Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
#4 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. Peckinpah met great success with "Noon Wine", his television film starring Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland, and he was able to secure funding for his grand, revisionist western, The Wild Bunch. John Wayne saw this and bemoaned the death of the myth of the Old West.… Continue reading The Wild Bunch
#11 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. More than your typical Western, but less than the great, Civil War epic, Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee is one of those movies I wish was significantly longer, like Anthony Mann's The Furies could be improved in a similar way. By all accounts, it was much longer in… Continue reading Major Dundee
#5 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. The Deadly Companions was a weird little western with an ending that Peckinpah had no say in. Ride the High Country, his next film, was credited to N. B. Stone but with extensive rewriting by both Peckinpah and William Roberts, feels much less compromised, especially in its… Continue reading Ride the High Country
#8 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. Sam Peckinpah's last television project, The Westerner starring Brian Keith, came to an early end, and Keith went off to star in a movie with Maureen O'Hara. However, they had no director, and Keith recommended Peckinpah to the producers. Peckinpah, eager to make the jump into feature… Continue reading The Deadly Companions
#16 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. In terms of how directors go out with their final movie, this reminds me of Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's final film. There isn't any comparison between the two in terms of tone or genre, but both The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and Family Plot are solidly… Continue reading The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
David Vining, Author 