watchable as the once famous bandit released from jail into a world which has changed utterly during his incarceration and which he no longer understands. However, he still has his cunning...
35. The Last Wagon (1956)
Approved | 99 min | Drama, Western
Wagon train survivors of an Apache attack entrust the sheriff's prisoner, scout Comanche Todd, with their lives despite his wanted-for-murder status.
Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr, Susan Kohner, Tommy Rettig
Votes: 3,656
Reminiscent of Hombre as the despised and unfairly victimised outcast saves the day. Richard Widmark wasn't gifted with great range, but he had presence. He certainly uses it in this really rather good film.
36. Jubal (1956)
Passed | 100 min | Drama, Romance, Western
A new foreman rejects the sexual advances of a frustrated rancher's wife, which leads to conflicts that could get him killed.
Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Valerie French
Votes: 4,390
Shakespeare at the ranch, as Borgnine plays Othello to Steiger's Iago, with Ford caught in the middle. A little over the top but Ford is a joy to watch as usual, and nobody does nasty like Steiger.
37. Warlock (1959)
Passed | 121 min | Western
A famous gunman becomes the marshal of Warlock to end a gang's rampages, but is met with some opposition by a former gang member turned deputy sheriff who wants to follow only legal methods.
Director: Edward Dmytryk | Stars: Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone
Votes: 7,040 | Gross: $3.71M
Both Fonda and Quinn are great and slightly disturbing as dandy lawmen for hire. As they gradually (and quite brutally) impose law and order in the town of Warlock, their partnership fractures and a previously hidden homoerotic element is revealed. Richard Widmark racks up another impressive performance as the disgusted bad guy seeing the light.
38. Saddle the Wind (1958)
Passed | 84 min | Drama, Western
Former gunslinger Steve Sinclair (Taylor), is now a peaceful rancher, but things go wrong when his wild brother Tony (Cassavetes) arrives with his new gun--and his new fiancée, former saloon girl Joan Blake (London).
Directors: Robert Parrish, John Sturges | Stars: Robert Taylor, Julie London, John Cassavetes, Donald Crisp
Votes: 1,718
A tense affair. John Cassavetes brings a touch of the method to the range as Taylor's unstable younger brother. Donald Crisp and Royal Dano really stand out as the partriarchal cattleman and the homesteader, and Robert Taylor is always dependable in a stetson and spurs. Julie London is also good, and it's a pity she wasn't given more to do. A rather nicely shot movie too.
39. Rio Conchos (1964)
Not Rated | 107 min | Western
A former Confederate officer and a Mexican try to prevent a former Confederate colonel from selling stolen rifles to renegade Apaches in Mexico.
Director: Gordon Douglas | Stars: Richard Boone, Stuart Whitman, Anthony Franciosa, Wende Wagner
Votes: 2,320
A slightly Gothic tale focused on Boone's very well played anti-hero, a racist former Confederate soldier who's forced to team up with stuffy Union officer Stuart Whitman and black soldier Jim Brown. Stolen rifles, nutty empire-building Confederate officers and some redemption. Boone is brilliant as always but Whitman's underpowered performance lets the side down and Franciosa puts in a slightly hammy turn. Edmond O'Brien is great as Col Pardee though, and all told it makes for a fine and rather unusual western.
40. Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
GP | 108 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by the Crow tribe and proves to be a match for their warriors in single combat on the early frontier.
Director: Sydney Pollack | Stars: Robert Redford, Will Geer, Delle Bolton, Josh Albee
Votes: 34,958 | Gross: $47.74M
An unusual and sombre western, whose cinematography makes the most of the fantastic scenery. Like Will Penny, it conveys something of the vastness and emptiness of the land, as well as the loneliness, isolation and violence endured by its few inhabitants. It's a very evocative movie, and Redford gives a well-judged performance.
41. The Westerner (1940)
Passed | 100 min | Drama, Western
Judge Roy Bean, a self-appointed hanging judge in Vinegarroon, Texas, befriends saddle tramp Cole Harden, who opposes Bean's policy against homesteaders.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport, Fred Stone
Votes: 6,788
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