A good western week-end

So this week-end, Lagniappe and I watched a couple of good westerns while cleaning guns and loading ammunition onto belts. I have this theory that ammo works better when loaded in proximity to good westerns and/or war movies.

The first was the ago-old classic, The Magnificent Seven, with Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn.
How could any movie with those guys in it be bad?

Of course anyone who likes westerns knows that it's a true classic. It's a tale of a small farming village in Mexico that's regularly robbed by bandits, led in this case by Eli Wallach, another veteran character actor best known for playing Tuco in another classic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The villagers collect what meager money they have and a couple travel to America to find guns and hopefully get some Americans to return with them and solve all their problems. (Sometimes movies do mirror reality, eh?) They find Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen, who agree to help them and who recruit the others and bring them along too. They run the bandits off the first time, but then the bandits return and the villagers betray the seven heroes to the bandits in an attempt to appease the bandits and avoid further fighting. The movie predictably ends in an epic gunbattle like all good westerns do, and most of the Magnificent Seven die honorably, after which, Brenner and McQueen ride into the sunset as Chico, played by Horst Buchholz, decides to stay behind with a stunning little Mexican girl. And the credits roll. Ya gotta love it.



Then we caught Walk the Proud Land, with war hero turned actor Audie Murphy, playing John Clum, a real-life Indian Agent. Sadly this one doesn't have any clips available to post, but it's still good just because it has Murphy and Charles Drake in it, not to mention Mrs. Robinson herself, Anne Bancroft, made up to look like the smokingest-hot Indian gal the world's ever seen. Of course it's got real Indians too, notably Jay Silverheels, best known as Tonto, sidekick to the Lone Ranger. Here he gets to play Geronimo. (Obviously if we can accept Anne Bancroft as an Indian, we can accept Silverheels--a Mohawk--playing Geronimo, an Apache). And like The Magnificent Seven, it's a good movie, well worth seeing if you haven't already.

But what would movie day be without a list of the lessons learned? Back in the day, movies had morals and lessons to be learned. And these were no exception. The lessons learned from these movies were:

--Don't trust Mexican villagers. You'll do them a favor and they'll screw you.
--If you're a Mexican bandit, don't just tell seven of Hollywood's deadliest gunfighters to walk away and even give them their guns back when they go. They will be back and you'll be sorry.
--If you're an Indian or John Clum, Indian Agent in the territories, don't trust the US Government, because they'll screw you over every time.
--Finally, it doesn't matter if you're Audie Murphy or Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft is going to complicate your life and look good while doing so.

It's also interesting to note that in both of these, as in most other period westerns, almost all of the speaking parts for Indians and Mexicans seem to be played by white people who are made up to look like Mexicans and/or Indians. Real Mexicans and Indians seem to have been restricted being little more than non-speaking extras, even in films dealing with Mexican and/or Indian issues and settings. Ah, the 1960's and Hollywood...