Anything I could say has pretty much already been said. This is a hidden treasure. Please please, whoever has the authority to do so, please put this out in a quality DVD edition. I really can't understand why it already isn't. Sadly, James Coburn isn't around anymore to do an audio commentary. I would really like to hear from all the principals what it was like to make this movie.
A truly great movie...
I love satires like Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein etc etc and adored this movie that is a true Western satire. I own this on VHS but want to buy it on DVD. TELL the peeps who do that sort of thing !
The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful
This 1967 film is a comedy remake of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". An Army gold bullion shipment is stolen. Sneaky gambler Lewton Cole (James Coburn -- "Our Man Flint") discovers a map and nearly gets shot for his discovery. Cole curiously follows the map. Sheriff Honest John Copperod (Carroll O'Connor -- "All In The Family") follows Cole seeking revenge after Cole locks Honest John naked into his own cell and steals Honest John's horse. Honest John's beautiful daughter Billie follows Cole seeking satisfaction after a romp in the hay.
Confusion follows with Cole and Honest John, Billie, the original thieves and an Army cavalry troop running in circles seeking the gold. Throughout the confusion Roger Miller vocals laud 'The Code Of The West' -- a nebulous and flexible code that bends to fit any situation.
"Waterhole #3" showcases the (IMO unexpected) worldly chemistry between James Coburn and Carroll O'Connor. But I do not consider "Waterhole #3" to be 'a man's film'. "Waterhole #3" also depicts larceny and satisfaction -- IMO both gender-neutral motivators.
After being coerced by a roving gang of Kiowas to trade his season's worth of hard-earned furs for a runaway slave, Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) vows to take back what's his. Before he can get them, though, the Kiowas are slaughtered by a gang of `scalphunters' led by Jim Howie (Telly Salavas), who nips Joe Bass's furs in the bargain. With Joseph Winfield Lee (Ossie Davis) in tow, Joe Bass trails the fur and scalp-laden Jim Howie and vows yet again to reclaim his property.
THE SCALPHUNTERS (1968) is a comedy-western that somehow manages to makes palatable some terrible things - specifically, slavery and the harvest and sale of human scalps. It doesn't condone them, of course, but it doesn't dwell on their horrors, either. Lancaster is energetic and perfectly cast as the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Burt Lancaster - Shelley Winters Director(s): Sydney Pollack DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I don't know the real history of the gunfight at the OK Corral. I saw the recent movie TOMBSTONE with Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer and found it thoroughly enjoyable but I never considered it to be "historical". It was just hysterical.
HOUR OF THE GUN is another, older version of the story. It too is excellent and more believable as a historical drama but I have no conception that it is historical other than the recognition that Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Ike Clanton were real people; Tombstone, Arizona, Colorado, Mexico and the OK Corral are real places; and a gunfight really did take place at the corral. That doesn't matter to me because this too is a fine film and thoroughly entertaining. It has none of the comic element that TOMBSTONE had but it is a high quality western... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Garner - Jason Robards Director(s): John Sturges DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Although scarcely seen in its original 3-D, and entirely out of sight for a decade and a half after its producer-star died, Hondo has maintained a high rep among John Wayne fans--and it wasn't even directed by Howard Hawks or John Ford. (Actually, Ford did shoot some second-unit stuff while visiting Wayne on location.) Half-breed Hondo, companioned only by an antisocial dog, tends to be more sympathetic toward the Apaches than toward the white society he occasionally scouts for. He falls into uneasy friendship with a New Mexico farmwoman (Geraldine Page) whose husband deserts her for long stretches, and whose son (Lee Aaker) is blood brother to the local Apache chieftain. A good, spare frontier tale--Louis L'Amour via James Edward (Angel and the Badman) Grant--in which... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Geraldine Page Director(s): John Farrow DVD Release Date: Released the 11 October 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This restoration of Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western Major Dundee is nothing short of magnificent, a noble attempt at restoring a famously wrecked masterpiece. When Peckinpah went over budget and over schedule during the Mexico shoot, unshot scenes were canceled and the footage rudely cut by the studio. The director disowned the results. In 2005, surviving footage was patched back in, and a new musical soundtrack commissioned to replace the score Peckinpah hated. This raises some legitimate questions about interpreting a director's intentions, and about messing with film history, but Major Dundee--The Extended Version is such a rousing, mysterious experience, one feels grateful.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) is a vainglorious officer busted to the decidedly inglorious job... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlton Heston - Richard Harris Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 20 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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