Biden’s Long-Lost Western!
Here’s more from the Babylon Bee with a shout-out to featured guest J.P. Sears from Awaken with JP.
Call Me Stormy
Finding righteous currents in turbulent times
Archive for the tag “Westerns”
RazorFist: Westerns, Ho!
Before my own Western, ‘The Ghost of the Badlands’ is released, I discuss 10 films which helped inspire it! More from RazorFist.
Alec Baldwin Charges Looming
Up to four individuals, including the actor Alec Baldwin, could face criminal charges in connection with the shooting death of cinematographer Halnya Hutchins. First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is seeking more than half a million dollars to pay the costs of investigating and prosecuting these cases.
In a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the DA specified that the four individuals could face homicide charges as well as gun violations. The charges stem from the death of Hutchins on the set of Rust.
The Western was being shot just outside the city of Santa Fe when Baldwin allegedly fired a prop gun point-blank at Hutchins. Director Joel Souza was also wounded in the blast on Oct. 21, 2021. More from The Quartering.
Why Westerns Matter
It’s time to saddle up and revive a genre that is primed for revivification. More from RazorFist.
The Terror of Tiny Town
This week’s Trillion $ Movie, The Terror of Tiny Town, was billed as Hollywood’s first all-midget, musical Western upon its release in 1938. To this day, it remains the one and only example of the genre. Tiny Town came out under the imprimatur of the low-budget Spectrum Pictures Corporation, but Columbia Pictures subsequently picked up the title to fulfill the production quota it had promised to exhibitors.
Producer Jed Buell bought into the concept, having made Hollywood’s first all-black, feature-length Western, Harlem on the Prairie, in 1937. After deciding to cast only midgets for his next novelty picture, he assembled a troupe of players that reportedly boasted an average height of 3 feet, 8 inches. Most of them had never appeared in a movie before, which is glaringly obvious from their clumsy and stilted line readings. But the experience would serve them well, as a year later, many of these same cast members got the call from MGM to flesh out roles as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.
Except for the pint-sized players, Tiny Town covers familiar Western turf. A gang of cattle rustlers, bushwhackers and murderers has pitted ranchers against each other in a Dry Gulch town. But the black-hatted villains don’t reckon on the heroics of Buck Lawson, a working cowpoke who rides around on a Shetland pony, lassos calves and easily saunters into the local saloon by walking under the swinging doors. Buck has a star-crossed love interest, and also inspires palpitations on the part of barroom chanteuse Nita, a sultry heartthrob inspired by Marlene Dietrich.
This isn’t a film that will set the prairie on fire, but it’s certainly distinctive, short (pun intended), moves quickly and has enough comic interludes (including a singalong with a penguin) to justify its marketing as “a rollickin’, rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ drama of the great outdoors.” In a week when the news has been dominated by debate over a politically incorrect, low-budget movie on YouTube, it’s rather apropos to resurrect The Terror of Tiny Town and celebrate the God-given, American freedom to create offensively bad movies. Enjoy and return next Friday for another Trillion $ Movie.
ARVE error: need id and provider
