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I'm pretty excited that there are two
weird Westerns at the festival this year: The Burrowers and
The Good, The Bad and the Weird. It's neat to see just how
flexible the genre is, encompassing both recent Asian Westerns like Sukiyaki Western Django, currently number one in the US box
office, or Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger as well as creepier
business like The Burrowers or Ravenous.
And while comparisons to Tremors
seem obvious, The Burrowers has actually been putting me in mind of
weird Western comics, in particular Midnight Madness screenwriter Joe R. Lansdale's (Bubba
Ho-Tep)
1995 miniseries, Jonah
Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such.
Lansdale's old west is dirty, nasty and filled with profanity. And
in that story, everybody's favorite scarred bounty hunter, Jonah Hex,
tries to survive a giant worm that kills people (and
horses and whatever else they get to) by biting off their heads and
sucking out their viscera.(And Oscar Wilde gets in a fist fight, too).
I'm not saying that The Burrowers will
be just the same. I'm just saying, how about enjoying some hot weird
western action to get you in the mood?
specimens!
Giant critters underground!
Lovecraftian births and despair--in the Old West!
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