A few more mini-reviews in Et Al.: Ride Lonesome (1959), Commandos Strike At Dawn (1942), The New Adventures Of Tarzan (1935) (serial), Rome Express (1932) and King Of The Damned (1935).
FROM THE VAULT
- The Dark Guys of London — posted by KeithA on November 1, 2011
- Tarkan vs. the Vikings — posted by kbegg on February 29, 2008
- So Weird I can't even think of a clever headline — posted by KeithA on May 12, 2008
- Just fantasy…and not enough of that — posted by lyzard on August 31, 2018
- Close, but no cigar — posted by lyzard on October 11, 2016
Pages
- About the Cabal
- Full Index of Reviews
- Roundtables
- 01: Brainathon ’99
- 02: Bangs'n'Whimpers
- 03: Post-Apocalypso
- 04: Review All Monsters
- 05: Pretty Mad Scientists
- 06: Tainted Love
- 07: Days of Future Past
- 08: Secret Santa
- 09: Catch a Throwing Star
- 10: Four-Color Features
- 11: Big Bugs
- 12: Fish With Bicycles
- 13: Go Go Go-Go Boys!
- 14: paLe IMITATIONS
- 15: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Roundtable
- 16: Whoa… Deja Vu.
- 17: Month of the Living Dead
- 18: B-Masters Beach Party
- 19: Kinji Fukasaku – The Man No Genre Could Tame.
- 20: Home Video Holocaust – The Video Nasties
- 21: Father Dearest: Who's Your Daddy?
- 22: So Sorry…
- 23: Back to the Well
- 24: Another Month of the Living Dead
- 25: The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back
- 26: Rubber Soul
- 27: Shhhhhh
- 28: Month of the Alternative Living Dead
- 29: On Time & Under Budget
- 30: These Kids Today…
- 31: Mea maxima culpa
- 32: Stingathon ’09
- 33: 10,000 B.S.
- 34: Foot Notes
- 35: Don’t Touch That Dial!
- 36: He Conquered the World
- 37: Secret Santa’s Revenge
- 38: At the Movies of Madness
- 39: They Might Be Giants
- 40: The Other Elizabeth Taylor
- 41: The Dark Guys of London
- 42: Falling Stars
- 43: To Be or Not To Be! (Pilot Error)
- 44: Teeth and Tentacles
- 45: Brunoween
- 46: Howl of the B-Masters
- 47: It’s Alive!
- 48: Bad, Black and Beautiful
- 49: Don’t Quit Your Day Job
- 50: B-Mentia 15
- 51: Quelle Horreur!
- 52: Carradine, Thou Wayward Son!
- 53: Tall, Dark and Gruesome
- 54: Pets Gone Wild
- 55: The Bad Place
- 56: From The Bible To Barbarella
- 57: A Fistful Of Pennies
- 58: Hello, Dolly
- 59: No, Not That One!
- 60: Dr Terror’s House Of Honours
- 61: WTF!?
- 62: In The Key Of B
- 63: The Forgotten Dawn Of Horror
- 64: The Most Dangerous Roundtable
- 65: Room For One More
- 66: Were-WHAT?
- 67: The China Anniversary Syndrome
- 68: The China Anniversary Syndrome: Part 2
- 69: The China Anniversary Syndrome: Part 3
- 70: The China Anniversary Syndrome: Part 4
- The Links We Love
#1 by kbegg on November 11, 2007 - 9:33 am
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“Bounty hunter Scott is escorting callow killer James Best to Santa Cruz for hanging…”
Because Best starred in the Killer Shrews?
#2 by lyzard on November 11, 2007 - 1:16 pm
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He’s got a hell of a resume; you can pretty much pick your own capital offense. (On the other hand, wow, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms AND Forbidden Planet!? I may end up defending him.)
#3 by Blake Matthews on November 11, 2007 - 1:56 pm
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“Personally, I parted company with the story at the point where the Odious Comic Relief – the Odious, Odious Comic Relief – whips a machine-gun from his backpack and slaughters about two hundred natives for having the temerity to object to their temple being plundered.”
Maybe Randolf Scott should’ve escorted this guy for hanging instead.
#4 by Joshua on November 11, 2007 - 4:21 pm
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Lyz, you’re Austrailian, right? I’ve always assumed that westerns appeal mainly to Americans due to their being set during/shortly after the westward expansion of the US. If you don’t mind my asking, what attracts you to the western? Is there an equivalent genre in Australia?
#5 by lyzard on November 11, 2007 - 5:57 pm
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“….Maybe Randolf Scott should’ve escorted this guy for hanging instead….”
There’s no “maybe” about it. Although hangin’s too good fer’im!
#6 by lyzard on November 11, 2007 - 6:12 pm
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“….If you don’t mind my asking, what attracts you to the western? Is there an equivalent genre in Australia?…”
The short answer is, because my father’s been thrusting them upon me since I was old enough to sit in front of a television; they are part of the test pattern of my life. The slightly longer answer is, because I like good films of any genre. And the actual answer is, while I would watch *any* western, as I would watch *any* science fiction or horror movie (that is, regardless of quality), I particularly enjoy seeing clever film-makers and writers take established genres and their cliches and use them to new and thoughtful ends. There’s a film I could have reviewed this time and didn’t (probably will now) which is a Republic western. Republic attracts a lot of scorn from critics, and yes, their work was absolutely poverty-stricken; no stars (or just falling ones), no sets, no stunts; in fact – all they have is *ideas*, because ideas cost less. There are a number of Republic westerns that I find absolutely fascinating in this respect – they go in the most unexpected directions – and also because, very unusually, they are often genuinely interested in their female characters, which is almost unheard of in this genre.
(And of course, everything I’ve said here applies equally to science fiction films, the other great fifties genre.)
No, there’s no equivalent Australian genre as such, but the country being what it is, any adventure-type story is going to *feel* rather like a western, whatever period it is set in. Only while the US western was about the coming of civilisation, we never really got civilised outside the cities; which is why you get films like Wolf Creek.
#7 by Blake Matthews on November 11, 2007 - 6:17 pm
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What did you think of Tom Selleck’s “Quigley Down Under”?
#8 by lyzard on November 11, 2007 - 6:20 pm
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Haven’t seen it. With rare exceptions, I avoid on principle anything with the words “Down Under” in the title.
#9 by Blake Matthews on November 11, 2007 - 6:35 pm
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If nothing else, Selleck has a great line after killing Alan Rickman.
#10 by supersonic on November 12, 2007 - 10:56 pm
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“to Santa Cruz for hanging”
Santa Cruz as in Beach Boardwalk, the Big Dipper, The Lost Boys, the UCSC Banana Slugs? I can’t imagine a less hanging-ish town. Or is this a different Santa Cruz?
“the US western was about the coming of civilization”
In fiction, yes. In real life most of the famous Wild West was about a collapse of law and order surrounding the Civil War. A lot more of it took place in, like, Kansas than out on the real frontier, let alone in the southwestern desert.
#11 by lyzard on November 12, 2007 - 11:09 pm
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“The US western”, by which I mean, yes, fiction. I guess I’m talking the cinema of the 20s through the 50s, after which we get the revisionist westerns (and the Italian version of events.)
It doesn’t specify where the film is set; they’re in desert areas for much of it. There’s a Santa Cruz in both Arizona and New Mexico, isn’t there?
#12 by supersonic on November 12, 2007 - 11:44 pm
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um, there is a Santa Cruz, New Mexico, population 423… Arizona has a Santa Cruz County, which is on the Meskin border and woulda been part of the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.
Not much to work with there, but on the other hand Santa Cruz CA is not exactly a desert region.
#13 by Joshua on November 12, 2007 - 11:52 pm
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Thanks for answering my inane question. Now I find myself intrigued by the notion of Australian adventure films feeling like westerns. Are there any you would recommend?
#14 by lyzard on November 13, 2007 - 3:31 am
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“Recommend”? Oooh…. You have to understand, a lot of these things were (like Steve Irwin and Foster’s beer) manufactured specifically for overseas consumption, so I don’t know how many I would be willing to recommend, as such. Let me think about it and get back to you. (And that wasn’t an inane question at all.)
#15 by Joshua on November 13, 2007 - 6:41 am
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Wait just a second here. You mean to say that you don’t swill liters and liters of Fosters while taunting reptiles? I find that hard to believe. Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t spend every day fighting for gasoline!
#16 by Blake Matthews on November 13, 2007 - 7:21 am
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Did you ever see the Razorback film? If so, was that a “Western consumption” film?
#17 by lyzard on November 13, 2007 - 4:08 pm
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“….Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t spend every day fighting for gasoline!…”
Ah, no, we do do that, actually.
Okay, to try and address everyone’s questions, I’ll first say that those of you elsewhere need to understand that for a long time there really was no such thing as “the Australian film industry”. We had people who made films, and there were times when people came here to make their films, but it was sporadic. It didn’t become an industry as such until the seventies, really, and then there were complications about government funding and the need for overseas sales and so on, most of which led to compromise in one form or another. The overseas guest star was a standard, right from the start, and so was tourist board-esque cinematography. So you get films like The Sundowners and Kangaroo and Robbery Under Arms, which are supposed to be “about” Australia, but are more about Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr and Maureen O’Hara. Later on you tended to get the more deliberate culture clash films; productions like The Last Wave and Walkabout. These are more honest, but there’s still a sense that you need that non-Australian element to play overseas. Even something like Picnic At Hanging Rock was obviously brought to us by the Victorian Tourist Commission.
But to be fair, it isn’t all compromise: there is a genuine sub-genre dealing, and not just commercially, with the theme of “outsiders”, either tourists of just ignorant city types, and what happens when they foolishly wander off the beaten track. There’a whole clutch of these films, either borderline or outright horror: Wake In Fright, Night Of Fear, Inn Of The Damned, The Cars That Ate Paris, Alice To Nowhere….and, yes, Razorback, and Wolf Creek.
AAAAAAnyway – to get back to Joshua’s question – the one film I think best typifies what I meant by “the Australian western” is Sons Of Matthew, which is about white settlers “taming the land” (or “destroying the natural environment”, whichever phrase you prefer!). Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s available even here (maybe on tape; not DVD). I would also suggest We Of The Never Never, which is from the woman’s perspective (and I think is on DVD), and also – you may know this one – a Chips Rafferty film called The Overlanders, which is a war film, but also a very good example of the kind of thing I mean.
#18 by KeithA on November 13, 2007 - 4:29 pm
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And how does Yahoo Serious’ Reckless Kelly fit into the scheme of Australian Westerns?
#19 by lyzard on November 13, 2007 - 4:45 pm
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I think it would fall into the other main sub-genre of Australian films, viz. “@#$% Tha Police”.
#20 by Joshua on November 13, 2007 - 6:48 pm
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Excellent! Thanks for the recommendations– I’ll see if I can track any down in this heathen land.