Westernshave been around since the infancy of movie-making, with some calling the 1899 British shortKidnapping by Indiansthe first Western narrative film. In the 125 years since, Westerns have become the most frequently-produced genre films.
Although straight Westerns are still produced nowadays, filmmakers have been attempting to broaden the definition of the genre since mavericks likedirector Sam Peckinpahand scribe Dalton Trumbo sought narratives beyond ‘Cowboys and Indians’ in the 1960s. While luminaries like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have come to define the ‘Man on a Horse’ Old Guard, many Western films have broken away from those tropes by telling stories from novel viewpoints.
Films from the perspective of Native Americans and freed-slaves have shown how the Old West had more than just gunslinging frontiersmen.Countries like Australiaand Mexico have contributed to the Western film genre in ways that redefined our Old West-centric ideas about the genre.
Directors like Kathryn Bigelow and Michael Crichton have incorporated horror and science fiction into Westerns, and films likeBrokeback Mountainhave turned the notion of Western machismo on its head. The following are the 20 greatest non-traditional Western films.
20Near Dark (1988)
Near Darkhelps hearken back to the ’80s action-trash and kitchen sink scripts of films likeRepo ManandThey Live. Bigelow shared some of her then-boyfriend James Cameron’s muses in Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen,reconstituting them in vampire rolesto a neo-Western backdrop. Decades later, Hollywood would begin further attempts at combining Westerns with horror, showing that this B-movie was actually ahead of its time and deserves today’s revisionist cult status.
Bigelow Presaged Her Later Success With This Imaginative Thriller
WhileNear Darkgets campy at times, owing mostly to a modest $5 million budget, it bookended 1987’s other notable vampire film,The Lost Boys, by making more of an imaginative horror film than its teen-driven counterpart. Bigelow’s visual talent and the present-day Western components are what make the film a fun watch, and bit parts from actors like Jenette Goldstein (John Connor’s foster mom inT2) make for a nostalgically sublime watching experience.
WithBring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, legendary director Sam Peckinpah made the full transition from mainstream Hollywood Western filmmaker to a New Hollywood avante-Western director willing to shoot in Mexico to maintain creative autonomy. Peckinpah’s enormous influence on Quentin Tarantino is never more apparent than in this film, and it gave star Warren Oates the first proper platform for his talent.
For Peckinpah, it Was Darkest Before the Dawn
Made in Mexico on a microbudget after the commercial failure ofPat Garrett and Billy the Kid(another of Peckinpah’s groundbreaking Westerns)Garciainstead broke all the rules of how heroic a Western protagonist need be. Oates' Bennie isa role straight out ofJackie Brown,a shady character who plays both sides against the middle.
18Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Bone Tomahawk
Bone Tomahawkwasn’t so much a horror film as agruesomefilm from theoft-sadistic director S. Craig Zahler.While it maintained staples of the Western genre like a heroic Sheriff, played by Kurt Russell, and a roving band of Native American killers, Zahler made the film’s calling card its truly brutal deaths.
The tribe in question doesn’t have a name — they’re a band of so-called ‘Troglodytes’ who communicate with a whistling throat modification, and process the humans they eat with the precision of awagyubutcher.
Bone Tomahawk Dissolves From a Traditional Western Into a Brutal Survival Story
When a local woman is kidnapped by the town’s antagonist tribe, Sheriff Hunt (Russell) and a local gunslinger set off on a rescue mission. Tagging along are the woman’s injured husband and a reluctant Deputy (a brilliant Richard Jenkins performance). It becomes apparent, early in the film, that this ragtag posse are outmatched, and the nature of this horrifying tribe’s intentions become all too real in the film’s Third Act.
17El Mariachi (1992)
El Mariachi
While earning room and board for a song, a down-on-his-luck musician gets into deep hot water when he’s mistaken for a guitar case-toting hitman in a small Mexican town. El Mariachi was produced by do-it-yourself Austin, Texas auteur Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Til Dawn) on a shoe-string budget for the Mexican video market but earned a major studio release. Winner of the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
El Mariachiis as legendary, these days, for demonstrating Robert Rodriguez’s ability to make an epic shoot-em-up for less than $8,000, as it is for its unforgettable gun battles. Rodriguez shot the film in only 14 days in Mexico, replacing cowboys in 12-gallon hats with a stylish Mariachi who wields a guitar case full of surprises.
Robert Rodriguez Proved That If There’s a Will, There’s a Way
Rodriguez usedEl Mariachito prove that all you need to make a feature film is a 16mm camera andextrememotivation,redefining ’90s indieswhile he expanded the modern Western to include Spanish-language films. Viewing hisMexico Trilogy, you become aware of the 2,000-mile border shared by Mexico and America, a border that Hollywood Westerns have straddled for decades — without giving proper voice to Mexican culture.
Related:Robert Rodriguez Proudly Recalls 14-Year-Old Glen Powell’s Ambitions: “I’m Going All the Way”
16The Proposition (2005)
The Proposition
The Propositionalerted us to a few important facts: firstly, that Nick Cave has the same creative power with a pen as with his guitar, that Australia is as fertile a place for Western films as the American West, and that Guy Pearce has a subtle depth to his acting like no Aussie ever to grace the screen.
Ray Winstone and Danny Huston round out one of the low-key, most-talented casts ever in a Western film — that does away with convention by exploring the empty outlaw wilderness known as the Australian Outback.
Nick Cave’s Script Is, At Once, Historic and Hallucinogenic
First famous as a rock musician, Nick Cave’s script forThe Propositiontouches on aspects of Australian cultural identity ranging from the roots of England’s penal colony, cultural overlap with Aboriginal tribes, and a similar frontier mentality to the one that made the American West so engaging in films.The film is a remote outback field tripand an experiential film, with magic-hour cinematography and a perfectly simple plot that make it undeniably engaging.
15Ravenous (1999)
Guy Pearce makes a second appearance on this list for an early-career performance in a ’90s Western horror,Ravenous. Playing oppositeTrainspottingstar Robert Carlyle, Pearce humanizes a survival tale set in the peaks of the Sierra Nevadas.
The film drew together flesh-eating legends of the Donner Party and The Colorado Cannibal, making Carlyle into a predatory Colonel who draws on local Algonquin legend to justify his penchant for eating intrepid explorers who pass through his mountainous turf.
Ravenous Examined a Different Historical Setting Than Most Westerns
Unlike the countless Western films that take place during and after the Civil War Era, this survivor’s tale is fashioned around the Mexican-American War and includes strangely comedic elements into what is essentially a horror film. The plagued production didn’t fare well upon release, but has since gained a cult following, in part, for the many ways that it deviates from traditional Westerns.
14El Topo (1970)
The crown jewel ofexperimental filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ouevre,El Topohelped define a new Western subgenre, the “acid western,” whenThe New Yorker’s legendary critic Pauline Kael coined the term after seeing the film in 1971. A psychedelic spin on a Don Quixote tale, El Topo (Jodorowsky) is a different breed of Man in Black, a pious searcher with Christ-like abilities to make bitter water sweet.
El Topo May Be the Trippiest Western Ever Made
Despite some seemingly-sincere Christian themes, El Topo was incredibly gory and brutal for a ’70s film, and in playing El Topo himself, Jodorowsky may have perpetrated a few real-life crimes during shooting — which is warranting reexamination, of late. Still, the film is hallucinogenic and visually-stunning, staking Mexican filmmaking’s importance in the Western genre three decades before Robert Rodriguez made it a more mainstream endeavor.
13Sweet Country (2017)
Few Australian films have given greater voice to the suffering of Aboriginal Australians thanSweet Country, which garnered an astounding 96% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a tender performance from Warlpiri actor Hamilton Morris. Morris plays Sam Kelly, a farm hand whose family suffers torment from an abusive settler in the Northern Territory.
Among the cast are two legends of Australian films, the New Zealander Sam Neill as Preacher Fred Smith, and Bryan Brown as the corruptible Sergeant Fletcher.
A Kangaroo Western, This Is Not
Despite the film’s breathtaking, stark landscapes shot in the actual Northern Territory, this film is more of a post-colonial tale than a neo-Western, and pulls no punches about the disastrous effect of White landowners on Australia’s indigenous cultures. The film’s most exciting scenes occur when Sam Kelly draws his pursuers into the bush, using his knowledge of the landscape to evade capture and seek revenge.
12Meek’s Cutoff (2010)
Meek’s Cutoff
Meek’s Cutoffdeviates from traditional Westerns in several ways. For one, it takes place in Oregon’s High Desert, a seldom-used locale for a story that dovetails with the history of real-life fur trapper and guide Stephen Meek.Through Michelle Williams' performanceas Emily Tetherow, we get a rare entrance into the brutal lives of servitude that women were forced into while settling the frontier.
In Meek’s Cutoff, Unlikely Allies are Forced into Cahoots
In a classic ‘blind leading the blind’ tale, Emily Tetherow’s grim prospects become apparent early in the film, when Stephen Meek leads his followers into hunger and despair. Emily is forced into a lose/lose situation, where she may have to ally with a local Cayuse drifter to not be subject to a fate predetermined by the fools leading her party.
11McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
McCabe & Mrs. Millerwas the greatest intersection of New Hollywood and revisionist Western filmmaking, with director Robert Altman coining the term “anti-Western” to describe his film. 4 years after Warren Beatty had become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars withBonnie and Clyde, Altman surrounded Beatty withone of his famous ensembles,in a tale that intertwines themes about sex work, romance, and gambling to poetic musician Leonard Cohen’s sonorous songs.
Altman Bucked Convention, Making Emotionally Complex Scenes Out of a Simple Story
McCabe & Mrs. Miller’s Third Act has plenty of action, but Altman makes the interaction between actors Beatty, ’60s Go-Go muse Julie Christie, and Shelley Long of central importance. Rather than make the John McCabe character a macho archetype, Altman made him an emotionally complex confidence man who embodies the frontier’s stake-your-claim attitude.
