Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (Box Set) (DVD, 2006)

Four of Peckinpah's best films: The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Ride the High Country, & Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Super picture quality

Four Peckinpah westerns in high-definition colour, at a good price.

Ride the High Country (1962) is strongly influenced by Anthony Mann's Naked Spur & Winchester 73. The plot is decent here, though not as good as Mann's work. The acting by old-stagers Joel McCrea & Randolph Scott is excellent, while Mariette Hartley (Star Trek) does well in her first starring role. The strongest point in favour of this film is Lucien Ballard's sumptuous photography of the mountain and high lakes, reproduced here in gorgeous hi-def.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) is a musical western, of the same vintage as the more famous Paint Your Wagon, but with even more of an anachronistic hippie influence. Jason Robards gives a very strong performance (as always) as the down-and-out prospector who builds a thriving business selling water to coach travellers in the desert. He briefly makes an honest woman out of Stella Stevens, and is given dubious spiritual counselling by trendy Brit, David Warner.

The Wild Bunch (1969) is Peckinpah's most notable film, famously featuring realistic slow-motion arterial blood in gun-shot scenes which make Dirty Harry look like daytime viewing. Realism was an obsession with many directors 1960-80, and these gory scenes were similar to contemporary Vietnam war footage, which was very lightly censored. William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ben Johnson, Ernest Borgnine, & Edmund O'Brien lead the starry cast of military bank-robbers.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) starts with tremendous promise: a starry cast, wonderful hi-def colour photography, and a sophisticated prologue and first act, which give the impression Peckinpah is making a western version of a Greek tragedy, exploiting the audience's familiarity with the story. Sadly, this all dissipates in a soggy second act. However, besides the photography and strong performances by Coburn & Kristofferson, this film is also interesting as an alternative version of events to The Outlaw (1943), The Left-handed Gun (1958), and John Wayne's hagiography, Chisum (1970). Billy the Kid is shown to have a strong connection to the Mexican community, whose story was often overlooked in earlier versions of this famous tale.

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Classic collection

Great movies from the master

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Happy Days

One of the movies is rated as the best western ever made so its great to have a copy

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All good

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