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Old West Vigilantes

Old West VigilantesOne of the aspects of the Wild West that has always intrigued me was the Old West vigilantes. I can understand the frustration with how many times crime was running rampant, with towns popping up ahead of the town’s infrastructure…which included the law.

And even in more developed towns, the law was handicapped because of the number of lawmen, the territory they had to cover, the technology and even that sometimes the lawmen were also the outlaws.

Probably the most amazing aspect of the vigilantes is that they were usually known by everyone…sometimes pictures were taken…yet I’m not aware of any vigilante being tried for his actions.

Why am I talking about this at this time? This is the birthday of one of the most famous Old West vigilantes, John X. Beidler or just “X” as he was known by everyone.

Old West VigilantesHe was a leader of the Montana vigilantes. Unlike most vigilantes, who tried to remain unknown, X relished the notoriety. He was the principal hangman for at least five of the vigilante’s victims, and he survived several narrow escapes in his relentless pursuit of dangerous men.

After Montana was rid of “The Innocents”…the name of the outlaw gang…the vigilantes disbanded. As an old man X fell on hard times and lived off the charity of people who remembered his service as a vigilante.

When he died in Helena, Montana, in 1890, his death certificate listed his occupation as “Public Benefactor.”

The James Gang’s Northfield Raid

James Gang's Northfield RaidThe movies show frontier town folk as being meek and easily intimated. But this was not so. These were people who were tough enough to brave the trip to the frontier, as well as being tough enough to endure frontier life. And after 1865 many were ex-soldiers. A good example of the toughness of the frontier people is the James Gang’s Northfield Raid that took back in 1876 on September 7.

The James-Youngers were the “cock of the walk.” They were robbing everything in sight. And even though the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency was after them, the Pinkertons were stymied at every turn. So, the gang decided to go to Northfield, Minnesota and rob a bank there.

James Gang's Northfield Raid

 

At the First National Bank, they demanded the money from the vault and Joseph Lee Heywood, the bank clerk on duty, was killed when he refused to open the safe. When the townspeople were alerted they attacked the robbers, defending their town and their savings. In the melee that followed, Nicholas Gustavson, a Swedish town resident, was killed, as were gang members Clell Miller and William Stiles.

The pursuit of the gang went on for weeks and covered 400 miles. The Youngers were eventually captured at Madelia, Minnesota, in another gun battle, in which gang member Charlie Pitts was killed. The three Younger brothers were tried in Faribault, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to life in the state prison at Stillwater.

The citizens of Northfield surrounded the bank and shot the robbers as they tried to escape. The result was that, with the exception of Jesse and Frank James, the gang was either shot up in Northfield or was captured by a posse some two weeks later.

It seems there was another gang known as the Daltons who had a similar problem in Coffeeville, Kansas.

Killers of the Flower Moon Trailer Released

The Killers of the Flower Moon trailer has debuted today. Based on the 2017 non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by American journalist David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon will be Scorsese’s first outing since 2019’s Oscar-nominated The Irishman debuted on Netflix. Enjoy the Killers of the Flower Moon trailer here:

Initially scheduled to enter production in 2018, Killers was one of the many film projects hobbled by the pandemic, and didn’t get off the ground properly until February 2021. Its ballooning $200 million budget apparently makes it the most expensive film ever shot in Oklahoma – judging by the epic scale of the trailer, it’s not hard to see why.

Starring DiCaprio alongside Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser, Jesse Plemons and Scorsese stalwart Robert De Niro, the plot centres on a series of murders taking place in Osage County and Washington County in the early 1920s, after large oil deposits were discovered underneath land owned by the Osage people.

Killers of the Flower Moon trailer

According to a Deadline feature on the making of the film, Scorsese and his two leads agreed early in pre-production that they did not want to “serve up a white-savior Western” that focused on the heroic deeds of FBI agent Tom White –the character DiCaprio was initially slated to play. DiCaprio reportedly suggested shifting the focus of the film to one of the suspects, Burkhart, and he wound up with the role, while Jesse Plemmons came on to olay White. De Niro plays William Hale, the uncle of Burkhart, and a key figure in the film’s central conspiracy.

“I’d read the book a few years earlier and the Tom White character was more prominent,” De Niro told Deadline. “That was right for the book, but Marty and Leo’s idea to focus on the relationship between Bill and Ernest made sense to me. They wanted to focus more on that dynamic instead of Tom White coming in and saving the day.”

Killers of the Flower Moon Trailer

Killers of the Flower Moon has its world premiere coming up at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday 20th May, and will release worldwide in cinemas on October 6, before streaming globally on AppleTV+.

Terror on the Prairie – American Western Film

Terror on the Prairie is a 2022 American Western film directed by Michael Polish and written by Josiah Nelson. Produced by The Daily Wire, and Bonfire Legend, and distributed by The Daily Wire and Voltage Pictures. The film follows a family of pioneers as they defend themselves from a vicious gang of outlaws hell-bent on revenge on the Montana plains. The film features the cast of Gina Carano as Hattie McAllister, Donald Cerrone as Jeb McAllister, and Nick Searcy starring as The Captain, with Rhys Jackson Becker, Gabriel-Kane Day Lewis, Tyler Fischer, Heath Freeman, Samaire Armstrong, and Matthias Hues all featured in supporting roles.

Terror on the Prairie - American Western FilmSeveral years after the end of the Civil War Jeb and Hattie McAllister struggle to raise their adolescent son Will and infant daughter in the wilds of Montana. Hattie expresses her desire to return to her families own land against Jeb’s wishes to be self reliant and to be capable of raising their family on the own. After Jeb leaves to go to the town to look for work, four strangers arrive and ask Hattie for some food and water—although, once she sees they have collected scalps and are killers, she kicks them out. However, the outlaws do not go far. Instead, a stand-off emerges after repeated attempts to break into the McAllister cabin are foiled by Hattie and Will.

Terror on the Prairie - American Western FilmFilm Threat’s Alan Ng gave the film a score of 8.5 out of 10, stating that “If you like your westerns gritty, violent, and viscerally brutal, you’re in for a fun popcorn night at home.” Ng also spoke positively of Carano and Searcy’s performances. Wade Major of CineGods, awarding three out of four stars, described Terror on the Prairie as “below the surface, it’s a grueling — and often gruesome — meditation on the lingering self-inflicted wounds left by the American Civil War in far-flung locales like frontier Montana and beyond.” Major spoke highly of Searcy and Day Lewis’s performances, though of Nelson’s screenplay had stated that it “largely hews to formula, but it’s a competent effort with well-drawn, if archetypal, characters and strong, credible dialogue.” Christian Toto wrote, in his review for Hollywood in Toto, “Terror on the Prairie lags a bit in the middle thanks to a protracted stand-off. Perhaps a bigger budget would let the production insert flashbacks or other scenes to enhance the story. Otherwise, the film charges forward, letting us marvel at how Hattie improvises on her children’s behalf.”

“Dead For A Dollar” – New Walter Hill Western

The title of the new Walter Hill Western “Dead for a Dollar” makes it sound like a spaghetti Western, and the picture opens with stunning vistas and a wistfully valorous neo-Morricone score that gives you the impression — maybe the hope — that it will be. It ends on a very different note: a series of titles explaining, with precise dates and details, what happened to each of the main characters, as if the film were based on a true story. Veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund heads deep into Mexican territory to find and return Rachel Kidd, the wife of a wealthy businessman. After learning she actually fled from the abusive marriage, Max faces a choice: finish the job he’s been hired to do, or stand aside while ruthless mercenary outlaws and his longtime rival close in on a town that’s been his temporary sanctuary.

"Dead For A Dollar" - New Walter Hill Western

Hill, who is now 80 but still directs with his lean-and-mean vigor and classical rawhide stoicism (the movie is dedicated to Budd Boetticher, the legendary low-budget Western director of the ’50s), builds “Dead for a Dollar” around a vintage confrontation between two men: Max Borlund, a bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz with a worldly twinkle that basically allows him to parade himself as an impish assassin, and Joe Cribbens, a gambler and outlaw played by Willem Dafoe as the most live-and-let-live of sociopaths. These two live, in deed or spirit, outside the law. They’ve known each other a long time and collide in the opening scene, when Joe is being released from prison. But then they go their separate ways. The film turns its attention to Max on his latest mission-for-hire, which involves several characters you would never have seen in a Budd Boetticher movie of the ’50s, or even a Walter Hill Western of the ’70s or ’80s.

"Dead For A Dollar" - New Walter Hill Western