1) The Wild Bunch (1969)
2) Ride the High Country (1962)
3) Noon Wine (1969)
4) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
5) Cross of Iron (1977)
6) Straw Dogs (1971)
7) Major Dundee (1965) (in spite of flaws)
8) The Westerner (1960)
9) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
10) One Eyed Jacks (1961) (even if involvement minimal in the end)
Memoir by Rosebrook who wrote the script for Junior Bonner. The story of the making of this film actually isn't super interesting despite the involvement of drama magnets Steve McQueen and Sam Peckinpah - there was no recutting, no massive bust ups, it was so Major Dundee or coke riddled Convoy. McQueen liked the script, Peckinpah liked doing something non violent. Peckinpah did some mild (by his stands) bullying, firing people who didn't deserve it, McQueen was basically the boss, but people generally behaved.
Still it is an interesting book because of the director and star and also characters like Ida Lupino (whose role was intended for Susan Hayward who wanted to do it but they all got drunk and forgot to offer it to her and she got annoyed), Robert Preston (who as usual everyone loved), Barbara Leigh (an engaging unpretentious model who just had affairs with everyone from Elvis to McQueen to James Aubrey) and rodeo riders. Also the book acts as a memoir for Rosebrook's career which wasn't amazing but was entirely decent. He wrote a script for James Coburn, who sounds like a gentleman, and did a lot of TV. Rosebrook was a producer so has an engaging appreciation of below the line workers which a lot of writers don't.
Terrific film. It just works from its opening credits, beautifully shot and haunting melacholic theme tune. Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are perfectly cast in the leads (did this inspire Larry McMutry's Lonesome Dove), Mariette Hartley is a different female heroine (still pretty but smart, unconventional), the brothers are a terrific rogues gallery: handsome but sketchy James Drury, LQ Jones, Warren Oates, etc. Ron Starr is a little more stock as the kid but that's fine.
The location work looks gorgeous (mines, snow, towns with cars). It's got these old 1950s trappings with Peckinpah's freshness (brothel scene, end of West). The story is simple but effective - great jolt when Hartley's father is killed - and the ending is guy cry nirvana.
This brought Sam Peckinpah back after the double whammy of Major Dundee and Cincinatti Kid. The plot hasJason Robards and Olivia de Havilland running a farm - a mystery man turns up to work for them. He does a good job. Then its revealed the man has a history of mental instability. A visitor says this, causes trouble, and Robards kills him .
Interesting parallels to Straw Dogs - a simpleton innocently accused.
Plenty of story. Unexpected developments that are logical - the bounty hunter after the guy is slimy but Roberts still overreacts killing him, the simpleton is killed by the posse, Robards is full of guilt. Ben Johnson is a local sheriff.
Sam Peckinpah's follow up to The Wild Bunch was closer to Noon Wine and features the same star as that - Jason Robards. This was budgeted at $880,000 and blew out to $3.7 million which is absurd for a simple tale.
Roberts is engaing as Cable who discovers water and falls for a hooker (Stella Stevens). Peckinpah/s direction of Stevens is pervy and lecherous - close ups of her crotch, cleavage, arse, etc... She's very winning it's just Peckinpah is such a perve. So too David Warner's character. he's a sexual predator.
Strother Martin, LQ Jones, Slim Pickens, RG Armstrong and company are on hand.
This film is beloved in some areas. It didn't do it for me. The ending was quite moving when he dies.
Part of that weird early 70s enthusiasm for rodeo movies, this is arguably the best known, starring Steve McQueen and directed by Sam Peckinpah, although it didn't make much money.
McQueen is very cool and good. Peckinpah's direction is understated. The acting is fine. Robert Preston is flashy dad, Ida Lupino is harder mum, Barbara Leigh is the hot girl (that's about it). Joe Don Baker is excellent as McQueen's realestate brother. Ben Johnson is in it as some rodeo guy.
The movie would've been more exciting with McQueen as a gunslinger. Sorry, it's nice Peckinpah wanted to change pace, but the film is boring.
Aussies will like how McQueen buys Preston a ticket to Australia (Preston's dream destination).
Some good stuff here. Focusing on Germans in the Eastern front gives this a solid downbeat quality. Some excellent war scenes. James Coburn plays it straight, no joking, and it's a reminder that he can act. Max Schell and James Mason are on hand. It's long. Bad female roles again - rape victims, and Santa Berger as a hot nurse who roots Mason.
But Peckinpah resonated with material. Some good scenes. Much better than The Killer Elite I think being away from Hollywood helped him.
Sam Peckinpah's famously mediocre last movie. Dutch actor Rutger Hauer plays an all American TV host who hosts weekends for his old college friends. Then CIA agent John Hurt (a British actor) tells him that his friends are spies. The friends are played by Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon and Craig T Nelson.
Actually this film wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I felt it was easy to fix - they should have told the whole story through Hauer's eyes. The reveals come when he's revealed. Also more characterisation work please - I couldn't tell the difference in personality between Hopper, Sarandon and Nelson.
Everyone had a blonde wife too - Hopper ( a sort of trashy hooker), Hauer (scary eyed Meg Foster who at least got to kill someone with a bow and arrow), Hurt (whose wife masturbates before being killed). Sarandon's wife was played by the woman who was Kris Kristofferson's sad eyed lover in Convoy.
The action scenes are done very well. The voyeur stuff is irritating - the CIA watch everything on screens. How did they film everything? I got confused in a lot of places.
This actually should have been a character piece - dig into the notion of friendship.
But I didn't mind it. I guess my expectations were super low.
A saloon owner, John Dehner, wants to buy Brian Keith's dog, Brown. Bruce Geller wrote this. Peckinpah directed.
Keith's character is drunk a lot of the time, Dehner is sly. There's plenty of production value - dancing girls and celebrations. It's not really funny.
The most Sam Peckinpah title of all Peckinpah films, this has become a big cult, with its title, seedy Mexican setting, Warren Oates leading role, interesting cast (including Gig Young and Robert Webber as assassins), love story at its core between Oates and Isela Vega, woman who is raped but also enjoys it (Kris Kristofferson drags Vega off to the bushes but she seems willing).
It's almost two hours and feels dragged out with lots of scenes of chatting in the car - Oates and Vega and then Oates and the head. There is violence but it is short and sharp.
Beautifully shot, Mexican locations, dodgy views of men and women, Oates having a high old time, Young looking seedy AF, chatting to a head. Vega's murder happens off screen - he wakes up and finds she's been killed, but that is interesting. It also happens half way through. We never meet Garcia - lot of off screen drama.
But the film has its own integrity.
This one is directed by Andre de Toth and was not written by Sam Peckinpah, but it still has a strong story: Brian Keith kills a man, takes him to the nearest house... owned by the dead man's brothers. The dead brother had just killed a woman. It's solid story and the lynch mentality, wanting Keith to dig his grave and die is well done. Tough. Serious.
Making of this was famously troubled, like so many Sam Peckinpah films, with the cocaine riddled director booted off the film. It has a lot of pleasures - gorgegous shots of trucks going through the desert, Kris Kristofferson looking handsome, a sense of camraderie around the truckers, a feeling of pace and speed (they're always in trucks).
It's got silly things like Ali Macgraw's perm. I always remember the trucker girl Kristofferson slept with and how sad faced and unhappy she looked and wondered if that was the original intent which was surely to show Kristofferson to be a stud.
Ernest Borgnine's racism against Ajaye is very effective dramatically. It's great there's a black female trucky too. Bognine works well as a villain even if the "top level government conspiracy to get Kristofferson" is confusing and dumb and probably the result of too many drugs. Macgraw isn't much in this - if only they'd given her straight hair - but she doesn't have much to do, her tan matches nicely with Kristofferson and she does serve as a non-trucking surrogate for the audience to identify with. (This may have helped the film become such a big hit.)
And that title track is catchy.
James Coburn directed second unit!
A famous they-took-my-film-away-and-butchered-it movie, with Sam Peckinpah bleating loudly about the suits and critics dutifully taking his side. I think there's a lot of great things about this movie but it has an essential flaw. Oddly, fixing that flaw I think would've been easy and saved money but the studio wanted a Roadshow, and Peckinpah prepped for one, then the studio cut budget, and filming went haywire. I get why the studio wanted to cut the budget but if they did they should have junked the Roadshow idea and gotten Peckinpah to properly refigure it. It would've saved money.
The basic idea is very strong - North and South troops team up to chase Apaches into Mexico and clash with the French. There's a knock out cast. You could tell that story with ten people. It's a prison. There only needs to be a few guards.
But there's too many characters. Charlton Heston (very good) leads a a big band and there's all these people whose stories need to be serviced. Richard Harris is the Southern officer, an Irishman (which makes historical sense), James Coburn is a scout, Warren Oates is a Confederate, Brock Peters is a black soldier, Michael Anderson is a bugler seeking revenge against the Apache, Santa Berger is an Austrian doctor's widow, Ben Johnson is a sergeant, there's a sort of peaceful reverend guy RG Armstrong, and there's a Mexican Mario Adorf, Jim Hutton is an officer (I think he's meant to be a scrounger character), there's also some other women, oh and there's Slim Pickens too. And LQ Jones as some Southern soldier who gets these close ups. Like Heston hooks up with Berger, and then has a relationship with another woman. Who cares?
It's impossible to serve all these characters especially when time is devoted to Heston's character having a mid life crsis - which is fine actually. He should be the focal point. And you need Harris' character. Peters' character had great potential and is junked. Oates has a terrific subplot being killed. They should've cut Anderson and Hutton entirely, merged Coburn's characer with Johnson and Adrof... made it about a small bunch. Trim it right down to, let's say, Heston, Harris, Peters, that merged Coburn character and a few others.
There's so much terrific stuff. I loved the novelty of them fighting the French at the end. Harris and Heston duking it out is fun. Heston gives one of his best performances and Harris has flair. The Peckinpah regulars are spot on. Actually all the acting is good and the Mexican locations are splendid as is the photography.
What a missed opportunity.
Robyn Coburn is an Aussie, married to James Coburn, son of the actor, so this book has an excellent inside track - close to its source but not too close. Certain it''s open about Coburn (I'll use the star's surname more) being a crap father, absent and not interested, and a grumpy old opinionated man. But a fine actor, superb speaking voice, some excellent performances. The book benefits from his letters, thoughts and interviews - as a member of the family the writer has superb access.
Coburn had a fascinating life and career. Tall, deep voiced, silver haired. He got professional work quite quickly. Benefited from being able to study under the GI Bill (he was drafted in the early 1950s but was in Europe not the Korean War). He always seemed to be able to support himself via advertisements - when starting out and later on. When he began getting TV work the jobs came thick and fast - he was ideal as villains in Westerns and played a lot of them. His film career was respectable quickly too - Ride Lonesome then The Magnificent Seven. He had a great run as a second lead. The Flint films turned him into a star but his actual period as a top level name above the star wasn't long. But 1980 there were no more film leading roles, and TV didn't give him that much longer either. But he always had his voice and cameos.
A genuine hippy. Managed to link to popular culture in odd ways - a mate of Bruce Lee's, in the Band on the Run photo, a rejected Cosmo nude centerfold (the one before Burt Reynolds), a big car importer, in some films edited badly by Jim Aubrey.
He had a great 60s and pretty good 70s. Things went south in late 70s and took a while to bounce back. Won an Oscar with Affliction but that didn't so much for his career. Managed to appear in some iconic films though. Made a LOT of flops.
Brat Pack Western with only two of them - Dean Martin and Joey Bishop - with Alain Delon playing a role that might have been intended for Frank Sinatra... a rival of Martin's in love and guns... but to be fair the role has been clearly adjusted for him playing a Spaniard. He's quite animated and fun, Martin is fun. The film is a little lazy and the comic Indian stuff is bad (Bishop plays an Indian).
It's got 60s Universal crapness and could have done with more star power - for instance the similar Four For Texas also had Ursula Andress, Anita Ekberg and Charles Bronson, this has Peter Graves, Rosemary Forsyth and Tina Aumont... just not the same. It has its pleasures and Martin and Delon fans especially will get something out of it.
Sidebar: Delon was a Western fan, an admirer of Sam Peckinpah and tried to make two films with him. I wonder if this prompted the French stuff in Major Dundee?
1. Ben Hur (1959)
2. Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
3. Ten Commandments (1956)
4. El Cid (1961)
5. Omega Man (1971)
6. Soylent Green (1972)
7. Naked Jungle (1954)
8. Three Musketeers (1973)
9. Planet of the Apes (1968)
10, Major Dundee (1965) - excellent performance
This was a really easy list to compile. Unlike many stars of his generation, Heston had a strong 70s.
Those old Western TV series were so cheap - this is a couple of actors in a few sets, emoting. Brian Keith is a drifter, who turns up in a small town to rescue an ex "Jeff" a hooker in a destructive relationship with Geoffrey Keene - playing an Aussie I think with a great Aussie accent, he refers to fighting Percy Jackson.
Downbeat - Keene beats Keith in a fight, the girl stays. Warren Oates appears as a drunk.
In May 1973 Cohen announced a slate of seven films worth £5 million:
What about this slate? Well it had a massive hit in Orient Express. I would've invested in The Dove - not the Gould/Sutherland film.
Swallows and Amazons - yes, a kids film. Alfie sequel - it sucked, I would've made it in 1970... they waited too long. Cliff Richard musical - sure worth a shot. Killer Elite, yes.
This slate was a little iffy but it had Orient Express.
Another services film where John Derek is in love with the same woman as his buddy. According to Don Siegel, who directed, Derek insisted on swapping roles with Kevin McCarthy. This means Derek pinches Diana Lynn off McCarthy but then is heroic saving McCarthy's life only to see Lynn get back with McCarthy. It didn't really make much difference.
There's documentary footage of training and stuff at sea. Derek and McCarthy go up in jets. It's a surprise to see Siegel directed this.
This is dull. Sam Peckinpah worked on it as dialogue supervisor - he did a bit of work for Allied Artists around this time.
Loved it. Full of genuinely fresh takes, fascinating autobiographical insights, so much love for cinema. In depth pieces on filmmakers like Brian de Palma, Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah. Tobe Hooper. Jim Brown. Kenneth Thomas of the LA Times (who he attributes a lot of the success of the Corman school to - he'd give them a good review and they'd get an agent out of it.) Very seventies. I could read books by him on every decade.
