Clint Eastwood: The Antihero Who Rewrote the West

"Howdy, folks! Welcome if you're new here or returning, ready to take a ride through the wild world of Western films? Today, we’re talking about the man with no name who redefined the genre: Clint Eastwood. From a mysterious gunslinger to a legendary director, Eastwood didn’t just star in Westerns - he reshaped them. So, grab your hat, saddle up, and let’s explore how Clint Eastwood became the ultimate Western icon."

Jason Goes to Hell - The Final Friday (1993)

Okay, time for some brief personal backstory: the only reason I started this Friday the 13th challenge was an incentive to get to Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday.

I wanted to watch them in order, to see if there was any foreshadowing for some of the moments I knew were coming in this entry in the franchise, even though it was one I definitely knew I'd never seen before.

Although it's not available via Sky Cinema or through streaming, Paul had bought me the DVD over a year ago - but I hadn't gotten around to watching it until now.

And, I have to say, I loved it. Primarily for the way it ties in not just to Nightmare On Elm Street (with Freddy's claw grabbing the mask right at the end), but also with the Evil Dead mythology.

I'd known about that link for ages (hence my keenness to see this chapter in Jason's story) but hadn't expected it to be so overt.

I thought it might be a shot of the Necronomicon (which also gives it some Lovecraft flavouring as well) in the background, or some such fleeting Easter Egg. but it's front and centre, when Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay) is exploring the Voorhees home and flicks through the ancient tome:

Completely ignoring Jason's fate at the end of Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes To Hell opens with the FBI setting a trap for the supernatural serial killer in the woods near Crystal Lake, resulting in him being blown to kingdom come.

The pieces of Jason's body are taken to a morgue, where his still beating heart mesmerises the coroner (Deadwood's Richard Gant), sending him off on a murderous rampage.

Meanwhile, Crystal Lake is celebrating the lifting of its 20 year "death curse", with Joey B's Diner offering Jason-themed meals.

But tough guy bounty hunter Creighton Duke (The X-Files' Steven Williams) is having none of this, because he knows that Jason can only be finally killed by destroying his heart, and only someone of the Voorhees bloodline has the power to do that.

Jason's supernatural - Deadite - power is burning up his host body, so he needs to transfer the parasite within him to other bodies on his journey to find someone of his bloodline - not only are they the only ones that can kill him, they are also the only bodies that he is able to transform into his natural form (the zombie slasher we know and love from the later films in the franchise).

Hapless doof  Steven Freeman ends up getting framed for one of Jason's murders, but soon discovers - through a meeting with Duke - who Jason is really targeting and why.

He busts out of jail and sets off to track down the body-hopping killer.

On one hand, Jason Goes To Hell is quite unlike earlier entries in the Friday the 13th series, but it's a real hardcore '80s gonzo trio that extrapolates on the supernatural elements that were woven in Jason Lives and The New Blood, so we already know he's operating in a world where these things are possible.

Jason Goes To Hell is also full of definitive details about the franchise: such as the killer being born of Elias and Pamela Voorhees in 1946, he supposedly drowned when he was 11, he's responsible (prior to this movie) for 83 confirmed kills (and many more unconfirmed), the existence of the Voorhees home (which, surprisingly, we've never seen before) etc

So, as someone who sees movies like this through the eyes of a gamer and comic book reader, I'm totally grokking all these stats, and attempting to headcanon them into my own vision of Jason's mythology (which now embraces Freddy and Ash, of course!).

The Town With No Name Welcomes The Saloon With No Name

The first complete building for my Dead Man's Hand game (the marquee venture of PROJECT 60) now sits in pride of place in my rather crowded games room.

However, I didn't build the "multi-part, two-storey building" from Great Escape Games (purveyors of all things Dead Man's Hand and much more), instead I came across an already built kit on eBay for the same price as the kit.

All it needs now is a lick of paint. 

Of course, I have the other buildings - still unassembled - that I've acquired in recent months, but I reckon this saloon will be a great icebreaker.

Come to think of it, I haven't even conjured up a name for my nascent Frontier town, let alone considered what the saloon will be called. The Gem (as in Deadwood) is too obvious, so I'll have to give the old noggin a good shake and see what comes out.

In the meantime, the two-story building is sitting on my gaming table in the games room, surrounded by clutter that I'm sure I tidied up a few weeks ago, and a family of Border Reivers that I've been too slow about packing up (as my first wave of cowboy figures are off being professionally painted)!

The saloon was incredibly well-packaged by trader The Last Nazgul

The detail and features on this kit are amazing

Can't help but love that the all the levels are detachable, so figures can move in and out

Current visitors to the saloon appear to be Border Reivers!

Sometimes Size DOES Matter!

I cannot help but be blown away by the scratch-built Wild West town of Persistence. This half-hour video showcases the work of  Tim Eagling (of the Magrathea - Builder Of Worlds YouTube channel).

All the buildings are uniquely designed and built by Tim (although several nods to Deadwood are acknowledged, along with some other Western film and TV Easter Eggs), with detachable levels to allow for indoor gun battles and fisticuffs. 

And what makes this extra special is that it is that it's designed for use with 40mm figures! 

Don't worry, I'm not suddenly upsizing from my 28mm collection to 40mm, but these buildings - and the hard-to-track-down figures - are amazing... and inspirational.

Who wouldn't want to play a shootout on the streets of Persistence?

Django and Cullen Bohannon Have Moseyed On Up To My Door

Okay, so I treated myself to this swanky blu-ray release of the original Django this week.

According to one of my older review posts I first saw Django when I was at university, but I have absolutely zero recollection of that.

However, I guess, if you squint you can see some traces of influence in the Western movie script I wrote for my degree course.

I watched Django again, for the first time, the other week and was entranced by the violence and mud so prevalent in this once-banned spaghetti Western classic.

At the time, on Facebook, I wrote: "Oh, this was so good! [It] took a couple of unexpected turns along the way".

I'll probably write a full review of the legendary 1966 film when I see it next, now courtesy of this new blu-ray rather than Prime Video streaming. 

What I particularly love about this release is the inclusion of a Quentin Tarantino documentary - almost as long as the main attraction - in which the director sings the praises of Sergio Corbucci and explains elements and inspirations he drew from this work for his own.

On the gaming front, Django (complete with coffin) is available from Wargames Illustrated as one of its 28mm Giants In Miniature figures. Mine is off with Matt the painter at present, but I look forward to sharing him with you in due course.

Django - A Giant In Miniature figure

The blu-ray box set of the first season of Hell on Wheels arrived the other day.

My plan is, once I’ve finished my latest rewatch of Deadwood, to follow that up with Brisco County Jnr then start Hell on Wheels - which I haven’t seen since it first aired on TV.

I'm nearly at the end of Deadwood's second season - taking a break to watch other things when I finish each disc of the collection - so then it'll be the final season followed by the movie.

When it comes to 1993's The Adventures of Brisco County Jnr, the Bruce Campbell-fronted steampunky comedy-western, I'm not even sure I've actually seen the whole 27-episode season of that show before.

I'm looking forward to that as I seem to remember that while it lacks the horror elements there's a distinct Deadlands-style liberty taken with history (kinda giving it a Xena-like feel, but in the Old West).

Child's Play (1988)

On the run from the police, voodoo-obsessed serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Deadwood's Brad Dourif) ducks into a toy store to hide.

In the ensuing firefight with Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), Ray is mortally wounded, but before he dies he manages to cast a voodoo spell that transfers his soul into one of the Good Guys' dolls on sale in the store.

The doll eventually ends up in the hands of single mum Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) as a present for her six-year-old son, Andy (Alex Vincent).

Little doe Karen realise that the doll is now supernaturally animated, and intent on exacting revenge of those it feels contributed to Charles Lee Ray's death.

When tragedy strikes around Andy no-one believes him that his doll is alive, and he ends up being taken into psychiatric care.

During his campaign of revenge, Chucky - as the doll calls itself - discovers how to transfer his soul back into a human body, which means more trouble for the Barclay household and Detective Norris.

As the first movie in the Child's Play franchise (before the multiple sequels, reboot, TV series etc), the mythology at work here is pretty straight forward, allowing the story room to breathe and develop at a natural pace.

Yet director Tom Holland - who co-wrote the film with John Lafia and Chucky's creator Don Mancini - still keeps things moving at a cracking pace, getting in and out of scenes at just the right moment, without a wasted moment.

Events unfold over a short period of time and in a relatively contained environment (I reckon well over 50 per cent of the movie takes place in the Barclay's Chicago apartment), limiting the number of potential loose ends and plot holes.

As well as the tense horror (home invasion, disbelieving adults etc), there's a definite slice of dark humour (naturally accentuated by the sight of an animated child's toy dropping f-bombs and attacking people) in Child's Play that simultaneously leans into and distracts from the inherent silliness of the premise.

An exciting and engrossing horror flick, Child's Play - unlike some of the '80s horrors I've been revisiting of late, thanks to various streaming services - works as well today as it did when it was first released.

It's clearly a period piece now, but the fashions and lack of mobile devices don't impact the story.

I definitely need to start tracking down the sequels, as I do love a good, rambling, horror franchise (check spoilerific video below for a taste of what's to come).

Building Up The Old Western Library!

Today saw the arrival - all the way from the Good Ol' U.S. of A - of Deadwood's Al Swearingen: Manifest Evil In The Gem Saloon, penned by historians Jerry L Bryant and Barbara Fifer.

According to the Wild West Extravaganza podcast episode on Swearingen, this book is the closest we'll get to knowing the actual person - rather than the charmingly vile anti-hero version portrayed superbly by Ian McShane in the great Deadwood TV show.

This 140-page tome has immediately jumped to the top of my reading pile, as I just finished my first Louis L'Amour novel yesterday (The Tall Stranger)!

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)

It has taken just over a century to transform outlaw Jesse James into a mythical 'Robin Hood'-style character, but Andrew Domink's 2007 epic The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford goes a long way towards balancing the scales and showing that Jesse James was just a flawed human being.

In fact, Brad Pitt's portrayal of the younger James brother shows him to be seriously unbalanced and generally quite unlikeable.

Following the events that unfold after the James' gangs final train robbery, as the gang fractures and Jesse becomes increasingly paranoid about the law closing in on him, The Assassination Of Jesse James... takes its time to lay the groundwork for the inevitable conclusion and its rather sordid and pathetic aftermath.

The two-and-a-half hour film, which is a more a slice of Western life than a traditional "Wild West" movie, shows up nearly all of Jesse's gang as social rejects, perverts and lowlifes... only his older brother, Frank (Sam Shephard) and Robert's brother, Charlie Ford (Sam Rockwell), come out with their dignity intact.

The slowly unfolding tale, a damning indictment of the seemingly 21st Century "cult of celebrity", centres around young Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), his hero worship of Jesse James fuelled by press cuttings and dime novel accounts of the outlaw's exploits, and the crashing realisation that the man doesn't measure up to the myth.

While most people with a passing knowledge of the Old West will know the story of Bob Ford shooting Jesse James in the back, it was what happened next that came as an eye opener to me; Bob Ford's misguided belief that he, in turn, would become as big a celebrity or even be declared a hero rapidly unravelling into a cheap life of 'kill-and-tell' revelations (with his touring play substituting for the tabloid magazines of today) and eventual ignoble death in a mining camp years later.

The Assassination of Jesse James... is a fine film for fans of revisionist westerns, from Open Range and Unforgiven to Deadwood.

Although maybe not as pacy as its predecessors it still carries the viewer along with its sweeping landscapes and the poetic rhythm of dialogue that gives these pieces that certain verisimilitude that earlier Westerns, where everyone spoke Hollywood/Californian, might fall short on.

3.10 To Yuma (2007)

Yee-haw, I sure loves me some Western action!

It was the Deadlands roleplaying game (the original, pre-Savage Worlds, pre-d20 detour, version) that rekindled my childhood passion for the Wild West.

However, it really blew up when I was at university and researching my major, final third year project - a film script based on the life of Elfego Baca, the wannabe lawman who held off a veritable army of riled cowboys from within an adobe hut. The hut (a jacal) took about 4,000 bullets during the 36-hour gun battle but Baca was unharmed!

During that time at university, I watched wall-to-wall Westerns, from the true classics (such as Shane and Hombre) to the cult favourites (like Django and The Magnificent Seven), and read whatever text books I could lay my hands on, to immerse myself in the culture and language of those wild, frontier times.

Sadly, after University, my love of the genre kinda cooled. I'd probably rather overdosed and none of my old gaming buddies shared my interest in the genre (we are British, after all, so I guess it's not even our history!) so except for a few shoot-outs with a homebrew miniatures system I knocked up and the odd DVD purchase, the West rode out of my life and into the sunset.

However, as the 2000s dragged on, I noticed it sneaking back in on the coat tails of my 'discovery' of the whole 'pulp' thing (that is, putting a name and classification for a style of entertainment I already enjoyed), helped by Deadwood and several mainstream cinematic releases, such as Seraphim Falls and this one.

Turns out that as a cinema genre, Westerns weren't dead - they'd just raised their standards.

In 3.10 To Yuma, Christian Bale is crippled, ex-Union sharpshooter-turned-struggling-farmer Dan Evans, who volunteers to escort charming, stone cold killer and outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the train station to catch the 3.10 to Yuma prison.

Evans' 14-year-old son, William (Logan Lerman), who sees his father as a coward and rather idolises Wade, tags along in the small posse - which includes a grizzled bounty hunter (Peter Fonda) and the town's doctor (Alan 'Firefly' Tudyk).

The film starts in Unforgiven territory, but becomes increasingly Young Guns as the escort party's troubles escalate and numbers are whittled down by Wade's pursuing gang, renegade Apaches, troublesome railworkers and in-fighting.

It all builds to a dynamic, heroic and rather far-fetched climax as - having turned into a reluctant buddy flick - Evans and Wade make a final dash for the train, facing up to Wade's merciless gang and vigilante townsfolk.

The ultimate conclusion is suitably powerful and emotional, undermined only by a rather silly final scene.

Crowe is perfect as the supremely confident and calm killer, while Bale is, simply, superb as always; both of these actors are at the top of their game and guarantee a solid performance with every role they take.