February 23, 2010 (XX:7)

Sam Peckinpah, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962, 94 min)

Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Written by N.B. Stone Jr., Sam Peckinpah and Robert Creighton
Williams
Produced by Richard E. Lyons
Original Music by George Bassman
Cinematography by Lucien Ballard
Film Editing by Frank Santillo
Randolph Scott...Gil Westrum
Joel McCrea...Steve Judd
Mariette Hartley...Elsa Knudsen
Ron Starr...Heck Longtree
Edgar Buchanan...Judge Tolliver
R.G. Armstrong...Joshua Knudsen
Jenie Jackson...Kate
James Drury...Billy Hammond
L.Q. Jones...Sylvus Hammond
John Anderson...Elder Hammond
John Davis Chandler...Jimmy Hammond
Warren Oates...Henry Hammond
SAM PECKINPAH (21 February 1925, Fresno, California, - 28
December 1984, Inglewood, California, of a stroke) directed 28
films and tv series, some of which were The Osterman Weekend
(1983), Convoy (1978), Cross of Iron (1977), The Killer Elite
(1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Pat Garrett &
Billy the Kid (1973), The Getaway (1972), Junior Bonner (1972),
Straw Dogs (1971), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), The Wild
Bunch (1969), "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" (1
episode, 1967), Major Dundee (1965), Ride the High Country
(1962), "Zane Grey Theater" (3 episodes, 1959-1960), "The
Rifleman" (4 episodes, 1958-1959), and "Trackdown" (1957) TV
series (unknown episodes).
LUCIEN BALLARD (6 May 1908, Miami, Oklahoma -1 October
1988, Rancho Mirage, California, of a road accident) was the
cinematographer for 133 films and tv series, some of which were
My Kingdom For... (1985), Rabbit Test (1978), Mikey and Nicky
(1976), From Noon Till Three (1976), St. Ives (1976), Breakout
(1975), The Getaway (1972), Junior Bonner (1972), Elvis: That's
the Way It Is (1970), The Hawaiians (1970), The Ballad of Cable
Hogue (1970), The Wild Bunch (1969), True Grit (1969), Will
Penny (1968), Nevada Smith (1966), The Sons of Katie Elder

(1965), Wives and Lovers (1963), Ride the High Country (1962),
"The Westerner" (3 episodes, 1960), "Disneyland" (3 episodes,
1959-1960), "Zorro" (2 episodes, 1960), The Bramble Bush (1960),
Al Capone (1959), Band of Angels (1957), The King and Four
Queens (1956), A Kiss Before Dying (1956), The Proud Ones
(1956), The Magnificent Matador (1955), White Feather (1955),
Prince Valiant (1954), The Desert Rats (1953), Don't Bother to
Knock (1952), Berlin Express (1948), Laura (1944), The Lodger
(1944), The Outlaw (1943), Coast Guard (1939), Rio Grande
(1938), Highway Patrol (1938), Penitentiary (1938), The Shadow
(1937), The Devil's Playground (1937), and Crime and Punishment
(1935).
RANDOLPH SCOTT (23 January 1898, Orange County, Virginia - 2
March 1987, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, of heart and
lung ailments) appeared in 105 films, some of which were Ride the
High Country (1962), Comanche Station (1960), Westbound (1959),
Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Decision at Sundown (1957), ShootOut at Medicine Bend (1957), 7th Cavalry (1956), Seven Men from
Now (1956), A Lawless Street (1955), Ten Wanted Men (1955), The
Bounty Hunter (1954), The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), The Man
Behind the Gun (1953), Carson City (1952), Man in the Saddle
(1951) , Fort Worth (1951), Santa Fe (1951), Colt .45 (1950), The
Nevadan (1950), The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949), Canadian
Pacific (1949), Return of the Bad Men (1948), Albuquerque (1948),

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY2

Home, Sweet Homicide (1946), Badman's Territory (1946), Belle of

the Yukon (1944), 'Gung Ho!': The Story of Carlson's Makin Island
Raiders (1943), Bombardier (1943), Paris Calling (1941), Belle
Starr (1941), When the Daltons Rode (1940), Virginia City (1940),
Coast Guard (1939), Jesse James (1939), The Texans (1938),
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), The Last of the Mohicans
(1936), She (1935), The Last Round-Up (1934), The Thundering
Herd (1933), Hello, Everybody! (1933), and The Far Call (1929).
JOEL MCCREA (5 November 1905, South Pasadena, California - 20
October 1990, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, of
pulmonary complications) appeared in 93 films and tv series, some
of which were Mustang Country (1976), Cry Blood, Apache (1970),
Sioux Nation (1970), Ride the High Country (1962), "Wichita
Town" (26 episodes, 1959-1960), The Gunfight at Dodge City
(1959), Fort Massacre (1958), Cattle Empire (1958), The Tall
Stranger (1957), The Oklahoman (1957), The First Texan (1956),
Wichita (1955), Black Horse Canyon (1954), Border River (1954),
Lone Hand (1953), Rough Shoot (1953), The San Francisco Story
(1952), Colorado Territory (1949), Four Faces West (1948), The
Virginian (1946), Buffalo Bill (1944), Sullivan's Travels (1941),
Foreign Correspondent (1940), Union Pacific (1939), Wells Fargo
(1937), Come and Get It (1936), These Three (1936), Rockabye
(1932), The Lost Squadron (1932), Kept Husbands (1931), The Jazz
Age (1929), Freedom of the Press (1928), and Dead Man's Curve
(1928).
R.G. ARMSTRONG (7 April 1917, Birmingham, Alabama -)
appeared in 182 films and tv series, some of which were The
Waking (2001), Purgatory (1999), "Millennium" (5 episodes, 19971998), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), "Cybill" (1 episode,
1995), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (1 episode, 1994), "L.A. Law" (2
episodes, 1992-1993), Dick Tracy (1990), "Matlock" (2 episodes,
1989), "War and Remembrance" (2 episodes, 1988-1989),
Bulletproof (1988), "Trapper John, M.D." (6 episodes, 1981-1985),
Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), "Dynasty" (3 episodes, 1982),
Hammett (1982), Reds (1981), The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981),
Raggedy Man (1981), Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), The Last
Ride of the Dalton Gang (1979), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Stay
Hungry (1976), Race with the Devil (1975), "Cannon" (2 episodes,
1971-1973), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), The Great
Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), "Disneyland" (4 episodes, 19591972), "Hawaii Five-O" (2 episodes, 1969-1970), The Great White
Hope (1970), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), "Gunsmoke" (5
episodes, 1961-1967), "The F.B.I." (3 episodes, 1965-1967),
"Bonanza" (3 episodes, 1959-1966), "The Fugitive" (3 episodes,
1963-1965), "Rawhide" (4 episodes, 1959-1965), Major Dundee
(1965), "Perry Mason" (3 episodes, 1958-1962), Ride the High
Country (1962), "Cheyenne" (2 episodes, 1960-1961), "Maverick"
(2 episodes, 1959-1960), The Fugitive Kind (1959), "Have Gun Will Travel" (2 episodes, 1958), From Hell to Texas (1958), A
Face in the Crowd (1957), and Garden of Eden (1954).
JAMES DRURY (18 April 1934, New York City, New York - )
appeared in 70 films and tv series, some of which were Hell to Pay
(2005), The Virginian (2000), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (3 episodes,
1993), "Firehouse" (13 episodes, 1974), "The Virginian" (249
episodes, 1962-1971), The Young Warriors (1967), "Perry Mason"
(1 episode, 1961), "Rawhide" (3 episodes, 1959-1961), "The
Rifleman" (2 episodes, 1958-1961), "Gunsmoke" (4 episodes, 19551961), "Cheyenne" (1 episode, 1959), "Have Gun - Will Travel" (1

episode, 1959), "The Texan" (1 episode, 1958), "Broken Arrow" (1

episode, 1958), Forbidden Planet (1956), and The Tender Trap
(1955).
L.Q. JONES (19 August 1927, Beaumont, Texas -) appeared in 153
films and tv series, some of which were A Prairie Home
Companion (2006), Route 666 (2001), The Mask of Zorro
(1998),The Patriot (1998), In Cold Blood (1996), Casino (1995),
The Legend of Grizzly Adams (1990), Bulletproof (1988), "The
Yellow Rose" (10 episodes, 1983-1984), Lone Wolf McQuade
(1983), The Beast Within (1982), "Charlie's Angels" (4 episodes,
1976-1980), "The Incredible Hulk" (1 episode, 1979), "McCloud"
(1 episode, 1977), Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), White Line Fever
(1975), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), "Alias Smith and Jones"
(3 episodes, 1971-1972), "Gunsmoke" (7 episodes, 1963-1972),
"The Virginian" (25 episodes, 1963-1971), The Ballad of Cable
Hogue (1970), The Wild Bunch (1969), Hang 'Em High (1968),
"The Big Valley" (5 episodes, 1966-1968), "Rawhide" (5 episodes,
1963-1965), Major Dundee (1965), "Wagon Train" (5 episodes,
1959-1964), "Laramie" (7 episodes, 1959-1963), Ride the High
Country (1962), "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" (1 episode,
1961), Cimarron (1960), Warlock (1959), "Cheyenne" (3 episodes,
1955), Target Zero (1955), and Battle Cry (1955).
WARREN OATES (5 July 1928, Depoy, Kentucky - 3 April 1982,
Los Angeles, California, of a heart attack) appeared in 122 films
and tv series, some of which were "Tales of the Unexpected" (1
episode, 1985), Tough Enough (1983), Blue Thunder (1983), The
Border (1982), Stripes (1981), "East of Eden" (1981), 1941 (1979),
The Brink's Job/China 9, Liberty 37 (1978), The African Queen
(1977), 92 in the Shade (1975), Race with the Devil (1975), Rancho
Deluxe (1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The
White Dawn (1974), Badlands (1973), Dillinger (1973), The Hired
Hand (1971), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Wild Bunch (1969),
"Gunsmoke" (10 episodes, 1958-1967), In the Heat of the Night
(1967), Welcome to Hard Times (1967), The Shooting (1967), "The
Virginian" (4 episodes, 1963-1966), Major Dundee (1965), Ride the
High Country (1962), "Wanted: Dead or Alive" (5 episodes, 19581961), "Have Gun - Will Travel"(2 episodes, 1958-1960), The Rise
and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), "Wagon Train" (1 episode,
1959), and "The United States Steel Hour" (1 episode, 1956).
MARIETTE HARTLEY (21 June 1940, Weston, Connecticut - )
appeared in 119 films and tv series, some of which were The Inner
Circle (2009), "The Cleaner" (1 episode, 2009), "Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit" (5 episodes, 2003-2009), "Grey's Anatomy"
(1 episode, 2008), Baggage (2003), "One Life to Live" (1968)
(unknown episodes, 2001), Snitch (1996), "Courthouse" (1
episode), "Murder, She Wrote" (1 episode, 1992), Encino Man
(1992), "The Love Boat" (2 episodes, 1983), The Love Tapes
(1980), "M*A*S*H" (1 episode, 1979), "Columbo" (2 episodes,
1974-1977), "Little House on the Prairie" (1 episode, 1976),
"Gunsmoke" (5 episodes, 1963-1974), The Magnificent Seven Ride!
(1972), "Bonanza" (4 episodes, 1965-1971), Marooned (1969),
"Star Trek" (1 episode, 1969), "Peyton Place" 30 episodes, 19651966), "The Virginian" (2 episodes, 1964), Marnie (1964), "The
Twilight Zone" (1 episode, 1964), Drums of Africa (1963), and Ride
the High Country (1962).

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY3

PECKINPAH from World Film Directors, V. II, Ed. John

Wakeman. H.W. Wilson Co, NY 1988
American director and scenarist, was born in Fresno California, the
son of David Samuel Peckinpah and Fern Church. Peckinpah told
interviewers that he had a great-aunt with Paute Indian blood, but
he believed that his family name originated in the Friesland Islands
of the Netherlands.
Both the Peckinpahs and the Churches had migrated to the
Fresno area in the 1850s. His paternal grandfather had hauled borax
out of Death Valley, earning enough to buy timberland and
establish a sawmill in 1873 on Peckinpah Mountain in the Sierra
Nevada, subsequently selling out to buy a general store and way
station. His other grandfather,
Denver Samuel Church, had
come out west to work on an
uncles sheepfarm. He
qualified as a lawyer and set
up a practice in Fresno, then
bought a cattle ranch in Crane
Valley, near Peckinpah
Mountain. Church became
District Attorney of Fresno
County, then a Congressman,
and finally a Superior Court
judge. In 1914 Sam
Peckinpahs father David went
to work on the Church ranch,
where he met and married
Fern. With his father-in-laws
backing, the cowboy qualified
as a lawyer and also went into
practice in Fresno.
Though they were raised in Fresno, Sam Peckinpah and his
older brother Denver spent long periods on the Church ranch.
Peckinpah often referred to this as the happiest period of his life, a
kind of lost Eden. His grandfather Denver Church was an important
and perhaps crucial influence on him. An American individualist of
the old school, he opposed all kinds of government control. Though
a total abstainer himself, he voted in Congress against Prohibition
and later abandoned his political career because of his disapproval
of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Denver Church taught
his family that you hunted only for food, never wasted ammunition,
and respected the animals you killed.
His father David was also a man of principle, founder of
the Fresno Humane Society and a lawyer who, during the
Depression, was always ready to accept payment in kindor no
payment at all. He often said that he wanted only to feel that he
could enter his house justified. David Peckinpah also became a
Superior Court judge and so did Sams brother Denny. Sitting
around a dining-room table talking about law and order, truth and
justice, on a Bible which was very big in our family, I felt like an
outsider, Peckinpah said, and I started to question them. I guess
Im still questioning.
Peckinpah attended primary school in Fresno and
developed an equal delight in movies and in books. At Fresno High
School he became a formidable member of the football team and
also laid the foundations of his reputation as a brawler and boozer.
His parents tried another school, and when this did nothing to
moderate his violent temper, sent him for his senior high school
year to San Rafael Military School. He did well academically but

also accumulated more demerits than anyone else in the schools

history.
Graduating in 1943, Peckinpah enlisted in the Marines. In
the summer of 1945 he was sent to China, where he saw virtually
no action but fell in love with a Chinese girl and began my study
of Zen. Back home in 1947, he enrolled at Fresno State College.
There he met Marie Selland, a stage-struck student whom he
married the same year. She introduced him to the theatre and
Peckinah took to it immediately, switching his major to drama. He
graduated with a B.A. in that subject in 1949, the year that his
daughter Sharon was born, and went on for post-graduate work at
the University of Southern California. For a masters thesis he
wrote an adaptation of a one-act play by his idol Tennessee
Williams, and filmed it (to his relief
the movie was destroyed).
Peckinpah began his
career as a director-producer in
residence at the Huntington Park
Civic Theatre. After a year and a
half he decided to try television,
making a modest start at KLAC-TV
in Los Angeles as a stagehand,
propman, and floor-sweeper. He
lasted two years there and then, for
the first but by no means the last
time, lost his job after a row with a
studio executive. However, he had
managed to put together some short
films in his time at KLAC, and on
the strength of these was hired by
CBS in 1953 as an assistant editor.
That short-lived assignment ended
when he failed to report for work
while his wife was in labor with their second child, Kristen.
His first sortie into the film industry followed. He sat for
three days in Walter Wangers waiting room at Allied Artists, and
in the end Wanger gave him a job as third assistant casting director
(or gopher). His first assignment was on Don Siegels Riot in Cell
Block 11 (1954). He and Siegal liked one another, and Peckinpah
worked as dialogue directorin fact mostly as Siegals personal
assistanton Private Hell (1954), An Annapolis Story (1955),
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and Crime in the Streets
(1956). Peckinpah also played a bit part in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers and did some rewriting of one or two scenes. He learned
a lot from Siegel, whom he called his patron and also worked as
dialogue director on some of Jacques Tourneurs films for Allied
Artists in 1955-1956.
At that time Peckinpah was beginning a new career as a
television writer. It was Siegal who prodded him in this direction
when he loaned him a batch of scripts submitted to the CBS
Gunsmoke series. Using these as models, Peckinpah wrote some
scripts of his own that were accepted. Ten episodes of Gunsmoke
produced in 1955-1956 were written by Peckinpah. most of them
adaptations of Gunsmoke radio scripts. He went on to write for
other western series and in 1957 sold his first script for a feature
film. This was The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, based on the
book by Charles Neider that itself derived from Pat Garretts The
Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Much altered by other hands, it
eventually surfaced as Marlon Brandos One-Eyed Jacks.
Peckinpah directed his first television film early in 1958,
an episode of Broken Arrow called The Knife Fighter. His
television career took another step forward when he reworked an

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY4

original script rejected by Gunsmoke and sold it to Dick Powell at

Four Star Productions. This was The Sharpshooter, screened
during the spring of 1958. A story about a boy growing up in the
California foothills of the Sierra Nevada, it drew on Peckinpahs
own youthful experiences and was enthusiastically received. It
became the pilot for a successful new series, The Rifleman,
beginning in the fall of 1958. Peckinpah directed four episodes of
the show himself but left it in 1959, saying that the producers had
perverted it into pap.
Late that year, Peckinpah became producer of The
Westerner, an NBC-TV series that grew out of another pilot he had
written and directed for Dick Powell. The series starred Brian Keith
as Dave Blessingame, a self-sufficient drifter. Peckinpah, who
directed five of the half-hour episodes, co-wrote four of them, and
launched the series with one for which he had performed both
functions. This was Jeff, a story (as Peckinpah said) about a guy
who goes to take this young whore, who he knew as a kid, home.
Jeff received ecstatic reviewsThe half-hour had only one flaw,
a couple of descents into violence that didnt help the story at all.
The Westerner went on to receive a Producers Guild nomination as
Best Filmed Series, but was canceled after only thirteen shows
stifled by affiliate anxieties about its adult subject matter and by
the viewing publics sudden and mysterious hankering after hourlong shows.
Peckinpahs first feature followed in 1961, The Deadly
Companions, scripted by A.S. Fleischman from his novel Yellowleg
and produced for Path-America-Carousel by Charles B.
FitzSimons. Peckinpah was hired at the request of Brian Keith of
The Westerner, who stars opposite FitzSimons sister, Maureen
OHara.Peckinpah had altogether less control over his first
feature than he had anticipated and was not much pleased with the
film. However, it performed adequately at the box office and
brought him some good personal notices. Indeed, as Doug
McKinney says, this psychological Western was an impressive
debut, placed resolutely in a Peckinpah landscape, allowing for the
contrivances of the script in delivering a film of angular, subdued
tensions, somewhat skewed within the confines of the genre.
Moreover, this story of a quest for redemption and identity
provides an auspicious introduction to themes Peckinpah will
explore more fully in later films.
In 1961 the Pckinpahs had a third child, Matthew, who
later appeared in several of his fathers films; the marriage ended
the same year. After another brief stint in television, Peckinpah was
hired by MGM to direct Ride the High Country (1962; in Britain
called Guns in the Afternoon), a modestly budgeted Western from a
script that Peckinpah heavily revised. The project became caught up
in a front-office power struggle at MGM that resulted in Peckinpah
being banned from the studio during postproduction. He had by
then made his first cut, however, and the editing was completed
more or less in accordance with his intentions.
Ride the High Country was shot by Peckinpahs favorite
cinematographer, Lucien Ballard, in Cinemascope and in the
autumnal colors that set the films elegiac mood. Its opening credits
roll over vistas of the American wilderness wildernessmountains,
forests, riversall magnificently beautiful and totally empty. From
there we switch to the crowded California town of Hornitos at the
turn of the century. Hornitos is in carnival, and we see hucksters
selling mementos of the vanished frontier and a race between a
camel and a horsethat emblem of the old Westwhich the camel
wins.
Riding into town (and almost run down by an early
automobile), Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) finds his old friend Gil

Westrum (Randolph Scott) running a crooked rifle range, dressed

up like Buffalo Bill. Both men have outlived their jobs as frontier
lawmenHornitos has uniformed policemen. Judd clings to the old
values but Westrum has sold out in the interests of survival and has
acquired an equally unprincipled young sidekick, Heck Longtree
(Ron Starr). Judd secures for all three of them a job transporting
gold from the Coarse Gold mining camp. On their way they stop at
the farmhouse of Joshua Knudsen (R.G. Armstrong), a
sanctimonious tyrant whose puritanism masks incestuous desires for
his motherless daughter Elsa (Mariette Hartley).
Coarse Gold is in a state of lawlessness close to anarchy,

dominated by five brutish brothers, the Hammonds, against whom

the drunken Judge Tolliver (Edgar Buchanan) is helpless. To escape
her father, Elsa Knudsen comes to Coarse Gold and marries Billy
Hammond (James Drury) in a grotesque ceremony in a brothersaloon. After it, two of Billys brothers try to rape Elsa, but are
restrained by Judd and Longtree. Cutting between the attempted
rape of Elsa and scenes of brawling in the saloon, wrote Terence
Butler, Peckinpah for the first time in his work uses a montage
technique to create the impression of energy exploding.
The Hammonds break into Joshua Knudsens house and
murder him. Westrum relieves
Judge Tolliver of Elsas marriage lines, freeing her from her
misguided union. He is a more humane man than the rigorously
law-abiding Judd (who is given the line originally spoken by
Peckinpahs own father: All I want is to enter my house justified).
But Westrum has been corrupted by materialism, and he now
violates their friendship by making a bid for the gold he is supposed
to protect. Judd wins out in this encounter, but is forced to reassess
his old certainties when Elsa questions her own dead fathers
equally rigid morality.
Having escaped from Judd, Westrum returns to help him in
a final confrontation with the Hammonds at the Knudsen
farmhouse. The Hammonds are wiped out and Judd is mortally
wounded. In their final reconciliation, Westrum undertakes to
deliver the gold to its rightful owners; Elsa and the reformed
Longtree pair off. According to the conventions of the Western,
as Butler says, Gil Westrum, in his capacity as a good-bad guy,
should have been the character to die as a means of atoning for his
disrespect of the law. Westrums survival constitutes the movies
final refutation of the Manicheanism of the Western.For
Peckinpah, Westrums claim to human dignity lies not in whether
he can uphold the law but in whether he can respond to Judds cry
for friendship.
As many critics have pointed out, Ride the High Country is
a film about the changing Western as well as about the changing
West, and the casting of those old cowboy heroes McCrea and Scott
emphasizes this; Scotts role in particularhis lastis an almost
shocking assault on his screen image as a man of iron integrity.
Peckinpah learned a lot in the making of this film, especially (as he
said) fromLucien Ballard, who introduced him to the crane shot of

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY5

which he makes such telling use here and elsewhere, and from the
editor Frank Santillo. Peckinpah credited Santillo with teaching him
the flash-cutting that became a characteristic of his editing
stylethe use of very short shots, only a few frames long, to
capture rapid and violent action.
For Doug McKinney, Peckinpahs eye for detail adds
immeasurably to the movies impact: the hole in his boot, the
frayed cuffs, the touching way he goes to the john to take out his
glasses, telling Heck not to litter: all details which humanize Steve
Judd. Coarse Gold, Kates place, the slovenly quality of the
Hammonds camp, and the Knudsen farm are triumphs of detail,
while in the dialogue, the stories Steve and Gil reminisce over on
the trail...have a ring to them that must be recognized as a major
accomplishment. McKiney goes on to describe Peckinpahs
growing mastery of mise en scne in the final shootout, when Judd
and Westrum, walking steadily into the guns of the Hammonds
two against fiveare filmed from an increasingly low angle until
they loom as heroes of mythic proportions.

Because of the front-office conflict in which the film had

become embroiled, it was released by MGM as the bottom half of a
double bill. To the studios embarrassment, it was enthusiastically
reviewed and became one of the years sleepers. Newsweek called
it the best picture of 1962, and the following year it won several
European awards, including the grand prix at the Belgian
International Film Festival. Some regard it now not only as one of
the finest examples of the genre, but as Peckinpahs best film, free
of his obsession with violence. However, Richard T. Jameson in
Film Comment (January-February 1981) suggests that those who
nostalgically prefer it to the more stylistically adventurous, and
temperamentally contentious, works that followed must have an
aversion to voluptuous kinesis.
Peckinpah returned for a time to television, producing and
directing two hour-long films for The Dick Powell Theatre. These
were Pericles on 31st Street (1962), based on a story by Harry Mark
Petrakis (Peckinpah collaborated on the script) and The Losers
(1963), an adventure-comedy modeled on The Westerner and
starring Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn. Highly successful and
frequently rerun, it was almost taken up as a series with Peckinpah
as producer. This project collapsed with the death of Dick Powell,
and Peckinpah then joined Walt Disney Productions as a writerdirector. He left after a disagreement with a producer, and in the
late summer of 1963 was hired by the independent producer Jerry
Bresler to direct Major Dundee (1965), released through Columbia.
Adapted from a story by Harry Julian Fink, Major Dundee
is a cavalry Western starring Charlton Heston as an autocratic

Southerner who has chosen to fight for the Union during the Civil
War, a stubborn but deeply divided man clinging to vague notions
of order, law, and duty. Because of his arrogant behavior at
Gettysburg, he has been relegated to the command of a prison
camp....Major Dundee was the subject of bitter conflict during and
after filming.According to the director he left the film at a length
of about two and a half hours. It was cut by Columbia to a release
length of 134 minutes. Whole scenes were excised, wrecking the
movies logic and rhythm. There is much to admire in what
remains, but the result as a whole has been described by Jim Kitses
as one of Hollywoods great broken monuments.
In 1964 Peckinpah married Begonia Palacios, who had
played a minor role in Major Dundee. It was a fiery relationship,
and the couple were to be married and divorced three times in all;
they had one child, Lupita. The anguish Peckinpah experienced
during the filming and editing of Major Dundee was followed by
another tremendous blow. Signed by Martin Ransohoff to direct
The Cincinatti Kid at MGM, Peckinpah began work in October
1964. He and the producer disagreed, and he was fired after four
days of shooting, the film being completed by Norman Jewison.
The release of the truncated Major Dundee in April 1965 renewed
gossip about Pekcinpahs intractability, and he was effectively
blacklisted throughout the industry, his career apparently at an end.
The only feature credit Peckinpah earned over the next
three years was or his script The Glory Guys (1965), a bitterly
cynical cavalry Western loosely based on the Custer disaster and
clumsily directed by Arthur Laven.He taught writing at UCLA in
the fall of 1967, and at this time, his reputation partially
rehabilitated, he reentered the movie industry.
Signed by Phil Feldman for Warner Brothers-Seven Arts,
Peckinpah began the second phase of his career with The Wild
Bunch (1969), now generally regarded as his masterpiece.
It was scripted by Peckinpah and Walon Green from a story devised
by the stuntman Roy Sickner, about the last days of the Wests last
gang of aging outlaws. It was shot by Lucien Ballard in Panavision
70 and Technicolor, has a marvelous score by Jerry Fielding,and
apart from its stars, features several of the character actors who
formed a kind of Peckinpah stock companyWarren Oates, Ben
Johnson, Strother Martin, and L.Q. Jones. From the outset,
everyone shared an awareness that they were involved in the
creation of an important film.
[Referring to The Wild Bunch last battle] Richard Gentner
and Diane Birdsall described this long orgy of killing as the
unparalleled montage event of cinema history. It is both son of
Potemkin and light years beyond it. It is the most exhausting reel of
film ever creatednot merely a cluster of quick cuts. . . but a
cascading avalanche of comprehension. The destruction of
Mapaches stronghold (and, of course, the Bunch along with it) is as
inevitable as it is exhilarating.
. . .The film ends with a shot of the Bunch laughing, culled
from an earlier sequence. By ending with these killers as they
laugh, behaving as everyone does, Peckinpah said, I wanted to
remind the audience that they were just people like themselves.
Cut from 148 to 135 minutes, The Wild Bunch was
previewed in June 1969 and released the same month. Its realistic
depiction of violence, the way blood spurts practically across a
room, provoked an outburst of almost hysterical vituperation from
critics, journalists, and other moralists. . . Peckinpah maintained
that he did not like violence: My idea was that it would have a
cathartic effect. Asked why, if he wanted to oppose violence, he

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY6

had not made a film about the Vietnam war, the director said: The
Western is a universal frame within which it is possible to comment
on today. Even at this near-raucous press conference, however,
there were those (like the critic Roger Ebert) who insisted that The
Wild Bunch was a great film...a masterpiece.
According to Doug McKinneym Peckinpahs thesis is that
violence is a part of all of us.Abhorring violence is not enough;
we must recognize that the enemy is within, and how that capacity
for violence works and shows itself. J.-P. Coursdon, on the other
hand, speaks of Peckinpahs exhilaration in depicting violence,
escalating it into orgiastic celebrations of death, given and received
as the ultimate experience.
Coursodon (in his American Directors, V. II) points out
that The Wild Bunch continues Peckinpahs refutation of the
Westerns moral Manichaeism, driving home the by then
familiar point that there is no such thing as Good or Evil, only
different forms and degrees of evil and different levels of awareness
of this evil. All the men in the film are motivated by self-interest
and greed and the only glimpse of a moral, lawful social
structure is the blatantly ludicrous Temperance Union. Law
enforcement is abandoned to outlaws and irresponsible killers.
women are venal and treacherous (all the female characters in the
film seem to be whores). Even the childhood image of innocence is
repeatedly deflated.
In his Freudian reading of Crucified Heroes Terence
Butler dwells on the misogynism of the film (or of its heroes), and
offers a thesis that Pike Bishop is driven by a death wish inspired by
the pain and confusion of unresolved homosexual impulses.
Coursodon speaks rather of the Bunchs instinctive adhering to an
unformulated, dimly grasped code of virile togetherness....
It is, as McKinney says, at the very least a landmark
Western, and there are those who think it the greatest of all
Westerns.
A much gentler film followed, again produced by Phil
Feldman for Warner Brothers-Seven Arts. The Ballad of Cable
Hogue (1970) was a original script by John Crawford and Edmund
Penney, brought to Peckinpah by his friend Warrem Oates. Once
again the director had Lucien Ballard as his cinematographer, Jerry
Fielding as his coposer, and several of his regular stock players. The
movie was shot in Nevadas Valley of Fire in the early months of
1969.Cable Hogue was a script that Peckinpah initiated and
greatly liked, but his next was the opposite. During the filming of
the former, the producer Daniel Melnick brought him a British
novel by Gordon M. Williams called The Siege of Trenchers Farm.

Peckinpah had other projects in mind but these fell through.

Melnick then offered his own first-draft adaptation of the novel
along with financing through ABC Pictures. Peckinpah sat down
with David Zelig Goodman to try to make something out of a
lousy book with one good action sequence. The result, which
bears very little relationship to the original novel was Straw Dogs
(1971).
Peckinpah made no secret of the fact that he was much
influenced in Straw Dogs by the thesis advanced by Robert Ardrey
in The Territorial Imperativethat human behavior is much closer
than is usually recognized to animal behavior, and that a key factor
in both is the possession and defense of territory. The films title
comes from Lao Tse: Heaven and earth are ruthless and treat the
myriad creatures as straw dogs (used as substitutes for real animals
in Chinese sacrificial rites): the sage is ruthless and treats the
people as straw dogs. David [Dustin Hoffman] becomes a sage
when he recognizes the truth of this adage. Or, as Peckinpah said in
a much-quoted Playboy interview (August 1972), an intellectual
who embodies his intellect in action, thats a real human being.
Released at the end of 1971, Straw Dogs revived and
redoubled the uproar created by The Wild Bunch. It was hailed by
some as a masterpiece, vilified by others as an endorsement of
violence and as a sexist tract. Pauline Kael called it the first
American film that is a fascist work of art. Others insist that the
movie does not endorse violence, but only asserts that it is an
element in human nature which must be dealt with, not simply
denied. Peckinpah was still editing the film when Martin Baum,
president of ABC Pictures, invited him to direct Junior Bonner
(1972), from an original script by Jeb Rosenbrook. Lucien Ballard
shot the film in Todd-AO 35 during the annual rodeo in Prescott,
Arizona. Many of Peckinpahs films are elegiac studies of the old
West in transition to the new. Junior Bonner, his first contemporary
Western, wryly illustrates the outcome.An atypically gentle
movie for both Peckinpah and McQueen, Junior Bonner was a
commercial failure.
Peckinpahs next assignment was The Getaway (1972),
produced by First Artists, a partnership set up by Steve McQueen
and other stars. The script, based on a novel by Jim Thompson, was
by Walter Hill. Peckinpah had Ballard as his cameraman, but
McQueen scrapped Jerry Fieldings score, substituting one by
Quincy Jones.The Getaway was a major box-office success,
grossing $25 million. Contemporary reviewers also like the film, on
the whole, though some complained that Peckinpah was pandering
to the current fashion for outlaw heroes. Molly Haskell found the
picture a lot more fun and less pretentious than Straw Dogs and
The Wild Bunch, and its violence, not having to sustain the
burden of Peckinpahs atavistic anthropology, is less hateful.
For a Peckinpah project, the filming of The Getaway had
been relatively free of disputes. Not so Pat Garrett and Billy the
Kid (1973), a Gordon Carroll-Sam Peckinpah Production
financed and distributed by MGM. An original script by Rudolph
Wurlitzer, the film was shot on location in and around Durango,
Mexico, during a ferocious flu epidemic and under conditions of
open warfare between the director and the president of MGM,
James Aubrey. John Coquillon, who had shot Straw Dogs, was the
cinematographer, and the music was supplied by Bob Dylan, who
also appeared in the film as Alias, a former printer who joins Billys
gang.
Billy the Kid, an outlaw whom the dime novels turned into
a legend in his own brief lifetime, was shot dead in 1881 by Sheriff
Pat Garrett, once his friend. Beginning with the silents, at least a
score of movies have dealt in various terms with this incident. In the

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY7

hands of Wurlitzer and Peckinpah, the story becomes another elegy

for lost frontier values, and one with something of the inevitability
of Greek tragedy. Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is one of Peckinphs
survivors. The cattle barons and the politicians want a west in
which their money talks louder than guns and Garrett knows they
will win. He accepts election as sheriff and sets out to hunt down
his former friend and proteg Billy (Kris Kristofferson), whose
ways make him an embarrassment to the money-men.MGM cut
seventeen minutes from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, excising
whole scenes and characters. The most serious of these mutilations
was the removal of framing scenes showing the murder of Pat
Garrett in 1908 by the so-called Santa Fe Ring, representing the
same powerful and corrupt interests on whose behalf he had killed
Billy. As originally conceived, the movie would have been a
flashback composed of Garretts dying memories.In spite of
mutilations (for which Peckinpah sued the studio), the film had its
fervent admirers.
The screenplay of Peckinpahs next film, Bring Me the
Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), is credited to Gordon Dawson and
the director, from an original story by Frank Kowalski and
Peckinpah.Peckinpah said: I did Alfredo Garcia and I did it
exactly the way I wanted to. Good or bad, like it or not, that was my
film. Most contemporary reviewers disliked it intensely, and the
film was censored in Germany and Sweden. Later critics have
responded very differently.
In his 1972 Playboy interview, Peckinpah said that a
director has to deal with a whole world absolutely teeming with
mediocrities, jackals, hangerson, and just plain killers.The
saying is that they can kill you
but not eat you. Thats
nonsense. Ive had them eating
on me while I was still walking
around.
As J.-P. Coursodon
says, Sam Peckinpah is
undoubtedly the most
controversial American director
since Orson Welles. Dismissed
by some as a failed prodigy
and/or a fascist, he is regarded
by others as a major artist who
reinvented the shape of the cinema. Robert Wood calls him the
heir of John Ford, his values, like Fords embodied in the myth of
the Old West, with its emphasis on manhood and
independence...but he follows through the implications of such a
commitment (clung to in the context of contemporary America)
with a ruthlessness of which Ford (ultimately a more complex
artist) was incapable.
from Peckinpah A Portrait in Montage. Garner Simmons.
University of Texas Press, Austin, 1982.
An incurable romantic who has been married five times to three
women, and who frequently has fallen in love with prostitutes on a
pay-as-you-go basis, Peckinpah summed up the end of his first
marriage: You clothe the object of your own needs in the
vestments of your own desires. When you wake up to the fact that it
just aint there, thats when youve got to go.
Ride the High Country
Good fight...I enjoyed it.

There is a rumor that Ride the High Country was first offered to
film director Budd Boetticher who had directed a number of
Randolph Scott Westerns in the late fifties and early sixties. When
he turned it down, the rumor continues, it was offered to Burt
Kennedy, Boettichers scriptwriter, who had recently directed his
first feature, The Canadians. When Kennedy turned it down, the
rumor concludes, Sam Peckinpah was offered the job. Another
rumor credits John Ford, the renowned Western director with
recommending Peckinpah for the picture. The truth is that
Peckinpah got the job on his own merit.
Richard Lyons, the films producer, recalled: Ive heard
several stories through the years that a number of other directors
were considered for Ride the High Country, but thats a lot of crap.
I was the producer, and Id know. The way Sam got the picture was
that he and I were both at the William Morris Agency in those days,
and Silvia Hirsch, who was with the agency, heard that I was
looking for a director for this Western and asked me if Id ever
heard of Sam Peckinpah. I said no and she convinced me to look at
a couple of the segments of The Westerner that Sam had directed.
So I did, and they really impressed me.
Now you have to understand that this picture was to be
made at Metro and they were very class conscious. I mean they just
didnt even consider hiring television directors. But I called Sol
Siegel who was head of production at the studio at the time and told
him that I had this director whod worked in television, and Id seen
four segments that hed done and I thought they were outstanding.
Well, Siegel was coming in over the weekend and said hed have
look at one. So he came in, and
we ran one, and then he did just
what Id done. He said, You got
any more? So we looked at them
all, and when we finished Siegel
turned to me and said, Hire
him.
Ride the High Country
was Rick Lyonss first major
picture as a producer. ...Lyons
was hired to produce a small
budget Westernroughly
$800,000primarily for release
in European markets to offset
expensive productions, which
were then being made by Fox, like Lewis Milestones Mutiny on the
Bounty starring Marlon Brando. The story Lyons finally decided to
film dealt with two over-the-hill gunfighters who get one last
chance at glory when they are hired to escort a fold shipment from a
High sierra mining camp back to civilization.
Lucien Ballard did a magnificent job, stated Joel
McCrea. He was very smart. He knew Sam better than any of the
rest of us, and he had a very tactful way of saying, What would
you think of it if we shot it from over here? and, of course, it would
look twice as good. He is a very talented fella.
McCreas co-star, Randolph Scott, retired from the motion
picture business following completion of his work on Ride the High
Country, leaving behind a distinguished career. He is now a private
businessman in Southern California and declines to give interviews
or talk about old movies. In a phone conversation, he did,
however, make the following statement about his experience with
Peckinpah: Sam, in my estimation, is one of the top directorsthe
upper echelon of directors. I would have liked to have worked on
other films with him. I wish that he had come along earlier in my

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY8

career, which is not to say that I was not satisfied with the many
men I did work with. But Sam is a great troubleshooter on a film. he
has an innate instinct and talent for dealing with a script that many
others just do not have.
Principal photography for the picture was completed on
November 22, 1961. Then Peckinpahs luck took over.MGM
employed a full-time staff of cutters under the direction of Margaret
Booth, MGMs editor-in-chief, who had begun her career as an
editor working for D.W. Griffith before MGM had even been
formed. As a consequence, MGM could easily have decided to take
the film as shot and turn it over to Booth for routine editing by a
staff editor with minimal interference from Peckinpah on the
directors cut. There was one complication, however, Margaret
Booth disliked the daily rushes that had come in from location and
had virtually said that the film would be impossible to cut. Siegel,
on the other hand, had been impressed by what he had seen. This
circumstance, coupled with the fact that Siegel was a fighter and
had liked Peckinpah from their first meeting, caused him to offer
Peckinpah a legitimate chance to make the first cut on the
picture.We had a marvelous little editor name Frank Santillo, and
Sam spent fourteen weeks with Frank in the cutting room editing
the picture until they threw him off the lot. But in those fourteen
weeks, Santillo taught him how to edit.
[Santillo:] The thing thats really difficult in cutting for
Sam is that he shoots a lot of film, but its all good. That makes it
difficult to decide what to keep and what to throw away. With other
directors, you start to assemble a scene and about half the stuff is no
good, so you can throw it away. You have no problem in deciding
what to use. Sams footage is just the opposite. And Sam knows
every inch of that film. Youll almost be finished with a picture, and
Sam will look at it, and hell say there was such and such a shot and
to cut it in. And Sam doesnt care how long it takes. Youve got to
find it because it is essential to Sams conception of that character.
But probably the best illustration of what Sam was able to
do with Ride the High Country is in the final shoot-out sequence at
the end of the film. Margaret Booth had seen the dailies and said:
This is the worst footage Ive ever seen. Its impossible. Two old
guys who have been trapped by three young ones. Nobody will ever
believe they could possibly win. And the number of shots they all
fire when theyre standing there in the open. Its ridiculous!
At any rate, I had done montage for Metro for years, and
during the Second World War I had worked for the military censors
at the Pentagon. Wed get the footage shot by the Army, and wed
have to cut it quickly, making a little story out of it, and then turn it
over to the newsreels. So when we came to this final sequence in
the picture, Sam was upset because he didnt really want to cut any
of it. I mean it was all good footage. So as always, I took it and
made a rough cut. But because of my work with Vorkapich, I knew
that even with a one-frame cut the audience could retain something
of what was on the screen, and because of my war experience, I
knew how exciting a battle sequence could be made by cutting it to
a fast pace..Consequently, I cut the sequence and some of the
shots were only six frames long [one-quarter of a second on the
screen], and I said to Sam that even at that length some of them
would appear to be too long on the screen. And he said, Oh, no. I
could tell that he was afraid that maybe Id cut them too short
already.
So we went to the screening room and looked at what Id
cut, and after the sequence was over Sam looked at me, smiled, and
said, You know, youre right. And then we went back, trimmed
the sequence down until it was exactly the way Sam wanted it, and

some of the shots were only two frames long. Sam has always given
me credit for teaching him how to flash cut like that.

A Time review: This story could have been sheer

slumgullion, but under Sam Peckinpahs tasteful direction, it is a
minor chef doeuvre among westerns.
As a consequence of all this, the film began to be
discussed as a possible dark horse nomination for an Academy
Award in two categories, best direction and best original
screenplay. When Peckinpah learned of this, he called both Metro
and the Academy and told them flatly not to bother, If this film is
nominated for best screenplay without my name on it as writer, I
will sue every one of you! Ride the High Country received no
nominations for an Academy Award that year.
Released for foreign distribution in 1963, the film, called
by a variety of names abroad (most notably by its working title,
Guns in the Afternoon) won the Belgium International Film Festival
Grand Prix (beating out Federico Fellinis 8 among others),
Mexicos Diosa de Plata (Silver Goddess) for Best Foreign Film, as
well as high praise from Frances Le Conseil des Dix.
More important to Peckinpah, however, was the personal
victory bound to this film. His sister, Fern Lea, recalls: we went to
see Ride the High Country at a sneak preview, and when it was
over, I went into the ladies room and cried and cried because the
character played by Joel McCrea reminded me so much of my
father who had just died the year before. My father liked to quote
the Bible and could. The line All I want to do is enter my house
justified was a saying I often heard my father say. This was
Peckinpahs tribute to the Boss.

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY9

Peckinpahs real vindication as a director, however, came

for his former employer, Sol Siegel, who upon seeing the film in a
theater wrote Sam a letter that began, Who the fuck do you think
you are...John Ford?
Sam Peckinpahs Feature Films. Bernard F. Dukore. University
of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999.
Documentation on Peckinpahs uncredited revisions of
screenplays is abundant. The producer Richard Lyons, and the
head of the MGM studio at that time, Sol Siegel, brought me in to
rewrite the N.B. Stone script [of Ride the High Country] and shoot
the picture, says Peckinpah, for example, and they gave me a free
hand. According to Lyon and Joel McCrea, who played Steve
Judd, Peckinpah rewrote some 80 percent of the dialogue,
reconceived the characters of the two old westerners, and had Judd
rather than the other old-timer die at the end; furthermore,
Peckinpahs copy of the original shooting script, which he gave to a
typist, authenticates how massive his revisions were.
According to cinematographer Lucien Ballard, Peckinpah
must have rewritten half of The Ballad of Cable Hogue while
shooting it, and Stella Stevens, who played Hildy, maintains that
once she signed to do the film he reconceived the role for her;
Marshall Fine flatly states that Peckinpah and Gordon Dawson
rewrote the script, though they didnt receive credit. Jeb
Rosebrook, the screenwriter of credit for Junior Bonner, admits the
director helped me a great deal in revising the script and calls him
a master rewrite man....
Peckinpah knew Aristotles Poetics cold, says Paul
Seydor. It gave him the foundations for dramatic writing, notes
David Weddle, and he became a strong believer in the
philosophers theory that great drama provides an audience with a
catharsis through which they can purge their own pain, rage, and
fear. Such contemporary French writings as Sartres No Exit and
The Flies, adds Weddle, also fascinated him.
Complexities mark characters in Ride the High Country.
Joshua Knudsens language and rules of conduct cue audiences to
consider him not only a harsh and inflexible religious fanatic, an
unyielding, moralistic despot who may have driven his wife, Hester
(probably named after the heroine of The Scarlet Letter), to seek
affection elsewherethat is, to commit adulterybut also a
tyrannical father.Although Peckinpah rewrote a great deal of
Richard E. Lyonss screenplay, as Weddle points out, he made
only one structural change. Yet this change was crucial. Weddle
says, Instead of Westrum getting killed in the final gun battle, he
switched things around; Judd would die and Westrum would
survive. It was an inspired move, not only because it flew in the
face of the genres conventions (the villain must always die for his
sins), but because it threw the storys theme into sharp focus. With
a few quick strokes of the pen, Peckinpah had made Westrum the
protagonist and the upstanding Judd the antagonist.

WESTERNS ON U.S. TV, 1950-2000:

Action in the Afternoon, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., The
Adventures of Champion, The Adventures of Cyclone Malone, The
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, The Adventures of Jim Bowie,
The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Adventures of Lariat Sam, The
Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Adventures of Spin and Marty, The
Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Alaskans, Alias Smith and
Jones, Annie Oakley, Barbary Coast, Bat Masterson, Best of the
West, The Big Valley, Black Saddle, Bonanza, Boots and Saddles,
Bordertown, Branded, BraveStarr (animation), Brave Eagle, Bret
Maverick, Broken Arrow, Bronco, Buckskin, Buffalo Bill Jr., The
Californians, Casey Jones, Cheyenne, The Chisholms, The Cisco
Kid, Cimarron City, Cimarron Strip, Circus Boy, Colt .45, The
Cowboys, Custer, The Dakotas, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett,
Deadwood, Death Valley Days, The Deputy, Destry, Dick Powell's
Zane Grey Theater, Dirty Sally, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,
Dundee and the Culhane, Dusty's Trail, Empire, Father Murphy,
Four Feather Falls (puppet show), Frontier, Frontier Circus, Frontier
Doctor, Frontier Justice, F Troop, The Gabby Hayes Show, The
Gene Autry Show, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,
Gunslinger, Guns of Paradise (originally, Paradise), The Guns of
Will Sonnett, Gunsmoke, Harts of the West, Have Gun Will
Travel, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, Hec Ramsey, Here
Come the Brides, The High Chaparral, Hondo, Hopalong Cassidy,
Hotel de Paree, How the West Was Won, Into the West, The Iron
Horse, Jefferson Drum, Judge Roy Bean, Johnny Ringo, Kung Fu,
Lancer, Laramie, Laredo, Law of the Plainsman, Lawman, The
Lazarus Man, Legacy, Legend, The Legend of Jesse James, The
Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Little House on the Prairie, The
Lone Ranger, The Loner, Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove - The
Outlaw Years, Mackenzie's Raiders, The Magnificent Seven, A
Man Called Shenandoah, The Man From Blackhawk, Man Without
a Gun, The Marshal of Gunsight Pass, Maverick, The Monroes, My
Friend Flicka, Nichols, Northwest Passage, The Oregon Trail, The
Outcasts, Outlaws, Overland Trail, Paradise (later Guns of
Paradise), Pistols 'n' Petticoats, Ponderosa, Pony Express, The
Quest, The Range Rider, Rango, Rawhide, The Rebel, Red Ryder,
Redigo, The Restless Gun, The Rifleman, Riverboat, The Road
West, The Rough Riders, The Rounders, The Roy Rogers Show,
The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, Saber Rider and the Star
Sheriffs, Sara, Shane, Sheriff of Cochise, Shotgun Slade, Sky King,
Stagecoach West, State Trooper, Steve Donovan, Western Marshal,
Stoney Burke, Sugarfoot, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Tales of
Wells Fargo, The Tall Man, Tate, Temple Houston, Tombstone
Territory, Trackdown, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, 26 Men,
Two Faces West, Union Pacific, The Virginian, Wagon Train,
Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Westerner, Whiplash, Whispering
Smith, Wichita Town, The Wide Country, The Wild Wild West,
Wildside, Wrangler, Yancy Derringer, Young Maverick, The
Young Pioneers, The Young Riders, Zorro.

PeckinpahRIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY10

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2010 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XX:

Mar 2 Costa-Gavras Z 1969
Mar 16 Peter Yates, The Friends of Eddie Coyle 1973
Mar 23 John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence 1974
Mar 30 Stanley Kubrick, The Shining 1980
Apr 6 Wolfgang Petersen, Das Boot 1981
Apr 13 Federico Fellini, Ginger & Fred, 1985
Apr 20 Michael Mann, Collateral 2004
CONTACTS:
...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu
email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu
...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com
...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com
....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center
and State University of New York at Buffalo
with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News

Michael Lee Jackson & Warren Oates, 1976