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Thursday, September 1, 2022

THE WHITE BUFFALO (1977)

Charles Bronson never quite recovered from the alarming commercial success of DEATH WISH in 1974.  But 1977 saw him, possibly for the last time, looking for a way around this profitable professional trap in two off beat vehicles: TELEFON, an international spy thriller from Don Siegel (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/telefon-1977.html), and this mythical beast of a Western directed by the maddeningly inconsistent J. Lee Thompson.  (His big run TIGER BAY/’59, GUNS OF NAVARONE/’61, CAPE FEAR/’62.)  Bronson’s Wild Bill Hickock, aging and heading West under an assumed name to search for gold and quash the very real beast that lives in his dreams as an avatar.  Teaming up with old pal Jack Warden, they shoot down scores of Hickock’s enemies along the way, and are eventually joined by another man in search of peace, redemption & a white buffalo carcass, Will Sampson’s Crazy Horse, racially charged mutual hatred held back by grudging, if temporary respect.  With Carlo Rambaldi of E.T. fame as visual consultant on the White Buffalo attacks, the effect more mystical/poetic (THE BEAST OF THE BASKERVILLES?) than tough Western survival tale.  Whatever did contemporary audiences make of it?  With loads of guest apperances by fading players of a certain age (Stuart Whitman, Clint Walker, Kim Novak, Cara Williams!!, John Carradine), as old-school Hollywood as the jarringly artificial snow and soundstage caves.  Yet the film is simply too weird and involving to shake off.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: More Hickock in Walter Hill’s unjustly ignored WILD BILL/’95 starring Jeff Bridges; something of an accidental pilot for the cable series DEADWOOD which Hill worked on.  OR: Probably Bronson’s last really good film, HARD TIMES/’75, made right after DEATH WISH, written by the very same Walter Hill in his directing debut.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/hard-times-1975.html

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