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The running time of The Tall T is very brief. Almost like a temporally overgrown episode of Gunsmoke. And that's fine. This film is taut, compressed and direct. Unlike more ambitious--or pretentious--Westerns such as Once upon a Time in the West, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there is absolutely no flab or dead air. The story is economical, the pacing is at a swift gallop, and the climax hits like a cannonball.

Randolph Scott is a delight in the lead. Before seeing him in Ride the High Country some time back, I had never even heard of the man. Now, the more I see of Scott, the more I think he'd make an excellent choice for the fourth face--along with Duke, Clint and Cooper--on a Western Mt. Rushmore.

You can't, of course, have a great Western without strong villains/henchmen, and TTT holds a full house with Richard Boone, Henry Silva, Skip Homeier.

Boone's Frank Usher is a classic Burt Kennedy villain--he penned the film's screenplay--in that he's a thoroughly nasty piece of work but still retains a few shreds of humanity. (Much like Claude Akins' character in Comanche Station.) The scene where he takes a plate of food and coffee to the sleeping captive Doreen Mims (Maureen O'Sullivan), and then pulls a blanket over her exposed shoulder is quite touching. He behaves as a father to a daughter he will almost certainly see murdered within 48 hours. One can well imagine the conflict in his mind.

Usher also takes a shine to his prisoner Pat Brennan (Randolph Scott), and the latter evinces a grudging respect for the former, too. As good as TTT is, it would have been better still if the relationship between Brennan and Usher had been fleshed out further. This would have increased the impact of the ultimate battle between the two at the movie's conclusion.

Silva also leaves an impression as the soulless Chink who positively salivates at the thought of killing people.

On the other hand, Arthur Hunnicutt's performance as a crusty old stagecoach driver was somewhat disappointing. I like Hunnicutt a great deal, but he was not in top form for TTT.

In the last analysis, this a little gem of a Western. It's tough, well-acted, sharply drawn, and it gets straight down to business. TTT belongs in every Western buff's DVD collection.

It's a dam' rare thing when I prefer something new to something old, but this is one of those times. Now I certainly respect the original 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Most Western experts rate it one of the best and I'm not about to say they're wrong. However, much like My Darling Clementine, it just didn't do all that much for me. I didn't feel the slow boil of tension the film is known for. And without that tension, what have you got? Boredom in Bisbee and a coma in Yuma, I suppose. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but I really have no great desire to see it again.

The 2007 effort, on the other hand, has much more bravura and zest. There are only a couple of preposterous postmodern anachronisms, such as Dan's wife whining because he made some decision about the ranch without consulting her. Hello! This was southern Arizona in 1884 and it was a man's world, not one in which a young shrew posted a tell-all video on Tik Tok if her hubby went out drinkin' with the boys rather than taking her to the Taylor Swift concert.

This film features several excellent performances. Logan Lerman as the boy coming of age in the Old West, is very good. Peter Fonda showed well as a hard-bitten Pinkerton. Alan Tudyk was sympathetic and slightly droll as Doc Potter. And Russell Crowe was all he's cracked up to be as Ben Wade. I do feel like the 2007 Wade was fleshed out better than the 1957 iteration.

Ben Foster gets plenty of praise for his portrayal of Charlie Prince, but I'm ambivalent about him. For the most part he does a very good job, but there are a few cases where the slightly geeky 21st-centery Boston spoilt thing comes to the fore and undermines his portrayal. It takes one heck of an actor to free himself entirely from his time and place and Foster isn't quite good enough to pull it off.

Perhaps what I most admire about the picture is Dan (Christian Bale) putting his life on the line to earn the admiration he covets so much from his son. And he earns the great respect of Ben Wade into the bargain. That sort of striving after respect through acts of conspicuous bravery and heroism is classically Western. Indeed, it seems that in the Old West status was conferred less by fame and fortune per se, and more by the manly virtues. Quite remarkable that a film made in 2007 dilated on a theme that by that time and even more so now, is considered infra dig.

This film reminds me somewhat of The Tall T insofar as it's set, almost entirely, in a single isolated location, and the heroes in both films are confined to this spot and beset by grave menace and danger. Heck, one could even say that Errol Flynn's Lafe Barstow bears a strong resemblance to Randolph Scott's Pat Brennan in his rather dour disposition and his unimpeachably upright behavior vis-a-vis a vulnerable, beautiful lady in their midst. Alas, Rocky Mountain ends far more tragically than The Tall T.

The picture's scenery, near my old stomping grounds of Gallup, New Mexico, is stark and forbidding, not unlike Monument Valley. And indeed, this film feels almost like something John Ford--Monument Valley Ford, that is--could have directed. The black-and-white photography is quite fine, but I can't help wondering how this movie would have looked in Technicolor. The red and orange rock formations of west central New Mexico are remarkably vivid and would have shown well in color.

Excellent acting in this one. Slim Pickens makes one helluva film debut for himself and it's clear from the start that he was born to be a star in the Western genre. Patrice Wymore is very good as a rather brave Yankee woman who finds herself in a frightening scenario and is a bit conflicted by her presence among Confederates who wind up ambushing her fiance and his Union patrol. Then there's the grizzled, folksy Chubby Johnson as a stagecoach driver, and a canine thespian playing Spot who very nearly steals the show.

There is never a dull moment in Rocky Mountain, but the conclusion is its most memorable part. Barstow's Confederates heroically divert a Shoshone host from the woman, the old stagecoach driver, and an injured Bluebelly, and go out in a blaze of glory with a suicidal charge into the Indian forces. The Union cavalry arrives a moment too late to do the Rebs any good, but does honor them by unfurling the Confederate battle flag, and sending the dead soldiers off with a full military tribute as Max Steiner's dolorous version of "Dixie" plays in the background. It may not be a bona fide tearjerker, but it's not far from it. At bare minimum, the viewer's heartstrings will be tugged, provided he has a heart.

This is one of the more intense Westerns I have seen. Skip Homeier, who does an excellent job of playing the menacing outlaw Clay Anderson, happens upon an isolated family that seems like helpless prey for the predator. The man of the house is a preacher who appears to be hopelessly naive and idealistic in believing he can save Anderson's soul. The preacher's wife is young, voluptuous and a little amorous. Then there's a little boy who actually seems less of a tinhorn than his parents, although he very quickly falls for the outlaw's masculine charisma.

The whole mise-en-scene seemingly portends doom for the preacher and his family. And Anderson constantly appars on the verge of inflicting misery on the people who have extended their hospitality to him. In consequence, SaTD has an atmosphere that is borderline oppressive.

Alas, the worst does not come to pass. The preacher--well played by Macdonald Carey, whom I had never even heard of before viewing this film, and looking for all the world like Christopher Lee--proves to be made of far sterner stuff than the viewer might expect. Moreover, his salvific persuasion ultimately has an effect on the nihiilistic Anderson. And the fact that the clergyman prevails probably saves him, his wife and his son.

Carey is really quite superb here. There are moments where a gleam of madness shows in his eyes and the viewer may conclude that he's a fanatic. But rationality supervenes and the preacher then goes about his practical pursuits.

In some ways SaMD is a variation of the Shane mythos. A mysterious and lethal stranger shows up at the home of an idyllic family, wins over the boy and his dog with his checkered charisma, arouses the sexuality of the wife, and forms an ambivalent relationship with the paterfamilias. But, whereas Shane is a good soul through and through, Clay Anderson is a badman who possesses a tenuous fiber of goodness that could possibly be embroidered into the tapestry of a new man. And in both films, the mysterious interloper suffers a serious wound, fatal in Anderson's case, perhaps not in Shane's.

An interesting subplot of this film is a killer horse. Yes, a killer horse. Think of an equine Jaws marauding through a small community in the Old West. You might not think a horse could be frightening, but this rampagaging, hyper-aggressive steed certainly puts fear into all who come into contact with him. The parallel between the horse and the outlaw is so transparent that it is not even metaphorical.

Along with The Bravados (1958), SaMD is the most overtly Christian Western I have seen, with The Bravados evincing Catholic overtones, and SaMD hewing to Protestantism. The possibility of redemption is at the heart of both. But whereas in The Bravados redemption is sought by a fundamentally good man who has made a terrible mistake, in SaMD redemption comes to a genuine villain who finally sees the light in his dying moments. Both are excellent films that give thoughtul treatment to Christianity, a subject that is strangely neglected in the Western genre.

Obviously, this sub focuses heavily on home-cooked steaks. That's cool. Probably 90 percent of the steaks I eat, I prepare myself. But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally dote on the whole steakhouse experience. It's nice sometimes to not have to cook and to have a pretty waitress bring you your meal and the full kit. It can also be interesting to see how others cook steak and the trimmings.

This said, do you have a go-to steakhouse for when you don't feel like being bothered with doing it all yourself, and you'd rather just be pampered for a change?

The best in Lubbock, Texas is the Double Nickel. Beautiful Old West decor--looks like the nicest saloon in San Fran in 1866--very fine service, and they can make me a mean strip with bleu cheese crust, not to mention a very solid martini.

The most legendary steakhouse in West Texas, however, is the Perini Ranch (pictured above) in Buffalo Gap. I haven't been there, but many claim it is the best in Texas. It's at the top of my bucket list.

Rough Night in Jericho is a tough, entertaining Western girt with considerable acerbic, deadpan wit.

The cast, of course, is outstanding, and it's hard to say any single actor outshines the rest. The villain is Dean Martin's Alex Flood, a man who liberated a town only to become a vicious tyrant, something so-called "liberators" frequently do. Martin is really excellent here. His natural tendency as an actor is affable humorousness, but there's nothing affable or humorous about Alex Flood. Martin plays him with a flinty, merciless menace that may surprise devotees of Dino.

His chief henchman is Slim Pickens' Yarbrough. And Yarbrough is one nasty customer. Pickens' natural folksiness can sometimes take the edge of his characters, but that doesn't happen in RNiJ. Instead, Yarbrough is a thoroughly bellicose thug not unlike Slim's turn as the chief heavy in An Eye for an Eye (1966).

George Peppard, John McIntire and Jean Simmons comprise the captains of Team Good. Peppard is a calculating, amoral gambler who's loath to involve himself in the moral and criminal contretemps of Jericho, the town in which he and McIntire have arrive to help Simmons with her stagecoach business, which is beset by Flood. Alas, Flood's malefeasance becomes too much even for Peppard's Dolan to stomach, and he decides to do good. McIntire, seriously injured in the film's opening scene, spends most of his time in bed bellyaching for three fingers of whisky to help ease the pain.

Simmons' Molly Lang is a gutsy, hard-drinking woman who refuses to yield to the impositions--financial and sexual--of Flood. And it is her constant goading of Dolan that helps precipitate the final conflict.

Simmons does well. Except for a rather silly, comedic scene in which she and Dolan get smashed, she adds to the picture rather than detracts from it. Fortunately, that comedic interlude, which threatens to knock this rather serious film off beam, proves a brief oxbow.

In some ways the highlight of the film is a fight between Dolan and a red-clad, whip-wielding Yarbrough. This is one brutal and intense roughhouse, and it may be the best I've ever seen in a Western. Heck, it's among the top I've seen in any genre.

But ultimately what hurries this fast-pace picture along is the tactical machinations of Team Good and Team Bad. The latter certainly seems to be holding all the aces for most of the film, but Team Good manages to seize the initiative and rout the fiends. Then there is the customary ultimate confrontation between the two principals--Flood and Dolan. It resolves in a most satisfying and traditional manner, and the Western aficianado will be suitably chuffed. Rough Night in Jericho may not be a philosophical work to make Wilhelm Dilthey sit up and take notice, but it is crackerjack entertainment in the fine Western custom.

I've heard it said of Will Penny that it "deglamorizes" the Old West. But is this true? Certainly, this film dilates upon the harsh, coarse, unsentimental and dangerous aspects of the cowboy's existence. As related in Will Penny, the cattle drive wasn't exactly peaches n' cream. The elements were pitiless, the work difficult and hazardous, and the recompense anything but lavish. The food wasn't up to Brillat-Savarin's standards, it was served by surly cooks, and your fellow cowhands stank to high heaven.

But is telling the unvarnished truth "deglamorization"? In point of fact, there aren't many Westerns that actually glamorize the Old West. Now there are certainly quite a few that sanitize it somewhat. These films show little of the grime and the blood and the pain and the fear and the isolation that were surely common in this place and time. But polishing something isn't the same thing as glamorizing it. The Western genre has never pretended that life in the Old West was opulent, refined and beautiful--in short, glamorous. On the contrary, the genre has done a good job of showing life in the Old West as the dangerous, impoverished and nasty grind it so often was. But the Western generally did so in a reserved, somewhat oblique way. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure we gain much by witnessing Comanche tortures, men getting their heads blown off, and families living on the verge of starvation.

Will Penny, however, gets us a bit closer to the latter than most Westerns, and that gritty authenticity is definitely part of its appeal. But rather than deglamorization, this is deglorification. No great victories and prizes are won in this film. Charlton Heston's character of Will Penny doesn't pluck a motherlode of gold from a creek, he doesn't fill his pockets with money at the end of an epic cattle drive, he doesn't outgun the badman on Front Street at high noon, and heck, he doesn't even ride off into the sunset with the beautiful girl.

Will Penny, this simple--but far from stupid--and humble man is an anonymous cowhand. That is his lot and his life. And in this picture, Penny does accrue no small measure of honor from his decent treatment of a young woman (Joan Hackett's Catherine Allen) and her son (Jon Gries' Button Allen) cut adrift in the western wilds. Penny's protection of mother and son, both from the harsh elements of the high mountains and from a clan of deranged monsters--played by Donald Pleasance, Bruce Dern and Gene Rutherford--is the crux of the plot. And once Will has seen Catherine and Button through the worst of it all, rather than attach himself permanently to them as they would both like, eschews this potential domestic paradise because he fears he would do more harm than good to them. Penny says an agonized adieu to them and returns to his lonesome--but familiar--existence as an Old West cowpuncher. He sacrifices for Catherine and Button, but the sacrifice isn't glorious, and it's dam' sure not glamorous. It is not even religious. Rather, it is the natural, but by no means automatic result of the fundamental decency and honor of a nameless cowboy named Will Penny.

This film scores high with me and I suspect I will appreciate it even more upon further viewings. Heston is perfect. In a world where film sophisticates deigned to give the Western its proper due, he might have won an Oscar. The abortive romance between Penny and Catherine is handled very well. Unlike romance in too many Westerns, there are no hysterics or histrionics, and the female lead isn't a rebarbative flake. Hackett, one of the daintiest and most delicate flowers ever to grace the silver screen, turns in a fine performance. Slim Pickens is also terrific as a testy but witty keeper of the chuckwagon. And Anthony Zerbe shows well as a fellow cowpoke who suffers a serious gunshot wound but is more concerned with getting a final drink of whisky than with medical treatment.

Additionally, David Raksin's score is marvelous. There was a certain type of music in the air at that time--1966 thru 1970--that wasn't entirely classical or pop, and it had a certain ethereal wistfulness about it. Songs by Harry Nilsson, Burt Bacharach, and Jimmy Webb exemplified this sound, and Raksin's score does, too. His music is used rather sparingly in Will Penny, but it meshes well with the film's dreamy and slightly melancholy mood.

Will Penny, with the exception of febrile performances from Pleasance and Dern, is an austere, understated and unpretentious Western. It is also deeply and earnestly sympathetic to the common man of the Old West, the cowboy. Will Penny is, I dare say, something of a forgotten classic of the Western genre.

The impact of this film likely depends, to a significant extent, on the viewer's familiarity with the historical Tom Horn. If you already know about his life and death then this film will be an excercise in filmmaking and acting more than a story imbued with uncertainty. If you're like me, on ther other hand, and were ignorant of the life and times of the real Tom Horn, this picture's conclusion may bring you up short. Almost as if you'd dropped from a gibbet with a noose around your neck...

This is a rather strange and moody film. It has the air of a very dark fairy tale set in the Old West rather than medieval Europe. There is much shadow and cloud-cover. There are staccato punctuations of brief, intense violence, but very little scoring to modulate the scenes' emotional freight. There is a romance that feels more abortive than realized. And the lead character, Steve McQueen's Tom Horn, is a doomed figure rushing headlong yet haphazardly to his own grim demise.

Nevertheless, although the signs of tragedy are strewn all about, the viewer may well expect Horn to stage a miracuous jailbreak and ride off into the sunset with the pretty school marm (Linda Evans). Alas, there is a jailbreak, but it is a pitiful one that never stood a chance of succeeding. And the concluding scene is the final moment of Tom Horn's life. It left this viewer slightly stunned and a little downhearted. But this was the actual lot of many a man---some good, some evil---in the Old West, one suspects.

In summary, this is a very good Western whose atmosphere reminds me somewhat of Pale Rider, which was filmed five years after Tom Horn. It's hard to imagine any actor doing a better job in the role of Tom Horn than McQueen, and the immortal Slim Pickens is also fine--if rather more sedate than usual--as the sheriff who seems sympathetic to Horn's plight but is forced, nevertheless, to carry out his lamentable duties.

Various critics have averred that there is some deep meaning in John Ford's Wagon Master. They've claimed it is a poem to the Western landscape or a paean to community or to tolerance. I simply don't see it. This is a linear picture that tells the simple tale of a Mormon wagon train attempting to reach a valley near the San Juan river in southeastern Utah from some point to the northeast. The intervening territory is terra incognita to them and it is inhabitated by Navajos who may well be hostile. The Mormons manage to convince a couple of seasoned westerners (Harry Carey, Jr.'s Sandy and Ben Johnson's Travis) to show them the way.

As the wagon train marches toward the San Juan, it is beset by various obstacles, the most serious being the Clegg family of outlaws, which attaches itself to the wagon train with the object of ultimately robbing it blind. How the Mormons, Sandy and Travis deal with the Cleggs is the linchpin of Wagon Master's plot.

Pretty basic, and hardly philosophical let alone ideological.

Regardless, this is a very nice film. As always with a John Ford picture, the dramatic western landscapes bulk large--so to speak--and that's very much the case with Wagon Master.

There is an extremely impressive action sequence where Travis, his horse looking for all the world like Affirmed, flees a band of Navajos at breakneck pace. (Ben Johnson's legendary horseback skill comes to the fore here.)

Joanne Dru, as louche medicine show girl, Denver, has never been more fetching. And, in contrast to some of her other performances, there are no flaky histrionics. I'm almost ready to forgive her for what she did to Red River.

James Arness, as Floyd Clegg, gets plenty of screen time but doesn't speak a word. But his fixed, unwavering stare and tremendous bulk lend him a powerful screen presence. And it is amusing to see him scoop up little Joanne like a kitten in a couple of scenes.

The musical score is central to this film, particularly its first half. The vocals are by The Sons of the Pioneers, and their sonorities are marvelous.

The final conflict between the Cleggs and the rest of the wagon train is sudden, abrupt, slightly surprising, and, interestingly enough, reminds me of the resolution of Smoky and the Bandit, which was made some 27 years later. In both of these films there is a leader and his sidekick. In WM they are Travis and Sandy. In SatB, they are Bandit (Burt Reynolds) and Snowman (Jerry Reed). And in both films it is the sidekick who, at nut-cutting time, proves the greater hero. In WT, it is Sandy who blazes away at the Cleggs just as they're about to kill Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond), the leader of the Mormons. His courageous impetuosity saves the day. And in SatB it is Snowman who takes the bull by the horns and blasts through a police blockade to deliver the suds to Atlanta just in the nick of time. In both cases, it is the perceived lesser of the central duo who rises to the occasion in the moment of greatest extremity.

Ultimately, Wagon Master is a gentle, pleasant, musical Western punctuated by a few tense scenes. It's a western for the whole family. But heavy, provocative and profound it is not.

I'm not a trained historian of the Old West, but I am interested in the field and have done some reading in it over the last few years. One thing most historians will do when approaching a discrete field of history is apply periodization to it, if that hasn't already been done. Well, with regards to the Old West, the periodization is very much a matter for debate. The restrictive school of historians limit it to 1865-1890. The expansive school will go from 1804 to 1920. For various reasons, I define the Old West temporally from 1820 to 1912. What's more, I divide that period into the Archaic Period (1820-1860) and the Classical Period (1861-1912).

Now as any devotee of the Western genre knows, the vast majority of Westerns focus on the classical period. Cattle drives, major Indian wars and conflicts between ranchers and sodbusters date largely from that period and they make good material for screenplays. That said, I really do wish more Westerns had been set in the Archaic period of mountain men, trappers, Indian traders, incipient mining and conflict with Mexico.

So, my question is, what films do you know of that are set in that earlier period? I suppose Jeremiah Johnson and The Revenant (which I haven't seen) qualify, but what others?

Ultimately, Rebel in Town is an account of people trying to figure out what is right and how to do right under difficult and highly emotional circumstances. An outlaw seeking water for horses "accidentally" guns down and kills a little boy on his birthday. The boy had snuck up behind the outlaw and fired his cap pistols. The edgy outlaw whirled and fired, alas, with real bullets. But, rather than own up to his terrible mistake, he and his two brothers flee the town and rendezvous with their father and another brother. The remainder of the picture details future interactions between the outlaw clan, the parents of the slain child, and the citizens of Kittrick Wells, the place where the killing occurred.

Should the outlaws flee or face up to the killing? Should the father take vengeance on any or all of the outlaws? Should all violence cease, as the mother of the boy argues? Should there be a trial or should there be vigilante justice? Should the outlaw family circle the wagons to protect their own or should they remand him to punitive custody?

All the characters in this engrossing and forceful western grapple with these moral dilemmas. The better among them--and the outlaws, with the exception of the killer, are essentially decent people--are driven almost to the edge of madness as they seek to do what's right. The lone true villain--Wesley Mason--is a fiend, not so much because he mistakenly killed the boy and fled the scene, but because he has no interest in doing what is metaphysically right. On the contrary, he couldn't care less about right and wrong. His only principle is naked self interest. And in that overweening egocentrism, he attempts to kill his idealistic (and naive) little brother, not once but twice.

This is a very fine western. John Payne and Ruth Roman as the parents of the little boy are perfect. J. Carroll Naish is excellent as the grizzled and frazzled patriarch of the Mason outlaws who seeks, against the circumstances, to lead his life as a dignified and honorable gentleman. And there's Ben Johnson as one of the Masons. He doesn't get many lines as the most loyal son of father Bedloe Mason, but bulks large nevertheless.

The script is direct, intelligent and unpretentious. Difficult issues are parsed, but in the manner of regular folk, not windy theorizers. In short, this is an Adult Western in the truest sense of the term.

It is possible for a Western to be too gruesome and unpleasant for its own good. The Wild Bunch, in my opinion, is an example. But it is also possible for a Western to be too docile and genial for its own good. The Undefeated, made in the same year (1969) as The Wild Bunch, is an example of this pratfall.

The film actually begins in fairly intense fashion as we see a skirmish at the end of the Civil War, which is rendered in rather graphic fashion. At this point you settle in for a hardcore Western that just never materializes. Instead, we see a film that has no true villain--let alone a central villain--to speak of, little sense of danger, and consequently, not much suspense.

This is a tale of a Confederate colonel (Rock Hudson) who refuses to concede defeat and instead takes his remnant forces to Mexico in order to link up with Emperor Maximillian. What they intend to do once they reach Mexico City is not made clear. Coincidentally, a Union Colonel (John Wayne) plans to venture to New Mexico and Arizona territories with his vestigial batallion to round up a remuda of wild horses and sell them to the US Army. Alas, emissaries of Maximillian offer him a better deal and so Wayne and the boys head south of the border as well.

Eventually, the two colonels cross paths and join forces. They do battle with bandits, Juaristas, and even one another before the film reaches its blissful conclusion.

John Wayne is perfectly fine, and even Hudson is better than usual. The great Ben Johnson is on hand as Wayne's right-hand man, so that's good, although Johnson rarely delivers more than one sentence at a time. There's also Dub Taylor as a cantankerous cook with a pet kitty kat and Roman Gabriel as a full-blooded Cherokee who is also Wayne's adopted son. Paul Fix, Harry Carey, Jr. and Bruce Cabot appear too, so the cast is very strong.

But as noted above, this film is just too lighthearted for its own good, a problem which is exacerbated by Hugo Montenegro's overly buoyant score. The real star of this film is arguably Wayne's Dreamsicle-colored shirt and his 3000-head remuda of horses. There are some excellent shots of this herd moving at full gallop. But when horses overshadow the plot, you know you've got a problem.

Two films, made almost simultaneously, that revolve around conflicts between the US military and Indians. In the case of EfFB, it's the Mescalero who are hostile to both the Union soldiers who control Fort Bravo and the gaggle of Confederates who manage to escape from the fort. In the case of DB, it's the Modoc Indians of southern Oregon whose conflicts with settlers prompts the intrusion of the military.

The most remarkable thing about EfFB is the harrowing conclusion in which the small band of Union and Confederate forces are pinned down in a shallow arroyo by the Mescalaro. Their situation seems utterly hopeless. This one stars William Holden as the commandant of the fort and features good turns from William Demarest and Richard Anderson.

DB stars Charles Bronson as renegade Modoc chieftan Captain Jack and Alan Ladd as an Indian fighter who tries his hand at diplomatic peace-keeping. Absolutely incredible scenery and cinematography in this film. It's also interesting in that the US military gets the dirty end of the stick from the Modoc on two occasions--the first a failed siege and the second in an ambush.

These are both so good that they should be considered Western classics, yet they're relatively obscure. My vote here is for Drum Beat because of Bonson's presence and some of the finest cinematography I've ever seen.