Best Westerns! Help me find some Winter Western Watching…

Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. Today, the Western genre. I am once again asking for your help…this time, in building a watch list of must-see Westerns.

When I was a kid, if we were really lucky, we might get a night in a Best Western motel. The four of us in single beds in a line, in front of a 14inch TV that might, ingeniously, be hanging from the wall on some sort of space-age bracket. We might get fish ‘n’ chips from down the road, or if the boat had been well and truly pushed all the way out, a slap-up binge from the Cobb & Co, with a few stray 20c pieces collected up for the tabletop arcade games, before heading back to the Bestest of the Westerns to sleep under the candlewick bedspread that had been ironed and stretched tight.

On the telly we would watch Magnum P.1. or The A Team or MacGuyver or The Incredible Hulk, or part of a movie that had already started. Sometimes, though, there was a “movie channel”. A video played on the central VHS machine and shared throughout the rooms. If you were really lucky, you’d see the wavy lines and some blue screen logo, and the anti-piracy ads rather than having to catch up and decipher what film was halfway through. You would be seeing Ruthless People or Police Academy, most likely. Or you might even get to see something as legendary as Back To The Future. But most often it was an older film.

And that’s where I remember first seeing Terence Hill and Budd Spencer. They made fruity, and fruitful “Spaghetti Westerns”. They slapped people a lot and the big guy would punch people on the top of the head. And the foley (film sound) was out of this world. A lot of bruised cabbages died a brutal (second) death so that I might enjoy a silly western.

I think the Budd Spencer and Terence Hill movies — They Call My Trinity and Trinity Is Still My Name — were my first examples of seeing a ‘Western’. Not quite your typical western. But also totally a classic, typical western at the same time.

The classic cowboy movie. The drifter that comes to town, cleans up the business, runs the bad guy from out of town. The bad guy that actually has a heart of gold. Falls in love with the wrong woman, or the woman falls in love with the wrong guy, rather. The impossible task of defending the tiny town with the last watering hole. These are some classic western tropes. You might find all of these in the same movie. These almost give westerns a bad name — reducing them down to a simplicity that could undervalue the true grit and genius of a really amazing western movie.

I’ve watched a few westerns in my time — but I haven’t watched many of the absolute classics.

As a teenager, I got hooked on all things Clint Eastwood. So I watched a few of his westerns, though I’ve seen far more of his Dirty Harry-styled films, and the movies he has directed across all genres. That said, Dirty Harry pretty much is a subverted western. Plot-wise. Character-wise.

And there are a lot of movies that aren’t really “Westerns” as such — but also totally are. A lot of sci-fi films (What else is Star Wars but pirate in space, or a giant space western?) and a lot of action films. Tarantino’s love of westerns is obvious across many of his films but especially the second part of Kill Bill, Django Unchained and The Hateful 8, even pushing his audience’s limits with loping pace and long run-times. Last week I gushed about They Live and that has the “drifter” element of a western; the lone soldier going in to fix up the mess.

So many martial arts films are westerns — even if they’re technically “eastern”. Many of them have influenced great modern westerns, many of them have taken their influence from old westerns. Again, think of Kill Bill as just one obvious example. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai sometimes feels like the greatest western I’ve ever seen…

In terms of ‘true’ westerns, I’m a fan of the Eastwood “comeback” The Unforgiven, from 1992. It stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it, wasn’t the usual film I’d search out at that time, and Gene Hackman’s Best Supporting turn is one for the ages. I’ve watched it more than once, but it’s been years since I’ve seen it. Every year, lately, I think it would be a good movie to kick off a winter run of westerns.

Well, now we have the big TV in place, with the Soundbar, and I have a poncho that’s not allowed out past the front gate, I reckon I’m all set — finally — for The Winter Western Movie Run.

There’s one problem. I need a list. This is where you come in.

I’d love you to help me build a list of essential westerns. I’m talking classics. Obscurities. Things to rewatch. Things that I somehow missed. I want to deep-dive on this genre. So help me with your must-view (best) westerns…

I’ve been watching John Wayne in either Winds of the Wasteland or Stagecoach Run while I’m writing this. It’s a 55-minute film from 1936 that goes by either title, and either way it doesn’t feel particularly important but does star John Wayne. So that still feels like a good start in some ways. I’m following it up with A Heart Like Water, another 55-ish minute film, but this one is from 2021 and is about a North Dakota frontier couple struggling against the elements. So there’s the goalposts really — anything from around 1930 up to and including 2024. It’s a big assignment.

So, here’s where you come in. Help me build a list of 10-15 essential westerns. I’ll watch them this winter. And possibly even report back…