It moves at a stately pace This movie is best viewed as the last part of a Delmer Daves trilogy. In 1950 Daves directed, for Twentieth...

A weaker Daves Western It’s a rather curious thing that Delmer Daves, who directed a film as good – and as influential - as Broken Arrow...

An influential Western We’ve been talking about the Western career of Delmer Daves (click the link for that). Well, with his first...

A great Western director If I described to you a noted film director who was born in the first decade of the twentieth century in...

One classic, one good The short story Three-Ten to Yuma by Elmore Leonard, an excellent little read (it’s collected in The Complete...

Who are those guys? Men (and occasionally women) of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency played a big part in Western movies. They...

Both to be enjoyed - but I prefer the book Ernest Haycox’s 1941 novel Trail Town is a dark and somber affair. Its central character is...

A classic gambler-gunfighter of the old West Yesterday I was waxing lyrical, or waxing anyway, about Luke Short the writer, real name...

The writer of novels, short stories and screenplays Luke Short (1908 – 1975) specialized in Westerns, and very good his tales were too. I...

Next time you point a gun at me, shoot We are in the throes of looking at Western novels and the movies made from them, and today another...

The term B-Western seems to get people quite exercised these days. I think some folk find it rather demeaning, suggesting low quality and...

The revenge Western We’ve been comparing some Western novels with their movie versions recently, for example Luke Short’s Ambush and the...

The fastest gun in the West They said my speed was next to none But my lightning draw had just begun When I heard a blast that stung my...

Hmmm... I caught this show, alternatively titled The American West, on a British TV channel I pick up by satellite here in France. They...

Not too bad After the huge success of Shane in 1953, Alan Ladd fancied himself a big Western star and set up a company, Jaguar...

Seriously good Here's a cavalry Western I like a lot, to finish our current thread. It’s a classy picture. It’s an Army v Apache story –...

Not a dud but not top-drawer Ford either I’m just going to do two more cavalry Westerns, for the moment anyway. There are so many that...

The black sergeant Let us continue with our thread of cavalry Westerns. Very soon after the solid but non-great example The Horse...

Rip-roaring This was a real Raoul Walsh film, dashing, macho and boisterous. He did a good line in whitewash biopics - look at his absurd...

A Fordian cavalry Western Since we are on the subject of cavalry Westerns at the moment, here’s one that I am inordinately fond of. At...