The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Westerns refer to the genre of films that take as their setting the American West (also known as the Wild West), historically located between 1865-1895 during the period when the North American frontier was being settled.
Cinema of the 20th Century turned the six-gun toting cowboy into a hero. By the 1920s and 30s, the Western had become a major film genre and continued that way for several decades, branching out into television in the 1960s. The genre largely died away in the 1980s, although there have been sporadic revivals, notably the revisionist Westerns of the 1990s/2000s.
Westerns featured simple horse adventures on the frontier, black-and-white heroes saving the damsel, tracking down the outlaws, fighting off incursions of the Indians, the quickdraw shootout on the main street.
There have been numerous genre crosshatches with the Western including cowboys vs vampires, werewolves, aliens and zombies; Westerns relocated into outer space and the post-apocalyptic terrain; time travellers going back to the West; and Western ghost stories, among others.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Weird Westerns.
Genre-bending film that mixes B movie space opera cliches with rock’n’roll and a David Lynch-ian sense of surrealism. Interesting but the film left me scratching my head trying to get a handle on it
Amblin make a sequel to An American Tail minus the involvement of Don Bluth this time. The story now becomes an amiable animated parody of a Western
A low-budget cute alien film made in the aftermath of post-E.T., this purports to be based on the true story of a UFO and alien visitor who landed in 19th Century Texas
Third of the Back to the Future films, which takes everything back in time to the Old West. Probably the slightest of the trilogy, this nevertheless goes out with a rousing farewell
Roger Corman jumps aboard the Star Wars fad and offers up a version of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven located in space. Corman has thrown a reasonable budget at the film for once and it emerges as colourfully enjoyable
Perhaps the strangest film on Chuck Norris’s cv – the film where Chuck plays an angel. A work of Christian horror where Chuck’s son Mike plays a decent man trapped in a sinister Western town of devil worshipping children
This has a reputation as a bad movie classic. The attention grabbing novelty mash-up transforms the Western outlaw into a hero to combat Dracula (a hammy John Carradine)
Classic tv movie that is one of the earliest horror/Westerns hybrids where Roy Thinnes plays a preacher who ends up in town only to find he cannot leave amid mysterious goings-on
The second in Uwe Boll’s trilogy adapted from the videogame, this plays out as a mix of Western and vampire hunter film and is marginally better than Boll’s usual standards
This is like a Western version of The Hills Have Eyes. Exceptionally written – slow, sombre and character-driven, containing one of Kurt Russell’s best performances, before emerging into a brutal horror survival story
High-concept Jon Favreau directed film that has a winning title concept, overflows with star power and is made on a big budget. But the script feels like it had no idea what to do after setting up its title conceptual mash-up
A horror movie set around a modern day Western recreation town that was quickly retitled on the tail of Cowboys vs Aliens. It’s debatable though whether it does actually feature any vampires
This gets you watching with its deliberately ridiculous title but once you do, you soon wish you hadn’t. Winner of this site’s Worst Film of 2021.
This was the second film set around the real-life Clown Motel in Nevada. Despite which this is not another killer clown films and is focused around the awakening of vengeful Native American spirits
The world’s first vampire Western featuring a vampire gunslinger. Today it’d be called Cowboys vs Vampires but such casual genre cross-hatching didn’t exist back then and it astride two genres with not uninteresting results
This could easily be called Cowboys vs Zombies. A low-budget effort that is tame on the zombie front but makes great effort and is served by some well-drawn characters
Punk/metal rocker Glenn Danzig directs his own film, a vampire Western. This comes filled an amazing line-up of genre cameos, while Danzig casts himself as a bad-ass vampire outlaw
From director Penelope Spheeries, this is an almost unclassifiable oddity. As three punks set out in a search of a better life, this becomes a road movie and Western homage (with ghost cowboys)
The second and best of the From Dusk Till Dawn sequels. This takes the story back and retells it in a Western setting where it offers some clever twists on the original
Western based around the idea of Jack the Ripper having relocated out West whereupon he becomes a standard slasher-styled maniac. Featuring Charles Bronson ringer Robert Kovacs as the hero
This advertises itself as the first live-action Steampunk film. What we get is like a Victorian version of The Librarians with two adventurers hunting mythical artifacts while armed with steam weapons
An obscure and drearily made film about avenging ghosts of a gang of western outlaws who are resurrected in the present day
An Acid Western was a Western made with a psychedelic trippiness. Directed by Robert Downey Jr’s father, this is a surreal work about a Christ-like visitor in a zoot suit who turns up in a Western town
An interesting, if not completely successful, attempt to revive the horror anthology – in this case with four tales that all take place in a Western setting
A 1940s light fantasy with Robert Cummings as an angel comes down in a Western town to help bad guy outlaw Brian Donlevy redeem his ways
A Clint Eastwood directed/starring Western in which he plays a gunslinger who turns up in a town and exposes the guilty secrets of the townspeople in what is eventually revealed to be a supernatural twist
Predating Cowboys & Aliens, this is an amusingly titled Western/alien invasion crosshatch that plays itself surprisingly seriously and is better than one might assume
The last hand-drawn animated film from Disney and one of their few flops, but by no means unlikeable. The premise of talking cows setting out on a quest gives this a madcap eccentricity
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
A quite delightful film from former Muppeteer Frank Oz in which a boy receives the gift of a magic cabinet that brings his toy Indian and any other toy that is placed inside it
Notorious Z movie made as companion piece to Billy the Kid Versus Dracula in which the famous outlaw encounters Frankenstein’s granddaughter and her creations
This is an adaptation of the DC comic-book character of a supernatural avenging Western gunslinger that fails to burn with the grim mood it should have
The third and final part of the adaptation of DC Comics’ classic title Crisis on Infinite Earths featuring an epic battle to prevent the destruction of the multiverse
Another of the animated DC Comics films in which various of their regular characters find themselves incarnated in simulated combat arenas
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
How much fun can a film based around Lego characters be? A film that overflows with cleverness, wit and energy. The most fun is in the film’s creating a madcap mix-up of characters from different franchises
This is a film filled with enormous possibilities in its set-up – a Western where Mary Stuart Masterson plays a woman who gets married only to find that her husband is a werewolf
Ron Howard makes a Western that has some horror overtones featuring an evil Indian sorcerer. In the hands of a classic director like John Ford this could have been an epic work but Howard’s plodding predictability kills interest
Muchly ridiculed Hammer film that was billed as a ‘Space Western’. Once one gets past that it is actually a far more interesting film than it suggests
One of the best films from Full Moon Productions that locates a Western on another planet and manages a perfectly pitched homage to either genre
The film‘s Space Western idea aside – the plot is High Noon transplanted into orbit – this is a solid and well-made science-fiction film with Sean Connery as a long marshal on Jupiter’s moon Io
Weird Western where a group of outlaws on the run end up in a town of witches
An oddity from the heyday of the serial that has singing cowboy star Gene Autry discover the doorway to an underground kingdom on his ranch Made with a crude pulp vigour
A mind-boggling oddity – a slapstick comedy Western where there seems no limit on how nutty things are allowed to go, including characters venturing to Heaven and Hell
A quirkily enjoyable horror Western about children searching for their parents and ending up in a town that exists in an afterlife netherworld populated by an assortment of weird creatures
Kevin Costner directs David Brin’s post-holocaust tale as an epic Western. Most audiences ridiculed the film’s ardent flag-waving but you cannot deny that Costner makes a stirring and undeniably interesting film
This spends much effort creating an imaginative future where priests battle vampires who are banished to reservations only to do nothing with it other than reach for the tropes of the Western
Exactly as the title suggests, a mash-up between the zombie film and a Western (albeit relocated to a post-apocalyptic future) – and one that plays itself surprisingly seriously
Gore Verbinski makes an eccentrically different animated homage to the Western, all cast with talking animals. The animation comes from Industrial Light and Magic and is quite unlike any other animated film.
Quite well made effort that throws zombies into a Western setting
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
The tv series Firefly gained a cult following before being cancelled before its time. This was a theatrical film intended to wrap the story up.
Horror film where escaped convicts wander into a Western ghost town where a gold treasure is guarded by mummies
This is nominally a Western – one of the harsh and realistic ones made at the end of the 1970s – and quite a good one too. It comes with a real surprise ending that takes it over into fantasy
A directorial outing from actor/playwright Sam Shepard set in the West as Richard Harris buys an Indian daughter for his son River Phoenix
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary
Beautifully animated DreamWorks film that tells the life of a horse on the Western frontier. For once, anthropological realism is maintained and the animals do not talk
Patrick Swayze vehicle that uncreditedly relocates the Western Shane into a post-holocaust setting
This has been construed as a modern-day vampire western with tongue planted in cheek. From Anthony Hickox who made a series of OTT horror films during this period
This has the promising idea of bringing together various mythic figures from the West like Pecos Bill and John Bunyan but then mishandles them in an oddly mundane depiction
The director of the I Spit on Your Grave remake makes a low-budget film about a haunted Western ghost town
Largely forgotten adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel made for tv. While other versions place the story in Victorian England, this has been Americanised – where the time traveller is a weapons designer and journeys back to the Wild West. What kills the film is a painful cheapness
Rather slight film with the amusing concept of a present-day motorcyclist thrown back in time to the Old West
Cult film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surrealistic Western that comes with an incoherent mishmash of symbolism, Zen mysticism and 1960s raised consciousness
The fourth of the Tremors films.; It is a surprise that the series has managed to remain consistently enjoyable despite a limited premise. The main spin here is an origin story that takes the series back to the West
Ray Harryhausen film featuring cowboys roping dinosaurs. The plot rehashes King Kong but with a dinosaur instead of an ape however it is Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animation effects that make the film watchable
Korean-made Wu Xia/Western crossover that imports Hollywood names and is shot in New Zealand, resulting in a bizarre oddity cross-cultural fusion. The plot elements are paper thin but the film comes to life during the stylised action scenes
Clearly influenced by the original Westworld, this is an interesting film about people waking up inside a computer-simulated Western town. Without realising it, this was the very first film to depict Virtual Reality
A strong and imaginative horror/Western hybrid set aboard a train before the realisation that it is travelling to Hell. Deft characterisations and some tight, electric confrontations make this work well
A hit for novelist Michael Crichton who made his directorial debut here. Themes of machines going amok run throughout Crichton’s work and here he comes up with the ingenious idea of a Western simulation playground using androids that proceed to turn against the humans
Probably the strangest film that Charles Bronson ever made – a retelling of Moby Dick where he plays the real-life figure of Wild Bill Hickok hunting a mythic white buffalo instead of a whale. This was a big financial flop but is a not unworthwhile film
The big screen remake of the 1960s Western/spy mashup tv series is transformed into an overblown and painfully unfunny Will Smith vehicle that loudly signals it is taking none of itself seriously
A beautifully subtle and ambiguous film about a pioneer woman alone in a cabin on the American Frontier where she is haunted by demons of the prairies that may all be in her mind