White Feather, 1955

WHITE FEATHER is a perfect mid-'50s western, which somehow I never saw at the time. I was 10 or so then and seeing all those early 50s westerns with my father: JOHNNY GUITAR (the first film I saw aged 8, what a vivid introduction to cinema), SHANE, THE COMMAND, DRUM BEAT, SITTING BULL, THE GAMBLER FROM NATCHEZ, GARDEN OF EVIL, CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, THE LAST WAGON, RIVER OF NO RETURN, BROKEN LANCE etc. We kids loved anything with covered wagons and Indian attacks on forts, and heroes like Dale Robertson, Clint Walker, Audie Murphy or Guy Madison, or as teamed several times, Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter. 

My father also took me to all those John Wayne and James Stewart westerns, like NIGHT PASSAGE and Ford's THE SEARCHERS, where Hunter had his immortal moment as half-breed Martin Pawley (Wagner had tested for that for Ford would not cast him, it would have been Wagner's first teaming with Natalie Wood if he had).  

WHITE FEATHER: The story of the peace mission from the US cavalry to the Cheyenne Indians in Wyoming during the 1870s. The mission is threatened when a civilian surveyor befriends the chief's son and falls for the chief's daughter.

Wagner is the  lead here, and Jeff is Little Dog, the Indian brave, with Hugh O'Brien as his sidekick.  Debra Paget is the indian princess and stodgy John Lund also features. 

We have covered Jeff Hunter several times before - he is one of "People We Like" - he of course died aged 42 in 1969, Wagner is still here and writing entertaining books, at 86, while Hugh died last year aged 91. Wagner and Hunter appeared in at least 5 films together, as well as the all-star THE LONGEST DAY, while Hunter also did five with Debra Paget - we are very partial to their 1954 PRINCESS OF THE NILE where Deb does one of her torrid dances, and Jeff wears a turban and harem pants, in old Cairo, right. Debra was back out west with Elvis in his first film LOVE ME TENDER in 1956.

WHITE FEATHER though is well done, scripted by western maestro Delmar Daves, but directed by one Robert D. Webb.  

A Place Called Winter

Marvellous to come across an unputdownable novel for the dog end days of the year. I was so engrossed in A PLACE CALLED WINTER by Patrick Gale, published in 2015, I could not stop reading it and did not want it to finish.  

Harry Kane has followed tradition at every step, until an illicit affair forces him to abandon the golden suburbs of Edwardian England and travel to the town of Winter in the newly colonised Canadian prairies.

There, isolated in a beautiful but harsh landscape, Harry embarks on an extraordinary journey, not only of physical hardship, but also of acute self-discovery

“Harry Cane is one of many, the disappeared who were not wanted by their families or their societies and whose stories were long shrouded with shame. This fascinating novel is their elegy” – The Guardian.

We meet Harry as a shy, stammering young man in Edwardian London, living a decent but rather idle life cushioned by his father’s fortune. He enters a somewhat platonic marriage and becomes a father, but his true feelings are unleashed when he falls in love with another man. However, his secret is discovered and Harry is given an ultimatum by his wife’s family. Under threat of disgrace and a sentence of hard labour, he finds himself en route to Canada to make a new life as a settler on a remote Saskatchewan prairie. He befriends his neighbours, a brother and sister who both go on to play important roles in his future, but as the threat of war reaches this remote outpost of the Empire, Harry’s life takes another dark turn.

It is really a western, complete with a terrifying unpredictable villain, and a hero forced to rely on his own resources in a wide open landscape, and it is also a bittersweet, passionate love story, and perfectly captures that Edwardian England (including Gaiety Girls including the young Gladys Cooper) before the Great War changed it all. The Great War also influences and changes the fortunes of our characters here, as we see the Canadian wild west being colonised and changed by the progress of the railways and the new settlers. A fascinating period brilliantly brought to life by Gale. Harry Cane was in fact a real person, Gale's great-grandfather and he pieces his story and invents where necessary to fill in the blanks, from materials left by his grandmother. 

Other characters like Paul and Petra, and Winnie, the wife he left behind, who loved another, are perfectly realised too, as is life in that harsh climate, we also get all-male dances in those early settlements with few women, and the fascinating Cree indians too. The real Harry returned briefly to England in the 1950s, before returning to Canada to die. But he found his happiness at least in that place called Winter.  Left; the real Harry Cane. 

Patrick Gale is a fascinating British author, gay and prolific. I like his collection of short stories DANGEROUS PLEASURES, which he signed for me when we had a very pleasant conversation at a book signing in the late 90s. Good to see he is still writing marvellous novels like A PLACE CALLED WINTER, 

Un Autre Homme, Une Autre Chance, 1977

Time for another look at Claude Leouch's 1977 western: This is my original review in 2010:

ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE - Not really French, this long unseen rarity is a pleasure to see it again now. It is of course a western reworking by Claude Lelouch of his 1966 mega-hit UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - as this is another man and another woman in a different time and place. Its a handsome pleasant hazy re-creation of the old west (well apart from the rape and murder of vet James Caan's wife, Jennifer Warren...). It begins in revolutionary Paris as photographer Francis Huster and wife Genevieve Bujold decide to move to the new world and travel by ship to America, then they are on a covered wagon and attacked by redskins and finally decide to settle and open their photography business. Caan also arrives in town, having sold his ranch, and deposits his baby with the underwritten part of the school-teacher - a too-little seen Susan Tyrell. Then cue the influences of Lelouch's original: some years later they visit their children at the school, she misses her stagecoach drive home, the teacher asks him to give her a drive, they slowly open up to each other, he asks to meet her husband and then we get the flashback about how he was killed .... instead of motor cars and racing tracks there are stagecoaches and horse races - and the ending is perfect as he rides on horseback to join her and the children [having brought his wife's killers to justice] as the camera pulls back to leave them as figures in a landscape with a neat voiceover as it fades to a sepia photograph in a photo-album. It turns out it is the story about the grandmother of the man we see at the start ... 
If you loved the '66 original, you will get a lot of pleasure out of this too, particularly with Caan and Bujold at their most pleasing, both are very likeable here, and as charistmatic as Trintignant and Aimee in the 1966 film,. Lelouch though seems to be out of fashion now, unlike Demy, Malle, Truffaut or Chabrol... We love Bujold of course in films like De Palma's OBSESSION or the ace thriller COMA. 

"That'll be the day"

A western double bill, for late autumn afternoons. Only the best western ever: John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, and a routine oater from 1949 MASSACRE RIVER, only of interest now for teaming of the young Guy Madison and Rory Calhoun - see previous on them, below, or at labels.

We have written about THE SEARCHERS here before, and my 2010 appreciation on Jeffrey Hunter is at 'Jeff Hunter 1' label. Looking at Ford's classic again (I also have it on Blu-ray, as Martin would say) it is a timeless American Classic and the climax is as emotionally stunning as the end of CITIZEN KANE or CASABLANCA. Maybe they are the Top Three American Movies Of All Time?  Its certainly in my Top 10 (along with my other favourite western JOHNNY GUITAR)

The images and the scenery - did Monument Valley ever look more iconic? - stun one again, as does Ford's narrative, Wayne is superlative, Jeff Hunter has his best ever role as halfbreed Martin Pawley - he and Natalie are so poignant together, a perfect Fifties pair, Vera Miles excels as ever, and grown men cry when Ethan picks up Debbie at the end ....

Ford has some amusement too with Wayne's son Patrick and the regulars are all here from Ward Bond down. The early sequence when the settlers realise that Scar is about to attack is chilling and brilliantly done too, as is the scene where Ethan and Martin meet Debbie again in the wigwam with those scalps. Ford orchestrates it all perfectly, as per previous reports; and of course that line of Wayne's "that'll be the day" which gave Buddy Holly the title of one of his best songs ... Max Steiner's score is one of his most evocative and complements the images perfectly. 
Ethan Edwards is racist towards the Indians and the depiction of them may be problematic for some now, though Ford 'atoned' for that with his CHEYENNE AUTUMN in 1964; the squaw Martin gets married to is despatched rather heartlessly. 

MASSACRE RIVER on the other hand is pure studio dross, but a very rare film. I had ordered the dvd only to see it crop up on our Western channel, otherwise known as TCM uk. This must be where Guy Madison and Rory Calhoun got pally, as per my previous on them, and the various reports on their longtime relationship, despite their marriages, and some scurrilous rumours, but there are lots of photos of them together - just like Cary and Randy. 
They share a tub in this and one can see the chemistry between them. Calhoun was an ex-con who got into the movies, mainly rememered now for his two with Monroe and with Hayward in WITH A SONG IN MY HEART. Madison continued in westerns and dramas - both were filming in Europe by the early Sixties, Calhoun in the rather good COLOSSUS OF RHODES by Sergio Leone, so maybe they were meeting up then too. 

THE SEARCHERS though will live forever. 

Guy & Kerwin, a few movie choices ....

My friend Martin has caught up with THE GARMENT JUNGLE, a 1957 thriller with Kerwin Matthews and the lovely Gia Scala. He likes Guy Madison as well (see post below) so for you Martin, here's Guy and Kerwin AND a young Kim Novak in FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE, that nifty 1955 thriller (a prototype for OCEANS 11, which I reviewed a while back. Guy/Kerwin/Kim labels), plus the trailer for THE GARMENT JUNGLE .... and a moment from THE LAST FRONTIER in 1955 with Victor Mature; and his SLAVE OF ROME with Rosanna Podesta in 1961 ....

Hunk de jour: Guy

Another person we like: Guy Madison - quite a lot about him on various sites. Here is his first role of a few minutes in the 1944 wartime drama SINCE YOU WENT AWAY. He was a real marine then, and had a career once he returned to Hollywood after the war.

I don't know SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, John Cromwell's film seems essentially of that era now, like CASABLANCA or MEET ME IN ST LOUIS. I have had to order it, for that great cast: Colbert, Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker, Hattie McDaniel, Agnes Moorehead, Nazimova, and er, Shirley Temple. Guy made quite an impression here as the young marine. 

Below: with Judy Garland, at a premiere, and with Judy again a decade or so later.

Guy (1922-1996) had a respectable career, gravitating towards westerns - one of the first films I saw, when aged 8, was his 1954's THE COMMAND - like Dale Robertson, also big in westerns then, Guy was ideal out west or in cavalry uniform. as in THE LAST FRONTIER.
He also had a long-runnng western series THE ADVENTURES OF WILD BILL HICKOK. He is also good with Jean Simmons in the 1956 drama HILDA CRANE (review at Simmons label) and I like FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE (also with gay Kerwin Matthews), and like Jeffrey Hunter, Tab Hunter, Robert Wagner, Tony Perkins etc he was a leading man of the 1950s, before the new crop arrived: Troy Donahue, Fabian, young Warren Beatty, Redford, etc. 
Like a lot of others he then did several costumers in Europe, as did his pal Rory Calhoun (who did a good one: Leone's THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES in 1961).  One of Guy's SLAVE OF ROME in 1961, is on YouTube, where he co-stars with Rosanna (HELEN OF TROY) Podesta:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiPJoCrbtQA

There are lots of pictures actually of Guy and Rory (1922-1999; mainly a B-movie actor (left), best known now for those two Monroe films at Fox: RIVER OF NO RETURN where Mitchum is the lead, and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE where he is teamed with Betty Grable), and with Susan Hayward in the musical sudser WITH  SONG IN MY HEART, 1952, which we like a lot. 

The boys went fishing a lot (and really caught fish, unlike BBM), both were clients of the notorious agent Henry Willson (Below with the boys). Guy was married for some years to the fragile actress Gail Russell, whom we like a lot, and he had 4 children by his second marriage. Rory was married to actress Lita Baron (usually a tough cookie in westerns), but like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, and Tab and Tony Perkins, their friendship endured during their marriages.

Guy and Rory both did an intriguing-sounding 1949 western: MASSACRE RIVER. One to check out?  He seems a bit clunky jitterbugging though ... More Guy at label. 

Looking at MASSACRE RIVER now the chemistry between the boys is startling, with all that horseplay and fooling around, as Rory's trousers fall down and they grapple in the hot tub. The rest of it is standard 1940s horse opera. Guy had a good run in cavalry uniform, as here and THE COMMAND in 1954 (which I saw when I was 8, one of the first films I saw), THE LAST FRONTIER in '56, and others. 

Fun out west with Anne, Jeff, Rory, Randolph & Angela

I have not seen the 1942 western THE SPOILERS - but it should be fun, with John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich and Randolph Scott heading this western set in Alaska in those gold-rush days. It was remade though in 1955, with a more 50s cast: Jeff Chandler, Anne Baxter and Rory Calhoun, with some grizzled veterans like Wallace Ford and John McIntyre. 

Like Wayne's 1960 comedy western by Henry Hathaway NORTH TO ALASKA we are back in those muddy streets of Nome, Alaska, where everyone is looking for gold or trying to get their hands on others' claims. 

Anne is vamping in high style, and some eye-popping costumes, as saloon owner Cherry Malotte, the guys are merely adequate around her scheming minx, Cue lots of fighting in the mud, and much amusement as Jeff and Rory demolish the saloon bar during their extended fight at the climax. She seems to be having as much fun as she does in her next, Cecil's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Below: the 1942 trio.

A lot of Randolph Scott's westerns are being aired here just now too, usually those lean Budd Boetticher revenge dramas with Randolph as a man alone seeking those who did him wrong, as in BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, COMMANCE STATION, THE TALL T, SIX MEN FROM NOW etc 
One I had not seen before is A LAWLESS STREET from 1955 - usual story, he is the weary Sheriff of a lawless town, who wants to hand in his badge. The interest in this run of the mill one is that Angela L|ansbury plays his ex-wife who returns to town as a singer and dancer and does a rather risque musical number. Rest assured Randolph and Angela ride off in a wagon once he has dished out justice to the lawbreakers .... a pleasant timewaster then, as indeed is THE SPOILERS, I imagine Marlene and Wayne would be fun too, with Randy too of course. 

The Gambler from Natchez, 1954

Regular readers will know that 1954 was my first year at the movies, when aged 8, and taken to the cinema by my parents in Ireland. Dad took me to westerns like JOHNNY GUITAR, SITTING BULL, DRUM BEAT, SHANE, and THE GAMBLER FROM NATCHEZ - western star Dale Robertson was my first movie crush! He is effective here, effortlessly gambling or swordfighting or romancing Debra Paget as the riverboat girl, and he also looks spiffing in his military outfit. (My mother and aunts must have taken me to A STAR IS BORN and other musicals, which I also loved...).

Returning to New Orleans, following four years of army service in Texas in the 1840s, Captain Vance Colby finds his father, a professional gambler, has been killed. The police tell him his father was killed while caught cheating in a card game by Andre Rivage, an arrogant young dilettante. Vance protests that his father was an honest gambler and never used marked cards, but the police inspector tells him there were witnesses. 
Aided by a riverboat owner, Captain Barbee, and his daughter, Melanie, Vance sets out to clear his father's name and avenge his death.

Its a nice period western now, with riverboats (like Tyrone Power's similar THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER about the same time) as Dale seeks revenge on the killers of his gambling father who are led by dastardly Kevin McCarthy, Thomas Gomez is Debra's riverboat father, and its all splendid, directed by Henry Levin, script by Irving Wallace. 

'50s /'60s guys: Jeff and Jeff

Another comparison of two actors (see previous on Oliver Reed & David Hemmings, below). I was looking at an old Jeff Chandler picture the other day, and realised how similar his career path was to that other Fifties guy Jeffrey Hunter - plus both died aged 42 and both from complications after surgery (Chandler in 1961, Hunter in 1969). Hunter had the better career, appearing in more prestige films (including 3 by John Ford) while Chandler was mainly consigned to westerns, actioners, programmers, sudsers where he was an ideal co-star for ladies of a certain age: Loretta Young, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Esther Williams, Susan Hayward ...

Like Susan (and Stanwyck and Streisand) Chandler (1918-1961) - real name Ira Grossel - was from Brooklyn in New York and he also attended Erasmus High School. His odd good lucks and that premature grey hair soon got him into movies, after his war service in WWII, where he became a Universal-International resident hunk (along with Hudson, Curtis, George Nader): westerns like BROKEN ARROW, THE GREAT SIOUX UPRISING, and TAZA SON OF COCHISE, and 'easterns' like BIRD OF PARADISE, YANKEE PASHA, FLAME OR ARABY, SIGN OF THE PAGAN. There were war films like AWAY ALL BOATS and TEN SECONDS TO HELL, 

He was ideal as the beach hunk with designs on Joan Crawford in FEMALE ON THE BEACH - one of our favourite Trash classics here - and with Esther in RAW WIND IN EDEN in 1957 - Esther rather trashed his reputation in her tell-all memoir, apparantly they had been dating but she discovered he was a cross-dresser with a penchant for polka dot dresses! - it was later suggested this was a fabrication to spice up her book, but who knows now .... He squired Lana in THE LADY TAKES A FLYER and was good with June Allyson, Mary Astor and Sandra Dee in the enjoyable tosh that is STRANGER IN MY ARMS, 1959 (see Jeff label). He also starred in RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE - a real Trash Classic - in 1961, and did that silly western THUNDER IN THE SUN as a favour for old pal Susan Hayward. His last film was San Fuller's tough war movie  MERRILL'S MARAUDERS in 1961. He died from blood poisoning after a slipped disk operation.

Jeffrey Hunter is best remembered today for his roles as half-breed Martin Pawley in John Ford's classic western The Searchers (1956), as Jesus Christ in Nicholas Ray's King of Kings (1961) and as Christopher Pike, the first captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, in the original Star Trek pilot.

Jeffrey Hunter (1926-1969): I have already featured his career here as a 'Person We Like' - see Hunter label. He must have been one of the best looking actors ever, certainly of his time - but he seems to have had a troubled life with several unhappy marriages. He worked a lot at 20th Century Fox where he was teamed several times with Robert Wagner, and in films like NO DOWN PAYMENT (which also featured his first wife Barbara Rush), DREAMBOAT, as Little Dog in WHITE FEATHER (1955), Nick Ray's THE JAMES BROTHERS, in the all-star THE LONGEST DAY, he is fun in PRINCESS OF THE NILE in 1954, but his memorial remains John Ford's endlessly fascinating classic THE SEARCHERS in 1956 - his Martin Pawley is always on show somewhere, along with John Wayne, Vera Miles and Natalie Wood. 

We also like his war films: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND, SAILOR TO THE KING, HELL TO ETERNITY, IN LOVE AND WAR. The early 60s saw a dip in his career - going to Europe for items like GOLD OF THE CAESARS, which is a better than usual peplum, He also had a TV series TEMPLE HOUSTON which I do not know, and was famously Jesus (with those piercing blue eyes) in KING OF KINGS for Nick Ray in 1961 .... He also had the lead in a new series STAR TREK in 1965 but did not continue after the first pilot episode. 

In 1969 Hunter suffered a stroke (after an accident on set in Europe), took a bad fall and underwent emergency surgery, but died from complications of both the fall and the surgery.

Both Jeffs are always watchable - I have just had to order MAN TRAP, a 1961 thriller with Hunter and the marvellous Stella Stevens, which I have not seen. Lots more at Hunter label ... 

Richard, Robert or Leo ?

In the early 1800's, a group of fur trappers and Indian traders are returning with their goods to civilisation and are making a desperate attempt to beat the oncoming winter. When guide Zachary Bass is injured in a bear attack, they decide he's a goner and leave him behind to die. When he recovers instead, he swears revenge on them and tracks them and their paranoiac expedition leader down.

A synopsis for THE REVENANT?  (which since it opened here last weekend has been praised in the highest terms and is expected to sweep all before it at the Academy Awards) .... er, no, its from a 1971 Richard Harris western (shot in Spain) titled MAN IN THE WILDERNESS by Richard C. Sarafian - I remember it but did not want to see it at the time (not being one of Mr Harris's greatest admirers) but it now seems to have been re-discovered, and it also features John Huston in the cast. 
Worth another look perhaps - is THE REVENANT a souped-up new version with all the technical wizardy now available - including that very realistic bear? The names may have been changed for the Harris version, but it seems he is playing Hugh Glass - as DiCaprio does in the Inarritu new classic. 

Then there's Robert Redford as JEREMIAH JOHNSON, another mountain man in the wilderness in Sidney Pollack's 1972 western - not the same story of course, but it shows that sagas of mountain men coping with everything nature (and other humans) can throw at them are nothing new .....those trappers and mountain men also feature of course in films like YELLOWSTONE KELLY and HOW THE WEST WAS WON (both Stewart and Fonda as trappers). Plus of course one of Kevin Costner's biggest hits DANCES WITH WOLVES, in 1990, (which even beat Scorsese's GOODFELLAS as Best Film) where his disillusioned cavalry officer leaves 'civilisation' to live in the wilderness and mix with the Natives ... we loved it at the time, don't know how I would feel about it now. 

Lets see how Leo does this time round - he is already on the Oscar campaign trail here, deigning to appear on heavyweight political shows (just like Cate did when campaigning for that BLUE JASMINE award a few years ago...). 

Fort Dobbs, 1958

Having eluded a posse, a wanted man rescues a woman and her young son from a Comanche attack. He then escorts them to the presumed safety of a U.S. Cavalry fort. Trouble develops along the way when the woman comes to believe that her rescuer was responsible for the recent death of her husband.

That late '50s period was that great time for westerns - not only on tv, but at the movies: 1956 - THE SEARCHERS; 1957 - 3.10 TO YUMA, GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, NIGHT PASSAGE; 1958 - MAN OF THE WEST, THE BIG COUNTRY, COWBOY, THE LAW AND JAKE WADE; 1959 - RIO BRAVO, THE HANGING TREE, WARLOCK, THESE THOUSAND HILLS; 1960 - THE UNFORGIVEN, NORTH TO ALASKA, 1961 - Brando's ONE EYED JACKS; 1962 - HOW THE WEST WAS WON, etc. after of course those great early '50s westerns like HIGH NOON, SHANE, JOHNNY GUITAR (the first movie I saw, aged 8 - as per other reports here), DRUMBEAT, WHITE FEATHER etc, and of course Ford with Wayne, James Stewart with Anthony Mann, Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher - see Western label for more on these. Now lets mix in Clint, who while no Wayne or Cooper has an agreeable Western presence, like Randolph Scott, or Dale Robertson or Guy Madison, and whose films while programmers are not without interest:

Sterling Hayden as JOHNNY GUITAR has a line: "Sometimes all a man wants is a smoke and a cup of coffee" - well, sometimes all I want for a snowy afternoon indoors is an unpretentious western ... 

FORT DOBBS, 1958 – A pleasing, tense if minor western from that great era for oaters. I remember this as a kid - we didn't get to see cowboy stars like Clint or Dale Roberston in their tv shows (no tv in Ireland then!) so caught their movies. Directed by the ever reliable Gordon Douglas (studio hack supreme) it casts man of few words Clint Walker as Gar, a wanted man on the run who stops to assist lone Virginia Mayo and cute kid Richard Eyer, as the Commanches attack their homestead. She thinks he killed her husband so tensions mount as they cross Indian territory – then Brian Keith and his guns turn up! The surprise here is that this is in black and white, when even routine westerns were in colour, but the monochrome is surprisingly effective. Walker soon removes his shirt to display that impressive physique, 

Eyer is as good as he was in FRIENDLY PERSUASION, but Mayo impresses the most – shorn of her usual glamour she delivers a compelling portrayal, particularly when she wakes and realises she is naked under her blanket and her wet clothes are drying (there's more than a few nods to RIVER OF NO RETURN here). The Indians of course are just faceless savages … its nicely worked out, there is no overt romance as such between the leads but a nice slow burn as she has to trust him, its one western that delivers. I liked it almost as much as SEVEN MEN FROM NOW! Clint went on to other oaters like YELLOWSTONE KELLY in '59 and the ridiculously enjoyable GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS in 1961 (if only for Roger Moore's godawful Oirish accent) and NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY, as well as co-starring with the likes of Rock and Doris (SEND ME NO FLOWERS) and Sinatra, and is still here in his late-80s. Then it was time for that other Clint to step to the fore, with all those spaghetti westerns ...