There’s a time and place that I would really like to visit, one that regular readers of The Unknown Movies will probably be able to guess. That time and place would be the golden age of the cowboy (the latter half of the 1800s) in the American west. There are many things about being a cowboy in that time and place that appeal to me. There would be the joy of discovery, with the opportunity to find new places in this land that no one had ever seen before (please don’t tell me the Native Americans probably saw it all first), and see it before it would be changed forever by so-called progress. I would be able to pack some heat (a gun, for all you foreign readers) on me wherever I went, and no one would make any objection about it. And by judging from all the western movies I have seen, there would be plenty of beans for dinner if I was eating out with my fellow cowboys in the wilderness (I love beans), and if I went to a restaurant they would always have steak available on the menu (I love steak as well, cooked medium, please.) My wanting to visit the old west clearly comes from my love of western movies. There are so many things that I like about western movies. Read my review of Gentleman Killer and find out just what these things are, as well as to find out why this is a satisfying entry in the spaghetti western genre.

Miss me much?  I’ve been on a wee sabbatical, attempting (and failing miserably) to clear some of the other projects off my plate.  But now I’m back, with a month-long tribute to the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.  The REAL crew of the Enterprise.

First up is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), one of the best examples ever of a reimagining done right:

And then we have Pioneer Woman (1973), in which our protagonist is a frontier wife with all of the gumption of a pet rock.

The 1939 version of The Wizard Of Oz may be the definitive one, but it is very far from being the only one. Published in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz” was an instant classic, and ripe for adaptation. Within two years the book was turned into a stage musical, and within nine the first film version was released. Throughout the silent era and into the time of sound cinema, numerous attempts were made to interpret Baum’s magical tales for the silver screen, with varying degrees of success.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ (1910)

THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ (1914)

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