Renegade Westerns: Movies That Shot Down Frontier Myths

by Clark Hodgkiss, Kevin Grant

The Western is America's definitive contribution to cinema, a bullet-spattered blueprint for the nation's image of itself and its place in the world. To watch a western is to witness the birth of a nation, overseen by square-jawed sheriffs and steel-nerved gunfighters, armed with six-guns and a clear moral vision. Their victories against outlaws and Indians were proof that might was right — so long as it was in the correct hands. Renegade Westerns shows the shadowy side of this picture, where heroes behaved like villains, where Indians were not always the savages we'd been led to expect. From injustice in The Ox-Bow Incident to racism in The Searchers, numerous films criticised the methods behind the myths and the personalities behind the legends. They questioned the simple belief that the destiny of the United States was to expand right across the continent, regardless of other peoples' claims to the land. The cast of characters includes cynical mercenaries and ageing cowhands, gun-toting cattle queens and teenage outlaws. We encounter western superstars — John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper and Robert Mitchum — and icons of modern film — Brad Pitt and Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp and Michael Fassbender. More than 100 films are dissected and discussed, from the hidden depths of High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to the ferocity of The Wild Bunch. There are skewed biopics of Billy the Kid and Jesse James, acid westerns and Cold War parables. The book ranges over 70 years of movie-making, right up to the biggest westerns of recent times — The Homesman and Slow West, and a double-barrelled blast of Tarantino: Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. Complete with a foreword by western expert Edward Buscombe and first-hand accounts by Wild Bunch stars Bo Hopkins and LQ Jones, Renegade Westerns offers a fresh perspective on a genre that continues to attract both large audiences and critical acclaim.

Genres: Westerns

400 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

What we have here is adequately explained in the subtitle...a book of reviews of movies that flew in the face of traditional western movies. Let's face it...the western genre is escapist art, and the old west as portrayed in the distant early years of the film industry just did not exist. Real-life westerners did not die at high noon facing an opponent in a fair fight; they were more likely to be shot in the back while taking a drunken leak in a back alley. But hey...ladies like Karen Steele looked great in jeans in a plaid shirt and you just knew she would be riding off with the hero, so you paid your quarter and watched the movie and wished you were Randolph Scott, little realizing that Randy had absolutely no interest in Karen Steele.

So Messrs Grant and Hodgkiss drafted a fairly complete list of movies that qualified as oaters but defied the tired formula that had been formerly in use. They reviewed these movies, wrote reviews, and bound their body of work in one of the nicest covers I have seen in a long time. The reviews are of varying lengths: understandably, the more significant they perceive the movie to be, the longer the review. Generally the reviews run from one page to five pages, with special status given to The Wild Bunch, which is how God meant it to be. Personally, I make a mental divide on all horse operas as being pre-Wild Bunch and post-Wild Bunch, because that flick was definitely a game-changer. A caution, though....if you read the book you will know the ending to every one of these movies, so be warned.

This work is liberally..., no, profusely...provided with eye-candy in the form of photographs, lobby cards, and gorgeous foreign poster art. Something to look at on every page! Also included herein are transcripts of interviews with duster veterans Bo Hopkins and L.Q. Jones.

Even an aficionado like myself will find titles in here that he never heard of, and I can tell you that I have been very busy doing my online shopping, but some of the titles are so obscure that you can no longer find them in any format. Some, like Walk Like a Dragon can be found in snippets on YouTube, but locating quality transfers of these movies can be very challenging.

To finish the book off, the writers have included a couple of chapters on sub-genres, one being western noir and the other being a chapter on films with a female lead or feminist slant. The movies in each category are reviewed in chronological order all the way up to 2018. The book isn't perfect or all-inclusive, but I think it's the best of its type I've seen to date. It could have benefitted from some closer proofreading to weed out a few homonyms like "horde of dollars" or "faired comparatively poorly".....spellcheck won't help you there, fellas! And I seem to recall mention of a gunfighter with notches on his barrel...you can break a lot of good pocket knives doing that! But over all an interesting read and a must-have for the western film buff.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

How the West Was Spun

What a wild bunch of wonderful western movies are assembled in Kevin Grant and Clark Hodgkiss’s book Renegade Westerns. Movies That Shot Down Frontier Myths! This is not a book to read in one go but rather one to enjoy in small doses because what the two authors actually do is give in-depth presentations and analyses of individual movies.

Their selection of the movies dealt with is not random, but, as the title says, it is focused on westerns that kick against the pricks of what is commonly regarded as the typical western genre, i.e. films that glorify the history of how the west was supposedly won, of how individual men with their braveness and their resourcefulness paved the way for “civilization” and the building of the United States. In other words, the two authors want to introduce their readers into the world of subversive westerns which criticize the conventional assumptions and tenets of the genre, sometimes more successfully and entertainingly than at other times. Interestingly, they manage to muster a great deal of titles of these “renegade westerns”, which is not surprising since a variety of first-class directors tried their hands in the western genre – and sometimes stuck to it – and also because the production conditions of what is commonly referred to as B-movies allowed for greater freedom and less studio interference, which gave those directors more liberty with regard to what they wanted to put on the screen. In his Personal Journey Through American Movies, for example, Martin Scorsese provides good insight into how B-movies permitted directors and scriptwriters to express ideas they would never have got away with in the more prestigious A-movies that were meant to appeal to mainstream tastes and sensibilities, and that were probably also under stricter HUAC control.

Grant and Hodgkiss chose a wide range of movies, from The Ox-Bow Incident to Hostiles, and provide really knowledgeable and profound analyses on every single one of them, not lending their voices to exuberant and undifferentiated praise but coming to conclusive assessments on the merits and demerits of the respective films – even though you might not always agree with them. The same is true of the choices they made: They must needs be subjective to a certain degree. I, for instance, could have done without the flat and garrulous pseudo-westerns by Tarantino and have found gems like Day of the Outlaw instead. On the other hand, there are lots of films that deserve being included and that, consequently, are, because there are some movies a man just cannot ride around. Still, next to essential westerns like The Searchers or The Wild Bunch, you will also find titles that might be new to you and that you will feel encouraged to add to your western collection.

What I also like about this book is how well the two authors know their onions, which shows by the books from which they quote or which they refer to: Most of the standard works on the western (Kitses, Lusted, Slotkin, French, etc.), and even more recondite titles are obviously on the authors’ shelves and must be well-thumbed.

There are also included two interviews with L.Q. Jones and Bo Hopkins, which did not knock my socks off, to be honest, and two extra-sections on noir westerns and westerns that put women into leading roles. The whole book is even made more entertaining by lots of movie stills and film posters, which add colour to an already interesting subject-matter and invite a casual reader to let his horse run wild. All in all, Renegade Westerns is a valuable book for anyone who loves their westerns, and the fact that the authors exclusively deal with American-made westerns seems to make sense to me considering that their topic is westerns that criticize the typical “American” approach to westerns.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

An illuminating examination of western pictures offering something other than the genres’ traditional storylines and characters, Renegade Westerns’ detailed essays explore these ‘shadowy’ releases, discussing techniques, influences and attitudes with a sharp, considered eye. Kevin Grant and Clark Hodgkiss cover films from the 1940s through to 2017, analysing anything of merit that would be of interest to fans desiring more than conventional tropes and tired good/bad confrontations where the outcome is clearly signposted shortly after the opening titles.

Renegade Westerns is a great read, full of mature writing and comprehensive research that never fails to engage with its outstanding depth and thoroughness. Visually supported by many pieces of movie art and on-screen photography, the book is a pleasure to explore and to then refer to whenever seeking information on its featured films. Highly recommended for anyone seeking to gain greater value from the western movie watching.

[Daniel DeLappe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book to read. Get some ideas of old school westerns to rewatch