>
> You guys missed the qualifying word--"oater." I
shouldn't have
> mentioned names. After all, I admit, Scott and the
Duke made some
> really great films (I love THE SEARCHERS for
example). But they also
> made a bunch of really corny, overly-simplistic
cowboy quickies that
> were truly black-and-white, even if some of them
were in colour. You
> know, oaters. In fact, their careers were based on
them. (Unless, of
> course, that term now encompasses any and all
westerns--I just always
> assumed it meant B-flick westerns
I always took it to simply mean Westerns in general.
> But, so as to not wander too far off topic, can
anyone think of some
> of the best hardboiled or noirish westerns. I don't
just mean violent.
>
> Off the top of my head, I can think of a
few:
>
> Maybe some of the early Spaghetti
westerns...
> and there was a Walter Hill flick a while back,
about, I think, the
> James Gang? I can picture the poster, with a bunch
of them facing the
> camera, in their long coats, on horseback, but I
can't see the title.
The Long Riders.
> And Shane, which is a great story, even though the
film looks like
> the old west had as many drycleaners as
cowboys.
Actually, the folks in Shane seem to be fairly mudcaked most
of the time, as I recall.
Noir/HB Westerns. Good questions. There's one called Pursued,
with Robert Mitchum, that is often described in noirish,
hard-boiled terms, but it seems more a psychological thriller
Western than HB to me. Some of the nihilistic stuff Monte
Hellman directed with Jack Nicholson and/or Warren Oates in
the Sixties seems to qualify: Ride the Whirlwind, The
Shooting, etc. Of course, there's a great connection between
the two genres, even if there aren't a lot of examples of
true cross-breeding.
Jim Beaver
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