I don’t care what happens in theaters for the rest of the year; 2006 is already a win. Sam Peckinpah’s The Legendary Westerns Collection (CHUD’s Amazon link!) is a landmark. It’s got three films new to DVD (Ride The High Country, The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid) and a much-needed reissue of one of the best American films, The Wild Bunch.
All four movies have commentaries by the three major Peckinpah biographers and documentarian Nick Redman. Pat Garrett was one of several Peckinpah’s films butchered by the studio; it’s presented here in two versions, making this the most comprehensive release to date. In addition, several good documentaries are included about the man behind the lens.
There’s too much material to cram into one review, so we’ll cover one movie per day all week. For anyone who doesn’t want to wait to read all the reviews, just buy it. The Wild Bunch disc is a solid upgrade from the release issued at the dawn of DVD. The other three films look better than they ever have on home video. All are among the best of their genre, and a couple are some of the best filmmaking America has produced.
A wild Peckinpah factoid: when Warner’s re-submitted The Wild Bunch to the MPAA in 1995 (unnecessarily, it turned out) the film was given an NC-17. Twice. Typically, the joke about old X-rated Hollywood films (like Midnight Cowboy) is that they’d barely be an R today. Peckinpah’s movie swings the other way. (Not like Midnight Cowboy.)
That’s just a way of saying that his stuff is as powerful now as it was then. The Wild Bunch was groundbreaking and polarizing but there’s much more to his movies than bullets, and this box set proves it. Most people know The Wild Bunch as a very violent film, and it definitely is that. But it would only be an action picture without the poetic attention to detail and character that Peckinpah offers.
Watch these four films and you’ll see that he’s not just a violent stylist, but a dreamer and a romantic. His work has been misunderstood and denounced, but only by people who were too blindsided to see what his movies were really about: friendship, loyalty, loss and the inevitability of change.
I hope that at least one or two of these movies are new to you, because there aren’t many filmgoing experiences that are as surprising and satisfying. If you’ve only seen The Wild Bunch or Straw Dogs, I promise that these films have more to offer than you’d ever suspect.
(I also want to acknowledge three books that are essential and very entertaining reading. Garner Simmons’ Peckinpah: A Portrait In Montage has the distinction of being the one written while the filmmaker was still alive. David Weddle’s If They Move…Kill ‘Em! is a solid and fast-moving biography. And Paul Seydor’s Peckinpah: The Western Films: A Reconsideration is a comprehensive critical assessment of all the films in this collection. Some of the material in each book obviously ends up on the commentary tracks, since all three participate, but the books are very much worthwhile. CLick any of the titles to go to CHUD’s Amazon link.)
Ride The High Country (1962)
Read the review here!
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Read the review here!
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
Read the review here!
Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973)
Read the review here!
Major Dundee (1965)
Read the review here!
(This disc is available from Sony, and is not part of the box set, but we missed it last year.)
The Artwork
To save time, let’s get this covered here. Like so many of Warner Bros’ box sets, this one comes in a plain sleeve. The photo pf Peckinpah is hardly the best. The cover montage on the left side doesn’t inspire, though I do like that it features the old poster and VHS cover for The Ballad of Cable Hogue. That art also shows up in the movie’s main menu.
As with the Warners noir box sets and my Alec Guinness collection sleeve, this box will probably end up folded in a drawer until I move to another city, at which point it’ll find a new home in the dump.
A part of me wants these films encased in battered leather flecked with the sweat of gunmen and the lather of horses. I want giant poster reproductions and lobby cards with extra info on the back. I want a book detailing the mechanization that haunts Cable Hogue. It should be packed with stories of the Mexican Revolution and photo breakdowns of the guns that shadow every character. Give me some Dylan sheet music while we’re at it. And all of me would be willing to shell out the couple hundred bucks that would cost.
Back in reality, I’m happy with these four simple discs in their shitty paper box. Because with a sixty dollar list price — which means forty bucks online — there’s no reason for anyone not to grab these films. There’s no reason for me not to lend them out to anyone lucky enough to be seeing them for the first time, because it’s what’s on the discs that’s priceless, not the discs themselves.
I do have one complaint. Several of these films cry out for a simple insert booklet. Take Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; there’s nothing to indicate what the differences are between the two versions outside of the commentaries and documentaries. Someone new to the films shouldn’t have to wonder which to watch first. Sony’s Major Dundee disc has a great insert explaining what was cut from the film, why it was cut, and what the new edit restores. The people who buy these movies deserve the same explanation.
The Artwork: 6 out of 10
Overall: 9.3 out of 10