Trollheart

You jest shut yer mouth there, young feller, or I'll have the sheriff throw you in a cell so ya can cool off, ya hear?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

At the very least you could use a color other than ****stain brown.

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Trollheart

Fer a darn tootin' long time ah done searched ... You know what? Ah'm - I mean, I'm dropping this accent. It's killing me, and as for chewing this tabaccy - I mean, tobacco --- phtooie!! That's better. Ahem.
For a very long time I searched for this movie but could never find it. I had vague recollections of having watched it sometime in the eighties on TV, and that it had been very popular in work at the time, but it was never again shown on the box. Now, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I have it to watch again, so let's see if it holds up.

Title: Evil Roy Slade
Subgenre: Comedy
Year: 1972
Starring: John Astin, Pamela Austin. Mickey Rooney, Henry Gibson, Dom de Luise and others
Director: Jerry Parris
Writer(s): Jerry Belson, Gary Marshall

The only survivor of an Apache raid on a wagon train, “Evil” Roy Slade was passed over for adoption by the Indians and even a wolf pack: nobody wanted him, so when he grew up (we're not told how a baby survived and grew to adulthood on his own: it's a comedy film for Chrissakes!) he became the roughest, toughest, orneryiest outlaw in the west. As the movie opens there's a wanted poster with his name on it offering a ten thousand dollar bounty for his capture. It turns out most of the banks, trains and other things Roy robbed, blew up or otherwise came in contact with all belonged to one man: Nelson L. Stool (Rooney), who was the president of the Western Express Railroad, and who is trying to entice the famous lawman Marshall Bing Bell to come out of retirement and stop him. So far he has not had any luck: Slade's reputation precedes him, and Bell refuses. Slade is in the middle of robbing a bank when he meets Betsy Potter and falls instantly in love. She, despite her stand-offish manner, she is smitten too.

However she lays down an ultimatum: if Roy wants to be with her, he will have to give up his evil ways and seek an honest living. Only one problem: zero cash, and you can't start a new, honest life without some old, dishonest cash to git you going, now can you? So Roy decides to rob a stagecoach before he breaks up the gang. Flossie, however, the barmaid, is annoyed at Roy for leaving her and squeals to Stool, who sets a trap for Roy. Of course he evades it, and makes it back to Betsy with the help of a dwarf whom he calls "the toy cowboy". Uh-huh. Unfortunately she takes Slade's gun, trying to force him to see sense, and of course he's taken into custody.

Using Stool's dumb and hungry dog to chew through his ropes after he's smeared what's supposed to be his last meal on them, Roy heads off to Betsy, and they decide to run off to Boston, where Roy is not known and can start a new life. Betsy introduces him to her friend, Doctor Logan Delp, who will try to cure him of his psychopathic tendencies and turn him into a respectable man. Eventually, after a long and difficult series of sessions, Roy is ready to enter polite society. He even gets a job with her cousin Harry, working for him at his shoe store. He asks Betsy to be his mistress (she was obviously expecting something more traditional, but you can't change everything about the guy) but his downfall comes when he is entrusted with lodging the shop's takings in the bank. He tries, but snaps, and instead robs the bank, reverting to his old ways and returning to his gang.

When the news breaks of the new robbery, Stool again tries to entice Marshall Bell, this time using the lure of Betsy herself as the inducement (“If Slade were out of the picture she would be yours”) and this swings the pendulum; Bell decides he will come out of retirement after all. However instead of being the rough, tough lawman we expect, Bell is more of the singing cowboy kind, lopin' along on his horse playing his guitar (which has been specially adapted to have a rifle made into its neck) and wearing a spangly costume. He certainly loves himself, and is not shy about showing it. He romances and woos Betsy, telling her he is retired, and when Roy is told of the impending wedding, he has to stop it. Of course Bell has his deputies there, ready to take down Roy, but he doesn't realise that Roy's men have already infiltrated the wedding and are rather implausibly all dressed as bridesmaids! Roy himself is the priest. Betsy faints, and there's a Mexican standoff till Roy tricks Bell's men into raising their hands and a shooting match breaks out. Roy grabs the unconscious bride and they leg it, closely followed by a posse led by Stool and Bell. They come to a cliff and can go no further, but Roy unhooks the horse and they jump over the gorge, evading their pursuers.

Just when it looks like they're safe though, Bing Bell arrives, having taken another route. He gets the drop on Roy, but when Betsy hears that he used her she takes out a concealed gun from her garter and he is disarmed. As Slade goes to cause him the most hurt he can – shoot his precious guitar – Bell shields it and gets shot. After several hilarious choruses he finally kicks the bucket. By now the posse – or what remains of it anyway, after many men have tried and failed to jump the ravine - has arrived outside. They demand Roy surrender, and he does, but when they look again it's Betsy, dressed in Roy's clothes. They've swapped clothes, and Evil Roy Slade, the baddest badass the West has ever known, escapes dressed as a woman. What a guy!

How evil!

Even in the first few minutes of the movie we're treated to examples of what a no-goodnik Roy is. He makes a cripple dance by shooting at his feet, throws one woman in the mud, pulls another down off her horse and robs it, takes an old lady's shawl and puts in in the mud she's trying to cross, then walks over himself leaving her behind, and literally takes the shirt off one guy's back to wipe his boots! What a guy!

When he leaves Betsy, reverting to his evil ways, he even robs the baby's piggy bank!

Quotes

Stool: “You're not a coward, huh? What do you call a nephew who rode sidesaddle till he was twenty-four? What do you call a nephew who won't form a posse unless it's daytime, as he's afraid of the dark?”

Stool: “It's a message from Bing Bell!”
Nephew: “Someone at the door?”
Stool: “That's his name, stupid!”
(This becomes a recurring joke in the film, every time Bell's name is mentioned).

Snake: “Hey I know who she is! That's Miss Betsy Potter! I seen her on the front of the newspaper when she won the Miss Frontier competition!” (Tips hat) “It's an honour to rob ye, ma'am!”

Betsy: “I'm sad there's such evil in your heart.”
Roy: “In my heart, in my hands, in my eyes. And a lot in my feet. I love kickin'!”
Betsy's mother: “Betsy, don't get any ideas about trying to reform this coyote.”
Roy: “You mind if I kill your mother so we can talk in peace?”

Roy, as they're playing poker: “What ya got?”
Gang member: “I got kings, with an ace!”
Roy: “I got threes, with a gun!”
Gang member: “You win!”

Roy: “Honey, you got pierced ears?”
Flossie: “No.”
Roy: “Shut up, or you will.”

Betsy: “It would never work, Roy. I wanna help people and you wanna rob them.”
Roy: “Aw, with a little effort you could change!”

Roy (praying): “And please, dear Lord, don't let no-one sneak up and shoot me in the back while I'm shooting someone in the front. Amen.”

Roy: “I can't change. I worked a lot of hard years to get to the bottom!”
Betsy: “Oh you're always on the run!”
Roy: “I ain't always on the run!”
Snake (shouting): “Hey Roy!”
Roy: “I gotta run.”
Gang member: “There's someone comin', Evil Roy!”
Roy: “Kill him!”
Snake: “It's a woman!”
Roy: “Wound her!”

Betsy: “I love you Roy.”
Roy: “Ain't nobody ever said that to me before.”
Betsy's mother: “Move, buzzard-breath!”
Roy: “That's been said to me before!”

Roy: “Boys, as we stand here ready to rob our last stage, I want you to remember the five most important things I taught ya: Sneakin', lyin', arrogance, dirtiness and evil. Put 'em all together, they spell Slade!”

Clifford: “I got five hundred dollars for any man who'll turn on his boss!”
(All of Roy's gang desert him, save Snake).
Snake: “Don't you worry boss: I'll stay with ya!”
Roy: “Don't be an idiot! That man's offerin' you five hundred dollars! Did I not teach you anything? You get out there and betray me like the others!”

Betsy: “Let's try some arithemtic. If you had six apples and your neighbour took three of them, what would you have?”
Roy: “A dead neighbour and all six apples!”

Harry: “You're really getting the hang of this, Roy.”
Roy (feeling his neck uncomfortably): “I don't like that expression.”

Roy: “I'm tryin' honey, I'm tryin' but I just can't do it. This straight life ain't for me. It's too boring! My idea of a nine to five job is nine guys robbin' five guys!”

Betsy: “He'll be back, Mister Stool. And when he does come back, I'm dedicatin' the rest of my life to making Evil Roy Slade a good man.”
Stool: “And I'm dedicating my life to making Evil Roy Slade a dead man.”

Good scenes

As Roy and his gang hold up the bank in Willow Bend, he decides to kiss one of the prettier girls. He doesn't realise he still has his bandana on, but then removes it and kisses her. As he turns around, a somewhat less attractive girl offers herself, eyes closed and lips puckered. He replaces the bandana and duly kisses her.

Anxious to get Betsy's address, Roy searches in the bank for a pen. He finds one, attached to one of the desks, and drags the whole thing around after him as he looks for paper.

To make sure there is no ambiguity about his reply to Stool's request for him to come out of retirement and take down Slade, Marshall Bing Bell listens as his servant reads the note from the railroad boss, then, as he is reading, lights it on fire! That'll be a no, then. Later, he does the same thing to Clifford's hat as Stool's nephew arrives in Boston to again plead for his help. I love the way that for most of the movie you don't even see him, just the back of his armchair and a hand coming up to set fire to whatever displeases him.

Slade calls the blacksmith to get the horses. This turns out to be a man called Smith, who happens to be ... black!

Invited to sit down on a swinging seat by the smitten Betsy, Roy eyes the slowly swaying rope edgily. “I've seen a lot of my gang meet their maker swingin' back and forth like that!”

Determined to change him, Betsy switches Roy's gun for a Bible. He runs out using it like a gun, shouting “Pow! Pow!” Then, “Why am I shouting pow pow?” he asks himself, realising “Cause this thing ain't going pow pow!” Betsy shouts out to him “Turn to page nine, Roy!” He yells back “There'd better be a stick of dynamite on page nine!” She cries “Read what it says” and he growls “I can't read, ya dumb .... love of my life!”

As Roy and Betsy arrive at her cousin's house in Boston, they decide to hide and surprise the new arrivals. Not a good idea, as Roy shouts “Ambush!” and shoots the place up!

Roy wanders over to a cello player, tells him to “take that big fiddle from out between your legs: there's ladies present!” and makes him play it under his chin!

The scene where Doctor Delp tries to make Roy walk without his weapons for the first time ever (“I even take a bath with my guns!”) is hilarious.

Starting work at Cousin Harry's shoe shop, Slade is shown a shoe horn. “What's this?” he asks, and is told it's used to help people put their shoes on. (For you kids that don't know, it's inserted between the foot and the shoe, to allow the one to ease into the other). Intrigued, Slade goes to a guy trying on a shoe who complains it won't fit. “You need a shoe horn!” he tells the guy, and presses it menacingly against his throat. “Now you just get that shoe on!” he orders. The guy sweats, says “It's on! It's on!” Roy looks at the shoe horn with new admiration. “He heh! This thing really works!” he remarks.

His sales technique needs a little working on though. He forces a shoe box into a customer's hands, growls “Hello! Here's good shoes! Gimme money!” When another customer complains one set of shoes is too tight (Roy can't force the guy's foot in, even though he bangs and squeezes them till the guy nearly passes out) and the previous pair too loose, he has a brainwave. Hammering the customer's toe he grins “Now, that'll swell up real nice, and them loose shoes'll fit you a treat!”

One of the very best scenes. Roy, left to drop the day's takings into the bank, overcomes his natural impulses to rob the money and makes it to the bank. He deposits the money, then a moment later stops, robs the gun from a guard and says “Gimme back my money.” Then he grins. “In fact, gimme back everyone else's money too!”

As Marshall Bell's servant prepares him to re-enter the world of gunfighters, he says “Here is the weapon that won the West!” and takes out a shiny ... guitar!!! Mind you, it turns out the neck of the guitar is a rifle!

The total hilarity of seeing veiled, bearded and very tall bridesmaids! As one woman says to another “Betsy sure is pretty, but she got a lot of ugly friends!”

As everyone covers everyone else – my best man got you covered, my bridesmaids got him covered, my ushers got them covered etc – Roy gets confused trying to see who has the numerical advantage and says “Would everyone on the marshall's side please raise your hands?” And they do!

Why do I love this movie?

How could you not? It takes all the standard Western tropes and pokes fun at them. There have been comedic westerns before, but few that in my view lampoon the lifestyle of the genre so well. Not even Blazing Saddles comes close. But it's not only that: this movie has some semi-serious messages too, as discussed below. John Astin is perfect in the part, his slightly maniacal smile, his dangerously glinting eyes, the curl of his lip all working to perfectly portray a man with no morals, but who you can't help but like. Rooney is good as Stool, Roy's nemesis, and Dick Shawn, as Bing Bell (is that the door?) though he makes his entrance late in the movie, is great too, but nobody can take the limelight from Astin as Evil Roy Slade.

The movie is so quotable (as you can see above, and that wasn't everything: I had to leave some out) and yet so many people will never have even heard of it, due mostly I guess to its being a made-for-TV movie which was, to my recollection anyway, only shown once, though I must be wrong, as I remember my workmates urging me to see it when it was shown on the telly. May have originally been before my time though. It never dips into stupid parody, though the satire is sharp and on the nose, and even the love scenes, few as they are, are not cloying or sentimental. Any time Betsy and Roy are being intimate together, you get the feeling Roy could pull a gun at any time.

Much of the style of this would be used in later movies such as Airplane! And The Naked Gun; a whole new subgenre of comedy that laughed at itself and, while at least here the characters did not break the fourth wall, they definitely move a few bricks out of the way on occasion. You can see they're laughing at themselves, yet the whole thing is played pretty much with a straight face, though not as deadpan as the likes of Leslie Nielson would make popular ten years later.

Message in the movie

A few, to be sure. One being either you can't change a bad man into a good one, though that won't stop a woman trying. Another being that the good guys don't necessarily always win, especially in comedy. A further one might be that some of the western movies took themselves so seriously that it's a wonder the actors could ride horses with the pole up their arses, and this breaks all that down really well. And I guess there's also the old favourite: money don't buy you happiness but in the end love conquers all.

God bless you, Evil Roy Slade!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

I tried a lot of colours, none worked. Hey, when you're in the Wild West ya got two choices for the colour o' yer fences, boy: brown or brown.

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Trollheart

Oirignally posted in The Couch Potato January 3 2015

Title: Unforgiven
Year: 1992
Subgenre: Revisionist Western
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: David Webb Peoples
Starring: Clint Eastwood as William Munny, Morgan Freeman as Ned, Gene Hackman as Little Bill, Richard Harris as English Bob

If you're my age or thereabouts (god help ya!) then you were probably brought up on westerns, or “cowboy movies” as we used to call them back then. The Magnificent Seven. The Lone Ranger. The Big Country. And series like “The High Chapparal”, “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” on the TV. Westerns were of course most popular in the forties to about the sixties, and then began to fade a little as other, more exciting and more challenging genres like science-fiction, horror and suspense movies came through. To be totally fair to them, Westerns were seldom great works of writing. That's not to say they weren't written well, but most of them followed a basic formula, and while Sergio Leone's “spaghetti westerns” would somewhat redefine and reinvigorate the genre in the seventies, Westerns were pretty much on their way out by the following decade. In recent times they've made something of a resurgence, thanks mainly to the likes of “Dances with wolves” and “Tombstone”, but even now it's unusual to see a Western on the big screen.

That said, the last one I watched, the remake of “3:10 to Yuma”, was very enjoyable. But if you look through the history of Westerns there are big names striding across them like colosssi: Brynner, Wayne, Marvin. And in later years, one man would come to almost embody the idea of the hired gun, the nameless stranger drifting into town and causing, or getting caught up in, a whole heap of trouble. Beginning his career in the TV series “Rawhide” and later going on to become the hard-bitten cop Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood made his name in the already-mentioned movies directed by Italian film maker Sergio Leone, and it is to these, to some degree, that this movie tips its battered, gunshot hat.

Billed as “the last great Western”, it really does turn out to be that. In a coda or epilogue to his years as “The man with no name”, Eastwood stars in, directs and produces a movie which forever draws a line under every mean western hombre he played in his younger days, and drags in the process some harsh truths out into the light. This is not a feel-good movie, where the goody gets the baddies and the girl. There is no riding off into the sunset as some unseen harmonica plays, no kicking the heels to the flanks of a trusty steed which whinnys and rears up, carrying the hero across the bleak desert, his job done, the town saved, the bad guy lying dead on a dusty street behind him.

This, if it can be termed as such, is a real Western, probably the most faithful and least fanciful depiction of what life must have been like in the Old West, and how stories get taller and taller the more they're told, and ordinary men who would laugh at the concept are made into heroes, but the reality is much different. It also finally answers that old question: just what does happen to old gunslingers who aren't killed and survive to their retirement?

We open on a typical western scene. A man stands in the setting sun, seen from a distance, raising and bringing down an axe. We can't see what's he's doing. Is he burying a rival, someone he has just killed? Is he digging for treasure, or indeed hiding some? Turns out that, under a tree and next to a ramshackle barn, the man is burying his wife, who has died of smallpox. It's two years later and we're in Big Whisky, Wyoming, a typical shithole of a town where the rain is lashing down, as if in sympathy with the pathetic lives the folk here live. In a cathouse, a cowboy takes exception to some remark made of him by one of the prostitutes and cuts her face. He leaves her disfigured, but she must still earn her living the only way she knows how, the only way she can.

The sheriff, known as Little Bill (Hackman) is reluctant to have the two cowboys hanged --- it was, after all, only a whore they cut --- and instead decides to whip them, but when Skinny, the owner of the bordello, complains that he is out of pocket as he now has one less whore to work for him, Bill fines the two instead, which does not go down well with the other ladies. They decide to pool what little resources they have and try to get together enough money to offer a reward to anyone who will come to Big Whisky and kill the two cowboys for them. Justice was not done, they think, so they will create their own justice. An eye for an eye.

We're back at the farm, where the man we saw at the start, the man burying his wife, is chasing hogs around when a stranger rides up and starts telling him that he knows who he is. William Munny (Eastwood), famed gunfighter, bankrobber and train robber, who shot more men than anyone even knows. The man denies this, annoyed, looking at the young man who sits arrogantly astride his horse, eyeing him as if deciding whether or not he has wasted his time making this trip to meet him. Invited in, turns out the youth is the nephew of someone Munny knows, calls himself the Schofield Kid, and says that his uncle told him that if he wanted a partner to help him kill someone he should seek Munny out. Schofield tells Munny about the disfigurement in Big Whisky, though by now it's become somewhat embellished: the whore lost her eyes, here ears, and so on. Schofield is going there to claim the thousand dollar reward that the other girls have offered, and wants Munny to split it with him. Munny, however, is not the man he used to be, or is rumoured to be, and declines, sending the Schofield Kid on his way.

As he watches him ride away into the distance though, Munny looks thoughtful and it's obvious he's remembering freer times, wilder times where he rode where the wind took him, and shot down any man who looked at him cross-eyed. Later he takes out his gun and practices shooting, but his late wife has “cured him of his wickedness” as he says himself, and his aim is well off. Age has caught up with him, and a farmer has little use for a six-shooter. With some perseverance though, and switching to a rifle, he finds the old skill has not deserted him. Soon afterwards he is riding in pursuit of the youth, leaving his two children to look after the farm.

In Big Whisky, Skinny discovers that the girls do not have the thousand dollars they have advertised as a reward, and worries what will happen when someone comes to collect? He goes to tell Bill, who is less than pleased, knowing that such an offer, even if the girls are lying and actually have the money, is going to attract every cowpoke and gunslinger from here to Cheyenne. They'll be flooding in, all eager to get their hands on that money and do in those two cowboys. Going to be real hard to maintain law and order round here now. And he was just getting finished building his house, too.

Munny comes to the house of his old friend and partner Ned Logan (Freeman) who he asks to look in on his kids while he's away. Ned however decides to accompany his old buddy on the trip, and the two of them rendezvous with the Schofield Kid, who is less than happy that the reward is now going to have to be split three ways. Munny, however, is immovable: it's either Ned, him and the Kid or they'll both go home and the youngster can tackle the cowboys on his own. Schofield gives in with bad grace, seeing as he has no choice, but declares that Munny will have to share his half with his friend. Munny says it's a three-way split or nothing, and Schofield has to agree, especially when they discover he's almost blind.

Meanwhile, the first gunfighter to act upon the whores' offer rolls into town, as “English Bob” (Harris) heads towards Big Whisky on a train. It's not long however before he and his travelling biographer, Beauchamps, are accosted by Bill and his men. Having disarmed Bob --- Beauchamps would not know what to do with a gun --- Bill proceeds to kick the living shit out of him, sending a message to all the bounty hunters and cowboys who plan to come looking for the “whores' gold”. Having reduced Bob, a much older --- and unarmed now --- man, to bloody pulp, he then throws him and his biographer in a cell. While they're incarcerated, Bill reads through the book which is supposedly written about English Bob, “The Duke of Death”, and laughs at the so-called true account of the episode he reads. Bill tells him the true story, and Beauchamps begins to see that Bob may not be the “English gentleman gunfighter” he has been portraying him as. When Bob is “escorted” beyond the county line, Beauchamps stays behind, reasoning that he can get more and proper material for his writings by sticking with the sheriff.

When Little Bill is told two strangers have ridden into town, armed, he goes to relieve them of their weapons, by any means necessary. Ned goes to check on the Kid --- and intimates he might take a little detour into one of the ladies' rooms while he's at it --- leaving William shivering and looking a pathetic figure on his own at the bar. When the sheriff's men enter and demand his gun, and he refuses to hand it over, Bill takes it and then doles out to the stranger the same treatment he gave English Bob, which is to say he punches, kicks and generally beats the crap out of him. Ned and The Kid meanwhile have been helped by the girls to escape, and make for their horses. William manages to crawl outside and somehow gets up on his horse, and they all head to shelter.

It's some time before Munny recovers, and the Kid watches him with growing disappointment, disillusion and realisation that this man is not who he thought he was, not any more. When he says to Ned “He's gonna die, ain't he?” there is no sorrow in his voice, and no real doubt either. He's just concerned that they won't be able to finish the job. The trio go after the cowboys and get one of them, but it's far from the triumph they --- or at least, the Schofield Kid --- had envisioned. Dyin's a dirty business, and it becomes pretty clear to the two hardened veterans that the Kid, despite his boasts, has never killed anyone. He is visibly shaken, and Munny shows his humanity when, having been the one to shoot the young cowboy, he entreats his mates to come out and allow him to have a drink of water, promising that they won't shoot them. He's clearly heartily sick of the whole business, even though he's been spending some time with the girl who these guys cut up. He knows they have to pay for what they did, but he don't have to like it. He will, however, keep his promise and finish the job.

Ned, on the other hand, decides he's had enough and is going to head back to Kansas. William says they'll head down to kill the other target and then hook up with Ned on the way back. When word reaches Little Bill that, despite all his warnings and demonstrations, one of the two cowboys have been killed, he organises a posse and they move out in search of the killers. Ned is captured and brought to him. Meanwhile, Munny and the Kid close in on the other cowboy, who has taken refuge with some of his mates. They get him as he comes out to take a shit, the Kid killing what proves to be his first man. But when the girls bring the reward to Munny and the Kid, they learn that Ned has died under interrogation, tortured to death by Little Bill, and worse, his body is now being displayed in front of the saloon with a sign saying his best friend is a murderer.

And so we kick into the final phase of the movie, where for a short, brutal period Eastwood resurrects the desperado that populated so many Spaghetti Westerns, with a shot of Dirty Harry in there for good measure. Age seems to fall from him like a cloak, and anger and revenge burn in his eyes. If he had a cigar he'd probably clamp it between his teeth and grind them till the cheroot split. He sends The Kid back to his farm with the money, telling him to take his own share and give Ned's and Munny's to his kids, then he rides on into town for one hell of a reckoning.

When he leaves town, Little Bill is dead, Skinny is dead, along with about another four of the sheriff's deputies. He rides off into the rain alone, nobody daring to stop him, and warns that unless Ned is buried with proper respect and the ladies are left alone, he will return and “kill every goddamn one of you sons of bitches.”

QUOTES
Little Bill (looking down at the cut whore): “She gonna die?”
(It's said with such offhand casualness, such total disinterest that he might as well have been talking about the weather. Bill clearly could not care less whether she lives or dies: one less whore to worry about. Still, if it did turn out to be a case of murder, then those boys may have to swing anyway. So maybe he is a little concerned, but more for himself and them than for the poor pathetic victim lying at his feet).

English Bob: “I don't wish to give offence, but I suggest this country select a king --- or even a queen --- rather than a president. One isn't that quick to shoot a king or a queen: the majesty of royalty, you see.”
Joe: “Maybe you don't wish to give offence, sir, but you are givin' it, pretty thick! This country don't need no queens whatever I reckon. Matter of fact, when I hear talk of queens I ---”
Thirsty: “Shut up Joe!”
Joe: “What's wrong with you Thirsty? This son of a bitch---”
Thirsty: “Might be that this dude here is English Bob! He's the one that works for the railroad shootin' Chinamen! Might be that he's waitin' for some crazy cowboy to touch his pistol, so that he can shoot him down!”
Joe: “Is that a fact, mister? You English Bob?”
Bob: “Pheasants. Let's shoot some pheasants. Ten pheasants, say ... a dollar a pheasant. I'll shoot for the Queen, and you for ... well, whomever.” (After the shooting match) “Well, that's eight for me and one for you. That comes to seven of your American Dollars.”
Joe (paying): “Som damn good shootin'! For a “John Bull”!”
Bob: “Well, no doubt your aim was affected by your grief over the injury to your president.”

Bob: “There's a dignity in royalty, a majesty that precludes the possibility of assassination. Now if you were to point a pistol at a king or a queen, your hands would shake; the sight of royalty would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and you would stand ... how shall I put it? In awe. You would stand in awe. Now, a president? Well, (pauses and laughs) why not shoot a president?”

Bob: “Little Bill! I thought you was --- I mean, I thought you were dead.”
Bill: “Lot of people thought I was dead, Bob. Hell, even I thought I was dead, till I found out I was just in Nebraska!”

Bill (reading the book in Beauchamps's bag): “The Duck of Death.”
Beauchamps: “Um, duke. The Duke of Death.”
Bill: “Duck, I says.”

Bill (while kicking seven shades out of English Bob): “I guess you think I'm kickin' you, Bob, but it ain't so. What I'm doin' is talkin': talkin' to all those villians down in Kansas, and I'm talkin' to all them villians down in Missouri, and all those villians down in Cheyenne! And I'm tellin' them there ain't no whores' gold! And even if there was, they wouldn't wanna come lookin' for it anyhow!”

The Kid (looking at a badly-beaten Munny): “His pistol must have jammed!”

The Kid: “Say Will?”
Munny: “What?”
The Kid: “That was the first one.”
Munny: “The first one what?”
The Kid: “First one I ever killed.”
Munny: “Yeah?”
The Kid: “You know I said I shot five men? It weren't true. That Mexican that came at me with a knife? I just busted his leg with a shovel, I didn't kill him neither.”
Munny: “Well, you sure kileld the hell out of that fella today.”
The Kid: “Yeah. Yeah I did. I killed the hell out of him, didn't I? Three shots, and he was takin' a shit. Jesus Christ! It don't seem real! He ain't never gonna breathe again. Ever. Now he's dead. The other one too. All on account of pullin' the trigger.”
Munny: “It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got, all he's ever gonna have.”
The Kid: “Yeah. Well. I guess they had it comin'.”
Munny: “We've all got it comin'.”

Little Bill: “Well Sir you are a cowardly son of a bitch! You just shot an unarmed man!”
Munny: “Well, he shoulda armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.”
Little Bill: “You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killed women and children.”
Munny: “That's right. I killed women and children. Killed just about everything that walked or crawled at one time. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.”

Those clever little touches

A man almost synonymous with Westerns and being a hard-bitten hombre who would ride for days to find a man and kill him, Eastwood finds that as he tries to mount a horse for the first time in what must be years, it is not as easy as he rememnbers it being, and he ends up dancing around in a comical/tragic circle trying to get on the horse's back, eventually ending up on his backside in the dirt. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Whether it's intentional or not, it's interesting that the hero/antihero's name is William Munny, very close to William Bonney, the famed Billy the Kid, espeically as Munny is supposed to have this tough desperado reputation.

The times, they are a-changin'

Munny thinks little of leaving his two children, the oldest of whom can't be more than ten or twelve, to fend for themselves on the farm while he rides off after the Scofield Kid. I guess they're in the middle of nowhere; it's not as if the kids are going to be attacked or anythng, and they've probably been shown how to defend themselves. Still, social services would not be impressed!

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True Western

If ever a movie was made that showed the stark, unalterable, unvarnished truth behind the tales of heroism, bravery and daring beloved of those who write about the “Wild West”, this is it. Munny may have once been a bad, evil, scary man who would shoot you as soon as look at you, and who inspired fear in everyone by the very mention of his name; a man whose fame and the tales of whose exploits would have drawn gunslinger after gunslinger into conflict with him, eager to dethrone the king, eager to prove themselves the next big thing, eager to take down the boss. He may have been all those things once, and perceived that way, but that was then and this is now. When The Kid asks him about some incident in the mythology that has grown up around his life, he tells him he doesn't recollect. He may be playing the event down, but it may also be true to say that he really doesn't remember. He's much older now, weaker and he would say a better man, or striving to be one, thanks to his late wife. He has hung up his gun and ridden his last horse (or so he thinks) into danger and adventure, and wants to put all his gun-toting days behind him. Maybe he makes himself forget, or tries to, or maybe it's just advancing age and the strain of too much whiskey and too many bullet wounds, but William Munny is no longer the man he was, much less the legend he has become, or that people have tried to make him, maybe even against his will.

This could not be demonstrated any more clearly or harshly than in the scene where Little Bill encounters him alone in the saloon, and proceeds to kick the living shit out of him. Conscious that the man is unarmed, and not caring who he is, the sheriff kicks him and sneers as Munny crawls along the floor, trying to avoid the blows. At one point, he grabs his whiskey bottle, intending to use it as a weapon to defend himself, but almost as if his erstwhile ally is turning on him, the bottle slips from his hand as he is knocked back to the floor, potential salvation --- which had been intent on being his damnation until his wife saw fit to try to change him --- snatched from his grasp.

The pathetic sight of the once-feared gunfighter cowering as he tries to evade the blows, and the somewhat shocked faces of Bill's men as they watch their boss sadistically lay into what they see to be an old drunk are telling, too: even they can see this is over the top, and perhpas some of them are seeing the real sadist in the sheriff, a man who enjoys beating defenceless people up and is no respecter of age.

But it's not just William Munny that's lying there, panting and gasping in the rain on the sodden ground outside the saloon, hoping he's not going to die. It's every gunfighter, every hero of the West, every pistolero and cowboy and rebel and desperado that ever walked, rode and fought his way through the pages of a western novel or whooped his way across the silver screen. In a very real way, this is Eastwood showing us the true West, where while a man's livelihood --- indeed, his very life --- and certainly his reputation could depend on his being faster on the draw than the other guy, every time, when old age crept up on him it gave no points for scores mounted up while the man was young: now he's old, and his past exploits don't matter a damn. In the same way as he, in his younger days, would pass by and narrow his eyes at some old-timer sitting on a bench or propping up a bar, he now is the old-timer, and the world is viewing him through the slit and narrowed eyes of the present, where his adventures years ago count for precisely nothing.

In the end, you can live on your legend --- real or built up by others --- for so long, but eventually time and age will claim you, and the harsh bitter truth comes home to roost like a dark raven alighting on your shoulder, and you know that your number is up. There will be no more heroic deeds, no more last-chance gunfights, no time to draw anymore. The other guy is finally quicker than you, and he's looking at you thoughtfully from behind a cowl as he leans on his scythe. All things pass, and so must even a legend pass into history, and the Old West must make way for the new.

Why do I love this movie?

I love the honesty in it. It's never once denied that Munny was a badass, but those days are long behind him now and he is a pale shadow of his former self. It's also almost a case of “Godfatherism” --- ”I keep tryin' to get out, they keep pullin' me back in!” --- where Munny has voluntarily, for the sake of his wife and his kids, left his old life behind, has quit drinking and settled down to the boring and unrewarding life of a farmer, but is denied this retirement when he is dragged back to his darker days, both to (I suppose) impress or at least not disappoint the youngster who seems to idolise him, and to make some decent money.

I love the way it's driven on three separate imperatives. Firstly, and most importantly of course, it's money. William is not making much of a living, scraping out an existence as a poor farmer, and a share of that rumoured thousand dollars would certainly help the lives of he and his kids. Then there's the outrage, the almost chivalrous need to ride to the ladies' defence. It's charming, but almost out of character with the West. In general, women --- especially whores --- were treated with almost contempt by the men, and the idea that anyone would seek to avenge an attack on one is pretty ludicrous by itself. Put it with a cash reward though, and suddenly everyone's Sir Lancelot. Given that, though, it's fair to say that for this trio there is certainly a sense of wounded chivarly at play. Munny, though he probably killed women and children, as he says himself later, is outraged and angry that anyone could treat a woman that way, perhaps because he himself did the same sort of thing, and wants now, at the end, to try to make up for it.

The Kid is idealistic and really does think he's riding to the rescue. For him, the money is secondary, although he goes on about it a lot. He's not really that interested. He's young, after all. Plenty of time to make his fortune. But to ride with William Munny, the legendary gunslinger, and to take on those cowboys in the name of revenge and the settlement of honour, that's far more important and it will make his name from one state to another if he can pull it off. Ned, of course, really just comes out of boredom and a sense of loyalty to his friend.

So there's chivalrous intentions, the greed for money and the need to prove themselves. Even Munny, old now and well past this sort of thing, must feel that he has still something to show the world, one last hurrah before the end, one more time before he really does this time hang up his gun. Once more unto the breach, pardners, once more! He probably realises fairly soon that he has bitten off more than he can chew, but he is not a man to back away from something once he has undertaken it. Even when Ned quits after they shoot the first cowboy, and Munny probably wants to follow him, he holds true to his promise, perhaps one of the few things he can continue to hold on to, the only real proof he still can offer that he is a man.

Then there's the downbeat tone of the movie. There's no whoopin' and hollerin' and shootin' up the town. When men are killed, it's shown to be a dark, gritty, unpleasant business. There's no honour in it. There's no joy in it. It's a job, simple as that. You kill them or they kill you. And wehn Munny is being beaten up in the bar, every moment you keep expecting him to whirl and take on Bill, his familar sneer and growl coming back, a six-shooter, carefully concealed, coming into play as he blasts away. But it never happens. The “old” Munny does not resurface, and the properly old Munny is all that's left; he must take the beating and then drag himself out into the wet streets like a dog, because he literally has nothing left that he can fight back with. To a degree, too, he may see and feel in the flying boots of Little Bill as they impact his body every cowboy and rancher, every farmer and banker, every man and woman he ever wronged screaming their dark delight and their delight as his battered body is subjected to their long-delayed revenge. All the anger, all the pride, all the cocksureness has been leeched from him, both by time and by a patient wife who has tried her best to turn him onto the road of salvation, little realising that this could in fact lead him to his death.

In fact, the first time we see the old Eastwood character surface is when he's told that Ned has been killed. Then we see the spark return to those tired eyes, the fires light behind them. Now there's really something to avenge: now real life has kicked the adventure into the dust and he's staring at a woman sorrowfully telling him his best friend --- who was not even supposed to be coming on the quest and who had quit and was heading home --- has been murdered by Little Bill. Now, let the whole world beware, cos The Man With No Name is comin', and Hell's about three paces behind him!

Even the confrontation is kind of low-key, in keeping with the overall non-exciting, non-sensationalist tone of the movie. There's no two men facing each other in the street to see who's quicker on the draw. There's no prolonged battle or chase. Munny's rifle jams but he quickly produces his pistol and shoots all around him dead. Bill goes down easily, though he doesn't die right away, and Munny has the satisfaction of looking into his eyes before ending his life forever. He then leaves, unopposed, like an avenging wind blowing in from across the desert, or a cleansing fire sweeping all before it. At this point he's no longer a broken-down old man: he has regained something of his old self, spurred by the unnecessary and ignominous death of his friend, and he is once again a force to be reckoned with, an irresistable power against which nobody can stand. But when the job is done --- and he seems to take little pleasure in it --- he rides out of town and back to his farm, returning to the life he was leading before The Schofield Kid crossed his path.

I even love the music. Far from being the uptempo, exciting, stirring music of adventure that used to colour westerns, this is a far more downbeat, laidback and slow score --- when it's there: much of the movie has no music soundtrack at all --- and is almost more suitable to a lazy day on the river than to the taking of men's lives. The entire thing can almost be taken as a metaphor for a man sleeping in the sun, waking for a moment to fire off a shot that kills someone he needs to kill, and then tipping his hat back over his eyes to ward off the bright light, slipping back into a doze.

Message in the movie

Well it couldn't be clearer, could it? It is not cool to kill people and murder, even in the old West, was murder no matter how you dressed it up. But lying beneath this very simple premise is a much deeper one. Munny wants to leave his former life behind, but does he really? When he gets the chance to go hunting down these cowboys he originally declines, but then changes his mind. Why? Is it purely the money that has attracted his interest? Or is it something more? Does he, at the back of it all, yearn for the old days of adventure and excitement, and though he would never admit it to the spirit of his dead wife, chafe to be back in the saddle and feel a gun in his hand again? Has he, really, changed at all, or is he just pretending, to himself most of all?

So the message then might be: to thine own self be true. Munny knows he's a killer: he says it near the end --- “I killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time” --- and those sort of sins can't be blotted out by a few years of honest living. Does he in fact think that perhaps he's not worthy of salvation, that he is after all damned? Does he go to meet his fate, thinking, perhaps hoping, that he will meet his maker, and that in so doing he can make up for all the lives he has taken by offering his own? If not, then why is it that he allows himself to be beaten and kicked in the saloon, but later rides into town like an avenging angel? If this was within him all along, why did he not use it then? Does he, on some deep and subconscious level, want to be punished?

There's also the Kid: he wants to make his name, and at first pretends --- boasts --- that he has killed five men, when in fact he has never even taken one life. When he does kill, it affects him so badly that he never wants to handle a gun again. He tells Munny “I ain't like you” and it's with a certain amount of horror that he could have become like his erstwhile hero, and thankfulness that he has not. So The Schofield Kid finds his own kind of salvation, almost despite himself, by seeing what sort of man he could end up being. He discovers that despite his bravado, he has not really got the stomach for killing.

So the message returns to being one of forbearance: murder is wrong, no matter in whose name or under what banner you fly it. When Munny shoots Little Bill down, he doesn't care that the sheriff isn't armed. To him, at this point, honour means nothing. It's just an excuse, and he doesn't need any excuse to kill the man who has murdered his best friend. He kills Skinny for the same reason, though it's fair to assume that the owner of the saloon probably had little choice in whether or not Ned was displayed outside his business. Munny doesn't care: to him, they're all tarred with the one brush and he will extract his cold vengeance from them all.

But if there's one clear message that stands out above all of these, it's this: the “Wild Wild West” was not the easy-going, goodies-and-baddies, go-fer-yer-gun rough and ready utopia that Hollywood spoonfed us through the early and later part of the twentieth century. It was a hard place, a tough place, unforgiving and relentless, bleak and pitiless and cold and life could be short and if it wasn't then it damn well was hard. All these smiling cowboys twirling their Colt 45s and tipping their hats to the ladies are nothing more than the construct of film-makers and the writers of western novels, and in the same way that movies such as “Schindler's list”, “Saving Private Ryan” and “Apocalypse now” showed the true, harsh, cold and bloody face of war, “Unforgiven” shows us the unvarnished, drooling, snarling, spittle-faced, shit-caking-your-pants and blood congealing on dusty streets that must really have been the West as it was carved out of the bones of America. Men --- and women --- died to tame that land, and this movie, while it doesn't completely pay homage to them, reminds us that they were real people, not actors and movie props and amalgamations of legends, stories and often outright lies.

It's the real West here compadre, and if you don't like it, then you best just ride on out of town. This here place's called Truth, and it don't have too much of a population.

THE STARS OF THE SHOW

Morgan Freeman has never been a favourite actor of mine, and here I feel he does his usual, the quiet, low-key character who talks a lot but doesn't do a whole lot. If anything, he's little more than a catalyst to set the real William Munny free by his violent death. Hackman is good in the part of Little Bill, but does not really have enough screen time to make his presence felt properly, in my opinion. No, for me, there are only two real stars here.

Clint Eastwood (duh!) as William Munny.
There could, really, be only one man who could have pulled this off without making it seem like some sort of parody, or overblown. Both acting in and directing the movie, the man with whom westerns became as synonymous in the sixties and seventies as they did with Wayne and Cooper in the forties and fifties makes this a triumph. Not because it showcases him, his character, or even to be fair his acting, which really is nothing terribly great. But because he was the spokesman for the western, the original nameless stranger, the drifter who appeared out of the dust and blew into town, usually killed a lot of people and drifted out almost with as little fuss as he blew in. If anyone was going to hammer in the final nail to the coffin of a genre that had been overexploited, lampooned, copied and bastardised for far too long, Eastwood was the man.

Almost sneering at his own roles in movies such as “For a few dollars more”, “Pale rider” and “The good, the bad and the ugly”, Eastwood presents us with a man who has blazed a trail across the West, a trail of blood and fire, a trail of dead bodies and crying widows, and laced no doubt with gold bullion from many robberies. A trail seeded with treachery and betrayal, perhaps with some kind of love and certainly with a lot of hate, and all deeply drowned in almost bottomless barrels of cheap whiskey. He rides his horse almost like a man in a dream, or a daze, kind of unable to believe he's doing what he's doing at his age, and perhaps slightly amused by the turn fate has taken for him. But he also may --- subconsciously or not --- want to impress the young kid, or indeed, he may want to not impress him, to show him, rather like Cagney at the end of “Angels with dirty faces”, that he is no hero, no god, no legend, but just a man, and a bad man at that. Not someone to emulate, not someone to venerate and certainly not someone in whose footsteps the Kid should try to walk.

He surely sees something of himself in the brash young Schofield Kid, who brags about the men he has killed and keeps pestering Ned for stories of Munny's exploits. As I've already said, he may also want to prove to himself that he can still do this, or even that he cannot, and should he survive, he will be happy to (as he does) return to his life on the farm and take care of his children, although the end lines of the movie hint that he may have moved to San Francisco, no doubt on the back of his newfound wealth after receiving the reward.

Eastwood is perfect in the role of the man who has been more or less constrained to go back to his own life, knows he is not really up to the task, and is anxious to get the job done and go back home. However, his almost absent-minded amusement disappears like ice under boiling water when he has to man up and avenge his friend, when the reality of their situation makes itself plain to him, and he must once again don the cloak of vengeance, this time righteous, and for once, as he says himself, sobre.

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Jaimz Woolvett as The Schofield Kid
Although he does not receive top billing --- when you're dealing with actors the calibre and with the reputation of the likes of Freeman, Harris and Hackman, you're always going to get bumped down the pecking order ---- I really feel that between them, this young actor and Eastwood make the movie. As I've already noted, and as I'm sure was intended by the writer, The Schofield Kid (a name he has given himself and which in all likelihood nobody, bar maybe Ned and Munny, call him by) is really a younger version of Munny. He's the way he used to be: eager to get out there and make a name for himself, unafraid to kill, bragging about his prowess while never having actually having killed anyone and daring anyone to cross him.

In other ways, he's like an excited puppy, just itching for his first big adventure, but sensible enough to mask that excitement behind what he believes to be a cold mask of indifference and calm. The fact that his eyes are narrowed in the way they are, much like Eastwood's are, has more to do with his short-sightedness than any conscious effort on his part to look tough seems to escape him, and he tells nobody about his infirmity. It's only Ned who works it out (mostly from the fact that when they approach him for the first time the Kid shoots in every direction); Munny either does not care to notice or misses it completely.

But such a disability in a serious drawback for a gunfighter, especially one heading down to collect a reward by killing two cowboys in Big Whiskey, so of course it's understandable that he would say nothing, and hotly disputes it when Ned calls him out on it. There's no avoiding it though: unless the target is close up The Kid is going to be useless in a gunfight. This is of course the reason, or part of it, why first Ned, then Munny, kill the first cowboy when they're up on a hill: there's no way The Kid could even see the target never mind shoot him. But when the second cowboy is in the john, it's closeup enough that the boy can redeem himself, and kill his first man.
The transformation The Schofield Kid goes through is a tribute to Woolvett's acting as well as the story. At the outset, he's a brash, confident, arrogant kid who claims he killed five men and sees Munny as a hero, someone to look up to and emulate, someone to impress and maybe even outdo if he can. As it becomes clear that Munny is not any more the legendary figure The Kid has held in his mind, he begins to grow contemptuous of him, and when they find Munny outside the saloon, barely hanging on to his horse after Little Bill has kicked the crap out of him, The Kid stares at his broken body wonderingly and tries to find an answer: how could this man, this desperado, this scourge of the railroad and thorn in the side of the law, have allowed himself to be beaten up so badly? He rationalises it by concluding that Munny must have been taken by surprise, not able to go for his gun. Had he been able to, the Kid feels sure whoever beat Munny up would be lying dead now.

Then he throws on an extra layer of contempt by stating proudly that nobody would take his gun from him! This contempt grows as he watches his idol, now seen to have feet of clay --- or worse, just mere human flesh ---- struggle to survive and come out of his fever, and as the question rises as to whether he will make it or not, The Kid seems only concerned that should Munny die, the two of them left would be hard-pressed to finish the job. At this point, he doesn't care whether Munny dies. All respect he had for him is gone, and he is no longer looking at a legendary gunfighter, but some old broken-down farmer clinging to his pathetic life.

Finally, after he has seen what Munny does when Ned is killed, The Kid realises that he is after all the legendary figure, but now, rather than be impressed, awed or humbled by being in his presence, he is afraid, even a little disgusted. That a man could do that, so coldly, so clinically, chills him and he knows that, having experienced his first ever kill and not wishing to ever go through that again, the last thing he wants to be is like this man standing before him. Better a life of obscurity and have a clear(ish) conscience than to end up a raging monster like William Munny.

The wheel has finally turned full circle. At the end, The Schofield Kid has found the man he was looking for when he first rode to Munny's farm, but now he no longer wants to find him, wants him to just leave him alone and let him try to forget he ever knew such a man, much less wanted to become like him. They say never meet your heroes: now The Schofield Kid knows why.

Two sides of the same coin?

It's interesting the way Little Bill and Munny view women. The sheriff, gazing down in mild concern at the cut whore, shrugs and wonders if she'll die, but as mentioned above he's more worried about what he'll have to do if this turns out to be a case of murder: even dead whores deserve justice. But more to the point is that when he's warning Ned, as he whips him, that the whores are not going to support his story he tells him “Well now I ain't gonna hurt no woman.” It's important to Bill that it be seen there are lines he doesn't cross, and hurting women is one of them, although with a temper and arrogance like he has, I would hazard that there is more than one woman who has felt the touch of the back of his hand, perhaps even his fist, in the past.

Munny, on the other hand, when accused of shooting women and children, does not deny it. He does not excuse it, he does not try to explain it and he does not even condone it; it is simply a fact, a fact that he cannot ignore. He evinces no sorrow or regret that he did such a thing, broke one of the oldest and most sacred conventions of the Wild West. This may of course not be a truism: Hollywood would have us believe that there was an unspoken code in the nineteenth century West that women were off-limits, although certainly they could be in for a good beating if a cowboy was upset with his woman. But kill them? We are told not: both women and children were objects to be guarded, protected.

But really, how true is this? We can never know, without having lived through it. Contemporary accounts are unlikely to mention such a thing, if it happened, and as I say the movie studios, western writers and TV executives have all constructed this rose-tinted view of what must after all have been one of the most brutal and lawless times in American history (remember, it encompassed the Civil War), and want us to believe that a code of chivalry existed. But did it, then or ever? We hear lots of tales of knights rescuing damsels back in the dark ages, and even here, Beauchamps's book would tell us that English Bob shot a man over a lady's honour. And yet, while surely there were those who would defend the weaker sex, down throughout history women have been oppressed and used by men, so why imagine it would stop with the opening of the New Frontier? In a world where there was little if any law, who was going to stop you?

Whether this then remains the truth or not, it is the version of the truth we have been fed, and we all see cowboys tip their hats and hold doors for ladies, while they flutter their eyelashes and curtsy, perhaps giggling coquettishly. The ladies, not the cowboys! So to Little Bill (and most everyone else) the idea of killing women and children is abhorrent, and yet Munny seems unconcerned. No, that's not even right: deep down he does regret it, but he knows it happened and he can't change it so why worry about it, or worse, lie about it now? He doesn't even, to his credit, try to blame it on the drink, though he has told The Schofield Kid that he was “drunk most of the time” in the old days. Chances are, he knew full well what he was doing. Perhaps he enjoyed it, revelled in it, but even if he didn't, he sure as hell isn't going to shrink from the memory of the acts he perpetrated in his youth now.

It can also be seen as a tool; a tool, if you like, of terror. When you meet a man who stands there, rifle in hand, dead men at his feet and calmly agrees that yes, he killed women and children, you know you are dealing with one hard bastard, and your fear of, and respect for him as an adversary increases. You know you have little chance against this man, to whom not even the innocent and unarmed are a barrier, as Little Bill has seen, when Munny shoots down Skinny, who has no weapon, and thinks nothing of it. Perhaps sometimes it's good to remind people that you have the reputation you have for a reason, that it's not all stories and tall tales grown out of proportion and distorted by the passage of time and failing memory, or the need to impress, or make someone into something he is not. William Munny, the cold, narrow eyes of this avenging dark stranger say, in a soundless voice of death, was the man they say he was, and tonight, for a brief moment, he is that man again.

So Little Bill wants it to be known that he has not, and would not, (he says) hurt a woman, and William Munny calmly and coldly admits that not only would he, but he has. And it is the latter who walks out of the saloon, leaving the sheriff and his deputies dead on the floor.

Motifs and Themes

I'm not that avid a movie-watcher and it's seldom I'll latch onto a theme in one, but here it's impossible to miss. Rain. Rain and storm and wind and in the end, too, fire. But rain mostly. When we first meet Munny, at his farm, the weather, while not exactly what you'd call clement, is at least dry. As he and Ned set out on what will be their last quest together, the storm gathers behind them, almost as if it is following them, like a murder of crows or a whatever of vultures, knowing that where they go, death follows and there will be much feasting. For probably two of the three hours the movie runs for, the sound of falling rain is a constant motif throughout. It seems almost endless. We see Little Bill emptying buckets of water that have caught the rain falling through the leaky roof of the jail, and when he goes to apprehend Munny in the saloon it is teeming down.

But though the rain may be Munny's companion, it is not his friend, and is no respecter of reputation. It pisses down as he is kicked out into the sodden street, and as he lies there, almost unable to breathe, and it just as gleefully sheets down in torrents as he approaches the site of his humiliation, passing the corpse of his friend displayed outside, and again, when he rides off into the dark, sooty night, even though fire rages about him, making him seem like some avenging devil or even Jesus at the Harrowing of Hell, the rain drowns out all other sound, sluicing down as if to drown the world.

The end result of which, I feel, is that the overall mood of the film is not only sombre and dark, but miserable. As I said, these are not the deeds of heroes being recounted. This is not “How the West was won”, or “Stagecoach”, or even “High noon”. There is no glory here, no satisfaction, no triumph. Munny has been forced back into the life he has tried so hard to leave behind, forced to remember what he used to be like and to use that knowledge, that skill and expertise he had thought, or hoped, had deserted him, to bring the old William Munny back for one last fight, or properly I guess, execution, as he never gives Little Bill a chance to draw. He doesn't care that he's unarmed; to him, the laws that govern others, the secret unspoken codes mean nothing to him. They don't apply, and he ignores them the same way we ignore a fly buzzing around our face.

But it could be said, too, that the rain is a metaphor for the sorrow of his wife, perhaps watching from the world beyond, as she sees that in the end all her attempts to change her husband were for nothing. He held out for a long time, but eventually he decided of his own free will --- nobody forced him --- to go back to the life he used to lead, to be the man she had tried to make him see he did not want to be, and that at the last, he gave in to temptation and let the devil claim him. Or, looked at another way, it could be that this is a cleansing rain which, like the fire he leaves burning behind him, will wash away the sins of his past, sweep the board clean, allow him another chance at the life he wants to lead for the sake of his departed wife.

Or, you know, it could just be that it rained all the time they were filming. But even if it was unintended --- and I think not --- it's a powerful image, a sobering backdrop and one that grounds the film in the most basic of reality, reminding us that sometimes, quite often, life just pisses on you.

It's what you do when that happens that ends up making you into the man, or woman, you are destined to become.

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Anyone who's unfortunate enough to have been around when I was in my original journal-churning-out phase around 2013 will remember this:

Now I'm back, and it's back. And we're kicking off with an old favourite. What? It was a favourite of mine, and I'm old. What's hard to understand about that?


As before, these are not movies I've watched, therefore I'm getting them mostly from "worst Christmas films" lists and being guided totally by public opinion. I am, however, this time, using other sources such as Rotten Tomatoes, and checking out what both critics and audiences said about them. If they're available on YouTube I'll load them up here, though the chances are most will not be, luckily for you. Probably.

And as before, these are in no order. So let's kick off with this one.

The Night Before (2015)

The Night Before what, you ask? Why, Christmas, dummy, of course. I could probably just write “a Seth Rogen movie” and you’d know whether or not to chance it, but I’m not quite that lazy. Seems to me to be something of a Hangover type thing (not that I’ve seen the movie), or just insert your favourite stoner/screwball comedy movie here. The tale of three friends in search of a Nutcracker. Um, party that is. With drunk Santas, plenty of vomit, a Christmas-hating thief who steals one of the character’s hash not once but twice (seriously: how can you be so stupid or careless to get not only robbed twice but by the same person?) and a high-school teacher who turns out to be an angel, and indeed a son of Santa, how can you go, er, right?

Oh yeah, throw in a proposal that isn’t, a pregnancy that isn’t, a “hilarious” mixing up of phones, hallucinations that reveal the true meaning of friendship and steroids, and a sappy happy ending and you probably have enough reasons to avoid this movie like the plague. Or, if that is your thing, to seek it out and watch it.

Harsh, you say, from someone who admits he has never even seen the movie? True, true. Fair point. Let’s hear from some who did.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Jake Wilson writes: In The Night Before, which Levine directed and co-wrote, sweetness and crudity mingle from the outset.

Kate Muir, in the Times, is more succinct, and perhaps cutting. She calls the movie Intermittently funny. Hmm. Not a savaging, but hardly a ringing endorsement either. Don’t you just love those polite English?

We Irish? Well, maybe slightly less so, at least in the words of The Evening Herald’s Chris Wasser: This is the kind of movie where no amount of alcohol or class A narcotics can break our protagonists down. They just keep on rockin' hard - sometimes, with Miley Cyrus. It's kinda hilarious.

Americans had other ideas, such as this from Chris McCoy of The Memphis Flyer (sounds like a good name for a steam train, don’t it?): Sometimes, you just need a big, dumb comedy.

Well maybe, but it’s not for me. Some other English critics concur. Helen O’Hara, writing in the Daily Telegraph, noted The script was semi-improvised, which often shows in the film's loose, mildly chaotic tone, but it also allows the three charismatic stars to riff easily together.

While the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw concluded It's a conceited semi-stoner adventure set on Christmas Eve, with mawkish top notes of male self-pity.

Perhaps the last word should be left to David Jenkins of Little White Lies: Ho-ho-hell-no.

Indeed. Now, I’m not going to pretend that there weren’t positive, or at least kinder reviews by other critics, but I’m not going to post them, as that would show up my entirely biased agenda here, already set out in the introduction. I’m not saying I know this movie is bad - nor any of the others - but it’s getting a definite judge-the-book-by-its-cover treatment by me. Hey, it’s Christmas! Let me enjoy myself, huh?

Finally, let’s see what the people who matter (titter) the paying public had to say about the movie.

We won’t attribute these quotes because who cares who these guys are, right? fucking nobodies.

(Note: I'm pasting this in EXACTLY as they are, no corrections. If these fuckers can't be bothered to spell or use punctuation or grammar properly, I'll be diddly-doodly-darned if I'll do it for them. So blame them, not me.)

As far as stoner movies goes this one is a bad trip. Lots of flat scenes and awkward moments. There a few belly laughs, but the temptation to reach for the remote and FF begins about ten minutes in. Too bad, all of the leads and supporting cast are talented and likable.

Not terrible. It had some laughs. Better than I thought it would be.

Wow. High praise indeed. Someone wrote about a page about it but a) I’ll be fucked if I’m quoting that much and b) they liked it, which does not at all fit in with my fascist notions here, so I cry “fake news!” and move on.

Before I do, here's a trailer, for those interested.


Oh, also, I want to note the RT score here for each movie, but though it came up the first time, for some odd reason this one won't now, so I have to leave it as it is. Hopefully the others will all give me ratings I can share with you.

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Krampus (2015)

Look, if anyone did scary and often homicidal Christmas toys, it was The Nightmare Before Christmas, and nothing is ever going to top that. Krampus is a German legendary figure who punishes those who lose their Christmas spirit and when a family argue and bicker and the kid rips up his letter to Santa, it’s the signal for Krampus to go in and teach them, um, not quite sure what.

Killer jack-in-the-boxes, manic gingerbread men (complete with hook for some reason) and evil elves are the order of the day. Not that anyone can be blamed for their name, but when you have the likes of Queenie, Sage, Maverick and Emjay (apparently he’s some well-known child actor; personally I’ve never heard of him) you kind of know what you’re in for. In case you’re intending to watch it I won’t give away the ending, as read in the Wiki article, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Probably about as much as watching this, I guess.

Seems as if there was not just one, but, um, four sequels made to this movie, so I guess it must have done okay. Also, if you’re looking for it, it doesn’t help that there are three other movies called Krampus...

Ratings on Rotten Tomatoes:

Tomatometer: 66%
Audience Score: 51%

Rating on IMDB

6.2/10

Rating on Metacritic

49

And the critics say:

Time Magazine’s Stephanie Zackarek thought Some clever soul might have done something moderately effective with this idea, but Krampus is too dumb to be scary and too listless to be entertaining

While AV Club’s A.A. Dowd mused Otherwise, this holiday-season fright flick never leaps far enough outside of its own box; the movie flirts with going full-on monster mash, with really cutting loose, but the mayhem is too little, too late.

Nick Schager of Indiewire lamented that Unfortunately, the narrow scope of his story - which is primarily set inside the characters' abode - makes the film feel akin to a Christmas-themed home invasion thriller minus the surprises

Damond Fudge of KCCI in Des Moines (which I assume is a radio station) agreed: Krampus is a horror-comedy that doesn't go far enough into either of its two genres ... there's too much wasted potential to make this a true holiday horror classic.

Though Jeffrey M Anderson of Common Sense Media was a little kinder:
The movie sometimes gets lost in all its monster fights, but then the ominous, somewhat ambiguous ending ties everything together. Krampus may be too much for sensitive viewers, but lovers of alternative holiday viewing will rejoice

How about those poor sods who actually paid (I assume) to see it?

The film is trying to be a new Gremlins, using the festive season for some horror and the set up works rather nicely with the arrival of the unloved extended family. The tone is then somewhat undecided, too silly for grown-ups and too creepy for kids, especially when it comes to Krampus' multilpe helper creatures. That's borderline annoying a few times and would have worked much better with the emphasis on the main antagonist. But even he gets silly once we see underneath his hood often enough. At least the final twist is surprisingly evil.

Didn’t love or hate this. It was an okay Christmas horror. Dragged out a little long, though it wasn’t. (Odd one that: I didn’t cut it off, that’s how it ends. It wasn’t what? We’ll never know, but I won’t be losing any sleep wondering).

A fun, silly bit of holiday horror. This film could have gone much further in several directions: campier, scarrier, darker. There are not many thrills under the tree, but it has some delightful henchmen lurking among the boughs and holly. The film's score is notably clever but not enough that you'll be likely add the soundtrack CD to your Christmas list

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Okay then, this will be fun...


Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)

But not his dignity, I imagine. Another in the long line of movies starring Jim Varney as hapless loser Ernest P. Worrell, famous in America, perhaps not so famous (or cared for) here. As Santa reaches the end of his tenure (apparently his powers weaken over time) and comes to Orlando to hand over his magic sack, he leaves it behind in Ernest’s cab. And so begins a frantic chase across the city to allow Ernest to reunite Santa with his sack so he can pass on his powers before time - and audience endurance - runs out. You’ve got a teenage runaway called, um, Harmony Starr (seriously), Santa punching out a film director, and flying reindeer walking on the roof of a warehouse while Animal Control try to get them down. Oh dear.

Ratings on Rotten Tomatoes

Tomatometer: 36%
Audience Score: 42%

Rating on IMDB

5.7/10

Rating on Metacritic:

44



You know, oddly enough, for a film with such a low score on Rotten Tomatoes (36%), every critic review I can find either praises or allows the film some latitude, whereas the previous two, both with scores well into the sixties, have mostly caustic, disdainful reviews. Some of the audience ones are quite long, so I’ve taken excerpts in those cases. Like this one:

While this is a harmless movie in and of itself, I can't really imagine that many kids will actually enjoy this. It's weird, this film clearly isn't geared towards an adult audience, but it's not exactly geared towards kids either. It's stuck in limbo, because while it is a harmless family movie, that doesn't necessarily make it a good one either. This is kind of a disaster in a lot of levels. You can't expect high-brow humor with this kind of character, but there's no reason it couldn't have been, at least, a reasonably entertaining film. It fails at getting you in a Christmas-y mood, if that's what you're looking for, and that's really the ultimate sin for one of these types of films. I don't wanna say it fails at everything, but it's a bad film on many levels

Even then, you have the likes of this:

I liked this better then Ernest goes to camp, the jokes are better and the story is for the whole family. Ernest is really funny and not as obnoxious as the first film, which is for the best. Not going to win oscars but definitely one you'll remember fondly.

So I don’t understand the low ratings, but in general most seem to be able to forgive the movie because it’s an Ernest one. Guess it’s an American thing.

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