100 Westerns

• 4th Jun 2011

Editor: Edward Buscombe

Whether it is old, such as 1903’s The Great train Robbery, or 1913’s The Battle at Elderbush Bulch or more recent fare such as Kevin Costner’s 2004 drama Open Range – this book has quite the challenge ahead of it.

Go ahead!  Just read the introduction to discover just how many westerns there are out there in the world today. Apparently westerns make up a 5^th of all the U.S film output from 1910 to 1960! I know it was a genre that was often cheap to reproduce back in the day, but thousands upon thousands of films can be quite a number.

The intro text also looks at some specific and significant names attached to the genre from Ford to Boetticher to Hawks to Leone. Clint Eastwood naturally is also a name attached to many of the titles (so expect links to Sir Christopher Frayling at the end of the book).

The list itself does present many of the titles you may expect as well as a few surprises. Each entry covers a couple of pages of text on each film with basic credit info and the odd B/W image. The range of films over 100 years barely misses a decade which gives the reader a nice wide variety. Even if John Ford gets around 10% to himself.

Steven Hurst