If you are expecting John Wayne and John Ford, you won't find them here.

What made me think of this was Equinox mentioned watching McCabe and Mrs. Miller and off-beat western from 1971, directed by Robert Altman. There were a few other oddball westerns made in the early 70's that I truly adore, and I am not generally a fan of the western movie genre.

Oklahoma Crude 1973, starring George C. Scott, Faye Dunaway and Jack Palance, it was directed by Stanley Kramer. Faye Dunaway, a hard line feminist, takes on a big oil company with the help of George C. Scott.

Kid Blue 1973, starring Dennis Hopper, but it is the stuff of legends. It also starred Ben Johnson as Sherrif "Mean John" Simpson and Peter Boyle as an ascetic high-tech, high-flying Preacher. I always wondered what happened to this movie and decided to look into it today.
I saw it when it first came out in the theater in 1973. I loved it and it was developing quite a cult status. Then it disappeared from sight. Vanished. Gone. Never available on VHS nor DVD, so your chances of ever seeing this great movie are slim, unless you can maybe catch it on TV sometime. If I ever hear of it being broadcast or if it ever comes to DVD, I'll alert the masses. I read it was never widely distributed due to it's anti big-business satire and social commentary.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue 1970...Wow what a great movie. Many people, including myself and Sam Peckinpah, think this is his finest film, or atleast it was his favorite. Often when asked to speak about his work, he brought a print of this film to show instead of one of his more famous movies.

It stars Jason Robards, Stella Stevens and David Warner.
It is a well told simple tale of people just trying to survive. It really is his masterpiece and yet few people have even heard of it let alone seen it.

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Run of the Arrow—1990 Oscar-winner Dances With Wolves bears a number of striking resemblances to this 1957 Western by writer/director Sam Fuller. Rod Steiger stars as an Irish-American Confederate soldier who, rather than submit to the Yankee rule, heads West into Indian country and wins acceptance into a band of Sioux. His newly-found life is threatened when the tribe comes runs up against a Cavalry troupe under the command of Capt. Clark (Brian Keith). There are some odd casting choices (Charles Bronson plays a Sioux named “Blue Buffalo”), but this is one of the first Westerns I’m aware of that presents the Native American way of life sympathetically.

also El Topo (one of the early great "midnight movies"), and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (which critic Jonathan Rosenbaum dubbed an "Acid Western"), both of which are quite a bit more difficult to summarize.

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�It�s got good actors, and that spells good acting.�

Little Big Man with a young Dustin Hoffman. Raised by indians, this tall tale is a real enjoyment to watch comes to mind....

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Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy
and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation.

Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind,
I will block You, I swear it.

Johhny Guitar 1954 directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge and well check out the rest of the cast, practically a who's who of western stars...Sterling Hayden, Scott Brady, Ward Bond, Ben Cooper, John Carradine and Royal Dano. It's basically about two women who fight over running a small western town and the men. All the roles are basically reversed.

The Quick and the Dead, I love this movie, to me it was like they wanted Clint Eastwood for the role, but he was busy so they cast Sharon Stone instead.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean 1972, directed by John Huston, starring Paul Newman.
Truly an unusual film which defies categorization as myth, comedy, western, satire, or morality tale. Perhaps it's a synthesis of all of these, and a hell of a lot of fun...

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A man called horse

If you can find it, watch it.

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Cat Ballou, 1965, Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin in that great dual role as Kid Shelleen/Tim Strawn, which he won an Oscar for.

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"Oh my god! Look at your eyes!"
".... You should see them from my side."

great movie!

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Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy
and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation.

Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind,
I will block You, I swear it.

'Little Big Man' is indeed a very enjoyable (and at times upsetting) western..I love it. One of my favs of the genre.

And though I hate to rub it in for all our Americans readers who can't see it yet...The Proposition...a 'western' in every sense except it's location.

'Soldier Blue' is another unusal western insomuch as it showed an aspect of the 'white man in the west' that we knew had taken place but really didn't want to acknowledge in such graphic detail...

Although still a film everyone should see...

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This is one of my favourite films of all time, nice choice.

Unforgiven, though seemingly a pretty traditional western, was very good at subtly attacking some of the cliches of the genre.

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There's also Red Sun the film with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune teaming up together. It's like the directors couldn't decide whether to do a cowboy film or a samurai film and just decided to do both. They should have used the tagline "Samurai's and cowboys, together at last".

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"Nothing is Written."