The long wait is finally over: Five gun-blazing late-’50s Western classics directed by the legendary Budd Boetticher are finally out on DVD. Plus four more DVDs worth picking up.
by Harold Schechter
1. The Budd Boetticher Box Set: The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station
Western aficionados have been waiting a mighty long time for these gun-blazing late-’50s classics directed by the legendary Budd Boetticher, the only Hollywood auteur to have worked as a pro matador.
A college football star, Boetticher went to Mexico in the 1930s to recuperate from an injury and fell so passionately in love with bullfighting that he was soon wielding the sword and muleta himself.
Eschewing ostentatious camera work and over-the-top production, Boetticher and his collaborators (war-hero scribe Burt Kennedy and cowboy icon Randolph Scott) managed to produce a series of spare, no-frills films beloved by both cineasts and actual men.
As was the case with other B-movie immortals such as Sam Fuller and Don Siegel, Boetticher’s greatness was not immediately recognized by the world at large. Embarrassingly enough, it took a Frenchman (critic André Bazin) to see him for the artist he was, with his masterpiece Seven Men from Now (already on DVD). Its taut, efficient, utterly unsentimental filmmaking — the cinematic equivalent of Hemingway’s pared-down prose — is perfectly epitomized in its climactic scene: a gun duel in which a youthful Lee Marvin is shot dead with a single bullet before he can even draw his weapon. Now, with the release of this set, macho-movie buffs can revel in the best of the Boetticher oeuvre.
Filmed in the Lone Pine region of Northern California — a rugged desert landscape that mirrors the uncompromising soul of Boetticher’s typical loner hero — these movies offer a host of red-blooded delights. As an actor, Randolph Scott often projected a wooden demeanor that, by comparison, made John Wayne seem like a graduate of the Actors Studio. Under Boetticher’s direction, however, Scott comes across as the quintessence of frontier grit, a resolute (and occasionally vengeance-obsessed) individual whose stirring code of honor is best summed up in a line from The Tall T: “Some things a man can’t ride around.”
Watch the trailer for The Tall T:
Equally compelling is the colorful cast of bad guys who populate the films, played by a crew of top-notch character actors, some destined for future stardom: James Coburn, Claude Akins, Pernell Roberts, Lee Van Cleef. Baddest of all is Richard Boone (whose sheer virility was such that he became a sex symbol despite his close facial resemblance to a mountain troll), in top form as outlaw Frank Usher in The Tall T, a lean, mean western based on an Elmore Leonard story and the gem of this collection. Like so many Boetticher villains, Usher is a complex, oddly appealing figure who develops a deep affection for the hero that ends only when Scott’s decent, honorable character is compelled to shoot him down like a dog. Throw in his two young-gun sidekicks — a trigger-happy psycho (Henry Silva) and a mentally deficient would-be rapist (Skip Homeier) — and you’re in for a hell of a horse ride ($45; amazon.com).
Watch the trailer for Decision at Sundown:
Watch the trailer for Buchanan Rides Alone:
Watch the trailer for Ride Lonesome:
Watch the trailer for Comanche Station:
Noted thespians Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren play dead ’Nam vets resurrected as cyborg killing-machines. Fans of foot-to-thorax combat won’t be let down, as Van Damme does his share of 360-degree spin kicks ($21; amazon.com).
Watch the trailer for Universal Soldier:
3. Quo Vadis
A legendary sword-and-sandals epic from the days of outsize cinematic spectacles. Though it might seem slow to today’s action-oriented audiences, it compensates by having the one ingredient no manly viewer can resist: gladiators ($15; amazon.com).
Watch the trailer for Quo Vadis:
4. M Squad: The Complete Series
Why God created DVDs. Starring Lee Marvin, the epitome of all-American manhood, this TV drama about a plainclothes cop in Chicago’s elite homicide unit owned the small screen in the late 1950s ($108; amazon.com).
Watch classic footage from M Squad:
5. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hellboy’s kick-ass battle with the monstrosity known as Mr. Wink is a highlight, but viewers will also appreciate our hero’s adroit way with the oversize six-shooting shotgun he fondly calls “Big Baby” ($22; amazon.com)
Watch the trailer for Hellboy II:
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