Aisle 34 and 1/4

Aisle 34 & 1/4: The Bargain Movie Aisle

I type this as I watch that great western classic, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and yes this post is fully about this movie and movies of its ilk and yes I am fully aware that I haven't written in ages on this blog. No you will not be getting a detailed account of where I've been or what I have been doing. All you need to know is that I am now back to writing this thing and I'm starting off with this Clint Eastwood film.

I have always had an interest in westerns, even as a kid, though I seldom watched any. Mainly I would watch The Three Amigos and just about any black and white Zorro flick I could get my hands on. I also despised just about every John Wayne movie made (and I still feel that way for the majority of his films). I took a break from watching westerns when I reached seventh grade, I switched over to the more Carlesque B-horror films. I only returned to watching them when I was in undergrad. I quickly realized I liked the more gritty films of Clint Eastwood rather than any of the other films of this genre (though Tombstone and Wyatt Erp were both awesome). Around this time I also started rewatching old samurai films that I saw as a kid (mostly Akira Kurosawa films, like Yojimbo and Throne of Blood). What interested me in both these film genres was that they were pretty much one in the same. Granted most of Kurosawa's films (the ones not based off of Shakespeare) were directly translated into western form but the actual stories told in samurai films would play out as one would easily imagine them playing out in a western. Lone samurai/gunslinger drifter enters a town, kills multiple baddies with great skill and speed and eventually has a show down/duel/epic battle with the main antagonist who is dispatched, pretty much with one simple move after the protagonist gets thrashed about. Also look at the cinematic teachings of the samurai. It is said in many of these films (normally from the mouth of the wise master, who pretty much is going to be killed at one point or another) that the samurai must be able to fight till their last breath, in the westerns you see pretty much the same thing only without the master part. How many westerns have you seen where one of the gunslingers gets shot and in their dying breath manage to fire one last shot (and if they are a good guy they at least scar their assailants or at best they save their compadre who is just about to be killed).

Now let's get back to the movie in question. What's interesting is that this film is set during the Civil War. So there's tons of Confederate troops all over the place and tons of background fighting. Regardless you have three characters each moving through this war like environment, not really siding with anyone. They all follow their own individual missions. Plus I love Lee Van Cleef and the whole man with no name trilogy. It's all about redemption and revenge, and a big old pile of gold.

This is the first time I've watched this film all the way through in one sitting. Quite long but it seems worth it. I wonder why they don't make any films like this anymore... or maybe they do and they're all made in Italy. Honestly though, I could see westerns making a come back, especially now, with the world as it is. No I don't think people should remake the old classics, no I don't think they should place a western motif to another era (that's been done, see Star Wars, the original three, and John Carpenter's Vampires, and every other Robert Rodriguez film), I do think there are a shit load of western pulp novels that have been written that would make a pretty nifty movie treatment.

Now a western, samurai, and film noir combo flick... that'll be something I'd love to see.