Richard Jaeckel (1926 – 1997), shortish, stocky, great bad guy, was a stalwart character actor of Western movies, from 1950 through 1973....

Durango saves the day – yet again 1948 was an epic year for the Western. But it is easy to forget, in the time of mighty pictures such as...

Death and angst in the cold north Alder Gulch is an Ernest Haycox novel from the year after Trail Town (click for our review of that) and...

Creepy killer When reviewing the Westerns of director Gordon Douglas back in February (click the link for that) we of course mentioned...

Western meets Southern Gothic Inhabiting that shadowy territory between the genres of 70s Western and gothic horror, The Beguiled, which...

Unsold pilot for NBC series, 1955 Among the many TV shows that might have been - but never were - was an entertaining 1955 pilot not...

No matter how fast you are, there's always somebody faster The essay I wrote last month about the quick-on-the-draw hooey in Hollywood...

Down in the west Texas town of El Paso Since we are on the subject of gunmen-peace officers, here’s another one. He’ll be the last of...

Another Texas gunman We were talking recently about old West lawmen (click the link for that) who operated on both sides of the line, as...

The Wolf of the Washita Clay Allison was one of the most violent gunmen of the old West. There may have been a physical, as well as...

Say cheese There were some wonderful photographers of the old West, dating right back to the birth of the art, or science as it was...

A real pro We have been looking at the Westerns of such classy directors as Delmer Daves and Anthony Mann, and other luminaries will...

Stand aside, boys Allan Dwan was one of the most prolific movie directors of them all. He himself reckoned he had made over 1400 films,...

Novel by Oakley Hall and Fox movie, 1959 Warlock was a Pulitzer-shortlisted novel published in 1958 which later the same year was made...

The tin star Further to the subject of law ‘n’ order in the West, we have already established that the law in the West, or in Westerns...

It’s a hangin’ matter Since we are on the subject of the law in Westerns, both juridical and, ahem, extra-legal, I thought we might look...

Colorful rogue After our post on scurrilous judges in Western movies, and they are legion, I thought we’d take a look at perhaps the most...

The law west of the Pecos It’s a generalization, but the law in Westerns tends to be a peace officer: town marshal, county sheriff or US...

A really nice little ‘North-Western’ Ezra Allen Miner, known as Bill Miner and by a number of aliases, was born in Michigan about 1847,...

Apart from some early scenes, a bore In Anthony Mann, her survey of that director’s films, Jeanine Basinger does not include Cimarron...