The Magnificent Seven - John Sturges - 1960

★★★★-I didn't watch many westerns growing up and having a gaping hole in my knowledge of the genre. Not sure why this is as I'm crazy about the genre now. So I've never seen this before.. It's fantastic. Sturges directing Brynner, Coburn, McQueen, Mother Fuckin Charlie Bronson. Shit yeah. 

Gist is a group of seven skilled gunfighters are hired to protect a small Mexican village from a band of ruthless bandits. Favorite part was when they go and wrangle up all the gunfighters. It's a western-style remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese film, “Seven Samurai.” Also fucking sick. 

Directed by John Sturges. Other movies of his I love include Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, andThe Great Escape. Stars Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. The movie kind of kickstarted his career. Rounding out the seven are Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn, Brad Dexter, and Robert Vaughn. The big bad is played by Eli Wallach, I mostly think of him as Tuco (The Ugly) in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, one of my faves, and Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III. 

Apparently, McQueen and Brynner hated each other and even had a physical altercation. Too much ego. McQueen supposedly took over the production, much to everyone's irritation. He especially hated Brynner and tried to fuck with him constantly. Something I found watching a video about their issues were Brynner, who was like 5'6”, would kick up these little dirt mounds to stand on to look taller while filming. McQueen would then kick over these mounds. Dumb stuff. But pretty funny. 

McQueen and James Coburn jump off the screen. Bronson is pretty cool, but doesn't know how to chop wood for shit. One of the things I loved about his character is how the kids warm up to him. He is a real badass. 

Amazing musical score by Elmer Bernstein. He was nominated Academy Award for Best Original Score. Lost to Ernest Gold for his work on Exodus. No idea. Bernstein's music for this film was No. 8 on the AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list. I think it's the “Beef. It's what's for dinner” song. 

Horst Buchholz is terrible and irritating. He really hams it up in a grating/distracting way. There is also a forced love interest for him that doesn't make a lot of sense. There is this really stupid scene where he waltzes up to the bad guy posse and hangs out. This is like a group of like 25 guys and they just assume he is one of them, which seems unlikely. 

Overall, solid film. An unquestioned classic western, from what I've seen. But not perfect. Mostly good to great, but the sentimental shit and bad actors take it down a peg. Watch the Kurosawa version for an all-time great. 

Bad Day at Black Rock is the greatest movie of all time

Bad Day at Black Rock. "This town's wrecked, just as though it was bombed out. Maybe it can come back..." "Some towns do and some towns don't. It depends on the people." Directed by John Sturges in 1955, I loved this proto-neo-western. On my western Mount Rushmore. 

Stars Spencer Tracy as a guy who goes to this tiny desert town of seven or eight buildings and a bunch of assholes. He pulls in on the train which hasn’t stopped there in four years. Shows the whole town buzzing as it travels down the line. It’s a phenomenal opening. As he gets off the train, he tells the conductor “I won’t be here but for a couple of hours.” Guy replies “in a place like this, that can be a lifetime.” 

Gist is Spencer Tracy is looking for a Japanese man whose son saved his life during the war. Wants to give him his purple heart. Takes place in 1945. The townsfolk tell him he went to an internment camp after Pearl Harbor. But they obviously murdered him. No big mystery there, but Tracy is stuck there for a day and it doesn’t look like he’s going to make it. Immediately people are threatening his life and so forth. 

Big bad is played by Robert Ryan. The only female in the movie is Anne Francis. Ryan’s goons include Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. Quite an all star duo there. 

Favorite line is when Spencer Tracy is talking to the sheriff. Sheriff is basically like, “I don’t care what you have going on, you made a mistake coming here.” Tracy replies, coming out hot, “The thing I like about Black Rock is everyone is so polite, which really makes for gracious living.” Amazing flick.

Destry Rides Again is the greatest movie of all time

Destry Rides Again. Great flick. Audited a class at IU on the year 1939 in cinema, in the professor's informed opinion, the great year in film. This was my favorite of the films that we discussed. Western that is super fun and funny with iconic performers yucking it the fuck up. Also has two incredible scenes and has Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy, belting out some inspired tunes in her role as the saloon singer. The film is the obvious inspiration for Blazing Saddles with Frenchy as basically the same character as Lili von Shtüpp in that much more well known flick.

I fucking love Marlene Dietrich in this movie and she easily wins the movie. She was a fucking rocking chick. There is a podcast I listen to that goes into Dietrich during the WWII years that I highly recommend called You Must Remember This, which is just phenomenal. From Germany, she defected in the 1930s after the Nazi's came to power. She was a huge star by that point and after a few years of American films under her belt, Nazi Party approached her with an offer of becoming the top German film star of the Third Reich if she came back to Germany but she refused and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937, eventually working to raise money with Austria-Hungary born Jewish filmmaker Billy Wilder (among others) to help Jews escape from Germany and did a couple of USO tours during the war. In her late 30s when this film was made, Dietrich bragged about all the younger Hollywood dudes she banged going into her 70s. Among the men she boned were Yul Brynner, Kirk Douglas, Errol Flynn, Joe Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne, among many others. Also Jimmy Stewart who seems like sort of a dick. He knocked her up whilst filming this movie. She told him and he said something like, "well, golly, what are you going to do?" She said something about "we" can do this or that and he replied, "well, what are you going to do?" Dickhead. And she was bisexual and sort of a leader in the gay Hollywood scene and frequented the legendary drag balls of Berlin in the 1920s. She called her underground, closeted lesbian clan her "sewing circle." She knew how to live, this one.

In Destry, Dietrich beats the literal pants off a guy and then when his wife shows up, played by the actress Una Merkel, the two get into a tussle that is just fucking incredible. After minutes of cat-fighting, Destry, Stewart, the new deputy cleaning up the town, dumps soapy water on the pair which enrages her more and turns her wrath toward Destry. He tries to wait on her to tire herself out after minutes of throwing shit at him, but she just keeps on going, chasing everyone out of the saloon.

Movie has one of the best setups I can recall. The outlaw saloon owner Kent, played by one Brian Donlevy, kills the sheriff and then has the mayor in his pocket appoint the town drunk, Washington Dimsdale who is played by a guy named Charles Winninger, as the new sheriff. Everyone laughs their fucking asses off when he says he is going to quit drinking and clean up the town but he does what he says he'll do, wasted as he seems to be at that moment in time, bringing in Stewart's character, the son of legendary law man Destry.

Can't say enough about this flick. All around great with a fantastic and epic ending with all the women in the town taking up garden tools and kitchen utensils, marching down to the saloon, and kicking ass all over the place. It is phenomenal.