You bring a horse for me?
Desperado
(Looking at the other two guys)
Looks like, looks like we are shy
one horse.
Harmonica
(Pause a beat)
You brought two too many.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The desperados drop but so does the man with no name, hit in the exchange of guns. That was that, I devoured the Western. I came into the genre with who is arguably the second wave of major directors to influence the genre. First, John Ford, then Leone and then Sam Peckinpah.
The Western for the most part has come and gone since the Peckinpah period but every once in a while a film emerges and is placed with the great films of the genre like
Unforgiven. A couple of years ago Midnight Madness was graced with a great Western, Horror hybrid
Dead Birds and last night we were given a gift by J.T. Petty with
The Burrowers. It was a thrill to hear the thunder of galloping horses again or see the light of a fire on the plains in a pitch black night. The camera falling in love with the landscape. The close ups of the grass or zooming into the ants that crawl along the earth.
In J.T. Petty's Western these are cowboys and Indians that you actually believe inhabite the world that you are watching. Not caricatures but real people surviving in a harsh wilderness made all the more difficult by monsters that dwell beneath the surface.
Many more can write much more about
The Burrowers but I just wanted to send a simple thank you to Mr. Petty for bringing me back into that world of the Western for two more hours.
Thank you.
Robert Mitchell