Gene Autry wasn’t completely green when he starred in the 12-chapter serial The Phantom Empire in 1935. He’d made a musical appearance in 1934’s In...
The Phantom Empire
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DVD Reviews
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Vol. III
Indiana Jones may have been a professor and an archaeologist, but he always had the DNA of Western heroes. Guns, whips, horses, hats and the Yakima...
High Noon
Many regard High Noon as one of the supremely significant moments in American film, especially as it relates to the players, and the politics, of...
The Westerner/Man of the West
Although Walter Brennan won his third of three supporting actor Oscars—still the record—for his part as the “mangy old scorpion” Judge Roy Bean in...
Young Wayne Blazed a Big Trail
The Big Trail (1930) succeeded in recreating, from the widest vistas to the smallest details, the saga of those men, women and children who crossed...
The Top 10 Western DVD Collections
Western lovers who think of themselves as the last of a dying breed have to be feeling a little less lonely these days, as there are so many...
Comanche Moon
I won’t poke any more holes into what promises to be the final production in the Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove series, starring Val Kilmer (Inish...
The Essential John Ford Collection
(Fox Home Video; $49.98.) Those who look hungrily at the massive Ford at Fox DVD box set, which lists at $299, but are hesitant to pony up that kind...
Rawhide: The Second Season, Vol. II
(Paramount; $38.99.) What made Rawhide an exceptional series is that it usually held fast to its single, simple premise, a handful of drovers push...
Major Dundee
Sam Peckinpah’s devoted fans have never been able to decide whether Major Dundee was a masterpiece mutilated by an unsympathetic studio or the noble...
Requiem for Billy the Kid
French filmmaker Anne Feinsilber began thinking about Billy the Kid when she read a New York Times article about the controversies surrounding his...
The First Films of Samuel Fuller
Sam Fuller made his first movie about a sullen loser, Robert Ford, instead of a two-fisted hero, a singing cowboy or an outlaw. Lucky for Fuller, I...