Your favorite westerns.

Richards · Dec 5, 2005

Then there's the Marx Brothers' Go West....

Johnathan

qstor · Dec 5, 2005

Good lists

here's mine:

The Searchers
A Fistful of Dollars
Unforgiven
Shane
Wild Bunch
Rooster Codburn
My Darling Clementine
Once Upon a Time in the West

Mike

Kanegrundar · Dec 5, 2005

I love westerns so much that I think I was born 120 years too late sometimes.

Here's my list:

Lonesome Dove
Unforgiven
Pale Rider
Hang 'Em High
High Plains Drifter
Tombstone
Open Range
Deadwood
Two Mules for Sister Sara
Quigley Down Under
Young Guns
The Jack Bull
The Shootist
High Noon
The Cowboys
True Grit
The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly
A Fistful of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More
Rio Bravo
Dances With Wolves
Gunsmoke (the series)
Have Gun Will Travel
Maverick (the movie)

Edit: I forgot about The Gambler and The Outlaw Josie Wales.

There are others, but these are the movies and shows that I watch pretty regularly.

Kane

Dioltach · Dec 5, 2005

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is definitely my favourite Western. But I'm surprised no one has mentioned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (probably my second favourite).

Henry · Dec 5, 2005

Here's a good side question: Which westerns of the list would qualify as "reasonably historically accurate?" I'm not looking for perfection, I'm just looking for the lack of hollywood holster rigs, maybe a percussion revolver or two mentioned, and maybe the occasional bullet in the back in preference to a high noon showdown.

My personal recent favorites has been Deadwood, but Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer's Tombstone was IMMENSELY fun, and generated some of the must fun quoted lines I've seen in years. Unforgiven was also a great film that always stuck with me.

(Unforgiven was also unforGOTTEN to me because I got food poisoning from the buttered popcorn served at the theater I saw it at!)

Kanegrundar · Dec 5, 2005

Henry said:
Here's a good side question: Which westerns of the list would qualify as "reasonably historically accurate?" I'm not looking for perfection, I'm just looking for the lack of hollywood holster rigs, maybe a percussion revolver or two mentioned, and maybe the occasional bullet in the back in preference to a high noon showdown.

My personal recent favorites has been Deadwood, but Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer's Tombstone was IMMENSELY fun, and generated some of the must fun quoted lines I've seen in years. Unforgiven was also a great film that always stuck with me.

(Unforgiven was also unforGOTTEN to me because I got food poisoning from the buttered popcorn served at the theater I saw it at!)

Open Range was a pretty true depiction of the time nearing the end of the wild west period in US history. Dances With Wolves was also good in that arena as well.

Warrior Poet · Dec 5, 2005

The following are at the top of the list, in order of appeal to me:

Sergio Leone's holy trinity (Fistfull, Few Dollars,etc.)
Dead Man
Deadwood (HBO series)
The Outlaw Josey Wales
High Plains Drifter
The Searchers
High Noon
Unforgiven
Red River
Silverado
Blazing Saddles
Pale Rider

These are not in any order, and are also outstanding:
True Grit
The Cowboys
The Magnificent Seven
Rooster Cogburn
Two Mules for Sister Sara
Tombstone
Wyatt Earp
Open Range
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Hang 'em High
The Wild Bunch
The Shootist
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Big Jake

I'd like to take a special moment to note, as Pielorinho did, a novel, and add some others to the list:

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy. Not only is it one of the best westerns I've ever read, it's one of the best works of literature I've ever read. I'm a huge McCarthy fan, but this is his best as far as I'm concerned. And it's everything Pielorinho described, and more. It's a helluva journey that's horrifying to take and yet impossible to stop. The Judge may be the single most terrifying figure I've ever encountered in fiction. As novels go, this tops the list. Frankly, I think it trumps all the movies, as well. Best summed up in the sentiment (not from the novel) "Nous sommes touts sauvages." (-Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, q.v.)

The Pistoleer by James Carlos Blake. Life and times of John Welsey Hardin.

Wildwood Boys by James Carlos Blake. Life and times of "Bloody Bill" Anderson

The Friends of Pancho Villa by James Carlos Blake. Life and times of Pancho Villa and Rodolfo Fierro, as told by Fierro.

And in the non-fiction category:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown.

Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell

Warrior Poet

Pielorinho · Dec 5, 2005

Warrior Poet said:
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy. Not only is it one of the best westerns I've ever read, it's one of the best works of literature I've ever read. I'm a huge McCarthy fan, but this is his best as far as I'm concerned.

Glad to see some more McCarthy love!

I had a writing tutor in college who introduced us to McCarthy, both as a guy who could set a scene and a guy who could build character through dress. Both excerpts were from Blood Meridian: the former involved resonant earth, and the latter involved a wedding dress. If you've read the book, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

The bit about its being fine literature is also no joke. It's probably not the best literary work I've ever read, but it's undoubtedly literary in even the snootiest sense of the word: despite being a gripping tale with plenty of plot, it's also very well respected in literary circles, with McCarthy being so good that there's actually a backlash against him. The backlash article I read awhile ago was pretty silly IMO, but it was interesting nonetheless.

And yeah, it's my favorite of teh three or four books I've read by him. His other books are good, but they weren't forces of nature like this one was.

Finally, one more suggestion: if you're looking for a lyric, epic, true-to-history account of the Old West, you can't go wrong by avoiding Rustler's Rhapsody, which is none of those things, but is pretty hilarious in a goofy slapstick way.

Daniel