Four Cult Westerns

On 16^th of January, I had the great pleasure of attending Night Visions’ and National Audio-visual Institute’s Western Movie mini-festival called Colttikonsertti 2016 (Colt Concert 2016) at the movie theatre Orion.

Four Western movies we’re presented in their 35mm film prints, these movies we’re: Minnesota Clay, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Blue Soldier and Red Sun. So here are my reviews on each one of them.

Minnesota Clay

The first Western and 2^nd movie of Sergio Corbucci, mostly famous from his violent Spaghetti Westerns that include Django, the Hellbenders and the Great Silence. I must say, despite the build-up hype surrounding this movie, it was an incredibly mediocre movie that’s background plot resembled way too much on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and most of the dialogue was the characters telling the audience how they we’re feeling, instead of expressing their emotions or the better word I’m looking for is: Acting.

Still, what I found redeeming here was the protagonist being a 46-year old revolver gunman Minnesota Clay (played by Cameron Mitchell), who was wrongfully judged and placed in a prison encampment, there is another catch about this character and the odds set against him, which I won’t spoil.

The concept of the story was good, but the execution was simply lacking, Still it was Corbucci’s first western and as previously mentioned he went on to make some of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns out there.

Two Mules for Sister Sara

First off, thank you Denmark for having such a pristine copy of the technicolor print, it was near perfect! 

With such deluxe print this was a pure jaw dropping experience to see the movie for the first time and I just have to ask: Why the hell is nobody talking about this movie?!

Everyone talks great things about the Man with no Name trilogy with good reasons, but this movie was an incredibly blast of witty dialogue, extremely charismatic chemistry between Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood that just sells the whole movie.

Directed by Don Siegel, the man who has made great movies like Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz, the Killers and was a clear influence to Clint Eastwood’s career as an actor and director, without Siegel (and obviously Sergio Leone) there wouldn’t be the Clint Eastwood as he is today.

The story is about Hogan (Eastwood) helping the Mexicans to capture a French fortification, on his way he meets up with a Nun named Sister Sara (MacLaine). Look, Do I have to say anything else? Go see this great piece of Western history, I promise you will laugh your ass off, the chemistry is so good between MacLaine and Eastwood.

“All the women I've ever known were natural-born liars but I never knew about nuns until now.” – Hogan

Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue, a movie about the atrocities U.S Soldiers inflicted upon the Native Americans was a massive success over in Europe, so why is it that we have never heard about this spectacle? 

The people hosting the event explained the audience that the movie has been cursed with strict censorship edits, and in fact the film print we saw on the festival was a combination of the gore revealing Swedish technicolor spliced together with the censored Finnish print. You have to give credit to both Night Visions and the National Audio-Visual institute for coming up with a solution that would please the audience.

Now this was a great presentation at the atrocities of war, I have not seen that many Westerns tagged with anti-war, but considering the movie was filmed during the 1970s the clear allegories you can make with Vietnam War in this movie are damningly evident.

Soldier Blue uses two protagonists to construct a narrative between the visionary woman Cresta (Candice Bergen) who’s wisdom and common sense gets ignored and scuffed at, where the naïve young soldier blue Honus (Peter Strauss) is the buffoon who has enlisted to the military cause. 

These tropes by now have been done to the death, but the movie demonstrates that beautiful line between ugly brutality and the central themes, that our world should truly respect the will of others and believing in your own. 

American history is full of war crime atrocities, like any country with military history but the message should always be present to the youth, in our dimmest hopes that history would not repeat itself, in this case, too damn often. 

Red Sun

Charles Bronson! Ursula Andress! And the legendary Toshiro Mifune! All together in a movie! The first west-meets-east Western from James Bond director Terence Young.

The gunslinger tough guy Link (Bronson) and the Samurai Kuroda (Mifune) teaming up is such a hype building concept with these actors, I have to sadly inform the movie is not the greatest out there, but it was a very serviceable and fun action movie. 

It was clearly more Western-favoured with Bronson being the main character, Mifune does a great performance showcasing Samurai swordsmanship and seeing the two different fighting styles working together worked for the movie. 

Still, at times the favouritism to the West just felt too forced and it really disappointed me how the movie ended, but this is just personal preference pure and simple.

Conclusion

I would greatly recommend everyone to check out Two Mules for Sister Sara and Soldier Blue, both we’re the uttermost best presentations of Westerns.