It was Kirk Ellis’s choice for our February film and he chose last year’s NEWS OF THE WORLD.
Based on the novel of the same name by Paulette Jiles, a National Book Award finalist (which I have not read), the story is set five years after the end of the Civil War in Reconstruction Texas still occupied by Union army soldiers.
A contemporary Western and one of the best films about the changing West, HUD (1963) was my selection for our January meeting. It tells the story of a Texas cattle ranching family in bitter conflict over its past and future. Hud Bannon (Paul Newman) is a charming but womanizing scoundrel. His father, Homer (Melvyn Douglas), an honorable old Westerner, can’t abide his son’s reckless, selfish ways. Between them is Hud’s teenaged nephew Lon (Brandon de Wilde) who loves his grandfather but also wants to be like his uncle. And there’s Alma (Patricia Neal), the Bannon’s housekeeper. Vivacious and earthy, she brings some stability, though fragile, to the Bannon home.
For our December movie watching, Johnny D. Boggs chose a surprising Gene Autry picture called THE COWBOY AND THE INDIANS. It’s surprising because Autry, whose company produced this B Western, presented something only a handful of silent films, like THE VANISHING AMERICAN, and fewer sound pictures, such as MASSACRE, had done prior to 1949 when this film was released.
An engaging tale of vengeance was Robert Nott’s choice for our latest Western Night virtual gathering. CORONER CREEK, a B Western released in 1948, finds Chris Danning (Randolph Scott) in pursuit of a man he knows only to be tall and blonde with a scar on his right cheek.
An elegiac-themed Western, THE LAST OF THE FAST GUNS (1958) was David Morrell’s choice for our latest Western Night at the Movies virtual gathering.
This Universal B picture opens intriguingly with a black-clad rider passing a cemetery where an open grave waits. In the town, the rider dismounts, faces a gunfighter in a shoot out and kills him. (The open grave was for the loser of the contest.) The rider then gets invited to see a wealthy old man who’s confined to a wheelchair who offers him $25,000 to go to Mexico to find his long-lost brother.
For our October Western Night at the Movies session, Sheila Ellis chose THE PROPOSITION, an Australian film from 2005.