Western Films (Genre)

Fields of the Nephilim: the 1980s Goth Rock act mixed Spaghetti Western and Apocalyptic imagery with obscure references to black magic, fallen angels, and the Cthulhu Mythos....

Details

• Settings:
  • Weird West
  • Deadlands
  • Devil's Gulch: Basic Roleplaying Adventures in the Weird Wild West
  • The Good, the Bad and the Utterly Insane
  • Cthulhu End Times
• Scenarios/Campaigns: see Weird West
• TVTropes: (link)

Film List

• Rawhide (1959 series) - A cast of cowhands, including a young Clint Eastwood, meet adventure and danger on their cattle drives; some episodes of the show could get dark, artistic, and even Gothic in tone, including ghost stories, stories about Bigfoot and other monsters, cursed herds of cattle glowing with St. Elmo's Fire during deadly storms, and more....
• Curse of the Undead (1959 film) - A cow-town preacher shoots a custom bullet at a vampire gunfighter in the Old West.
• A Fistful of Dollars (1964 film) - The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood), a wandering gunfighter, plays two rival families against each other in a town torn apart by greed, pride, and revenge.
• Wild Wild West (1965 series) - Steampunk/Western/Spy show in which two Secret Services agents, equipped with a wide array of gizmos, work for the government in the Old West.
• For a Few Dollars More (1965 film) - The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) and a bounty hunter with the same intentions team up to track down a Western outlaw.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966 film) - A bounty hunting scam joins The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) and an outlaw in an uneasy alliance against a corrupt military officer in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.
• Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966 film) - Exactly what it says on the tin: Bar-B ranch foreman Billy proposes to his blonde boss, unaware her top-hatted uncle (John Carradine) is a vampire. Made together with Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter....
• Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966 film) - Exactly what it says on the tin: Maria Frankenstein puts a monster's brain in the body of Jesse James' sidekick.
• Valley of the Gwanji (1969 film) - Everything goes wrong when a Wild West showman and his cowboy adventurers try to capture a stop-motion-animated dinosaur god near a Mexican town, and are placed under a Gypsy curse....
• El Topo (1970 film) - A black-clad gunfighter embarks on a dream quest through an Old West Sodom and Gomorrah....
• Red Sun (1971 film) - Bandits rob a train conveying a Japanese gift sword to President Grant, and one of the Samurai escort takes off in pursuit of the thieves.
• Horror Express (1972 film) In 1906 China and Siberia, a British anthropologist who discovered a frozen prehistoric creature teams up with a physician, a mad monk, and a brutal Cossack officer to stop the monster after it escapes on their train, leaving a trail of death in its wake. (Not an obvious choice of "Western", as a British horror film set in China and Siberia, but it would be only a little less weird if it were reset in a more traditional Western setting....)
• Kung Fu (1972 series) - A Shaolin monk/martial-artist flees China after his master is killed, and now wanders the American Old West, defending the helpless and beating down bad guys with his skills, all while trying to find his half-brother and evade Chinese bounty hunters.
• High Plains Drifter (1973 film) - A mysterious gunfighter (Clint Eastwood) comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the corrupt townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three brutal outlaws who are on their way to take vengeance upon the town.
• The Holy Mountain (1973 film) - In a corrupt, apocalyptic world, a powerful alchemist leads a Christ-like martyr and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment from a group of immortal wise men....
• Get Mean (1975 film) - While escorting a Spanish princess back to her homeland, a wisecracking gunfighter does battle with such foes as Vikings, Moors, barbarians, evil spirits, a raging bull, and a maniacal Shakespeare-quoting hunchback.
• Mad Max (1979 franchise) - Against the backdrop of decaying law and order in a dystopian future, one of the last lawmen goes rogue when a brutal gang murders his family, leaving him with nothing but his instincts for survival and retribution.... The film series is essentially a cynical Western in the "Spaghetti Western" tradition, reset in a post-apocalyptic future with an emphasis on souped-up cars over the traditional horses and guns....
• "Preacher Man (1987 short)" - cinematic Music Video for Fields of the Nephilim's "Preacher Man": a post-apocalyptic/occult western involving the showdown between a sheriff and a cult of mutants led by a sinister preacher.... (link)
• High Desert Kill (1989 film) - Three friends take a hunting trip in the eerie landscape of the New Mexico desert mountains, where they meet a mountaineer who has lost his horses, and a couple of strangely-acting "hippie girls" who soon disappear, leading to a series of increasingly strange events suggesting the influence of something unearthly among them....
• Grim Prairie Tales (1990 film) - Anthology. An Old West bounty hunter and clerk try to top each other's ghost stories around a campfire.
• Tremors (1990 franchise) Bored ranch-hands, a concerned seismologist, and an eccentric survivalist couple in the small desert town of Perfection, Nevada happen upon a series of mysterious deaths, and soon find themselves fighting for survival against giant, worm-like monsters hungry for human flesh.
• Ravenous (1999 film) In a remote military outpost in the 19th Century, a U.S. cavalry regiment embark on a rescue mission which takes a dark turn when they are ambushed by a sadistic cannibal.
• Shanghai Noon (2000 film) - Comedy in which Bumbling Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) works as an Imperial guard in the Forbidden City of China until Princess Pei Pei is taken hostage, and Wang pursues her captors to the wild frontier land of Nevada, where he meets a good-natured thief and occasional cowboy, who Wang convinces him to help recover the princess, and together the two form a curious partnership -- the likes of which the West has never seen. (Appears to have been loosely based on Red Sun (1971 film)....)
• Dead Birds (2004 film) A group of Confederate soldiers hole up in an abandoned plantation after robbing a bank, and find themselves at the mercy of supernatural forces.
• The Village (2004 film) Members of a remote pioneer community are threatened by the strange creatures that inhabit the surrounding forest under an uneasy truce when one villager enters the forest and breaks the pact.
• The Burrowers (2008 film) In the American western Dakota Territories, a rescue party sets out to find a family of settlers that has vanished from their home under mysterious circumstances.

"Lovecraftian" Analysis

SUMMARY

Associated Mythos Elements

• setting: Weird West; contrast with Southern Gothic and Gaslight
• setting: Old Solar System dying Mars has sometimes been adapted to a sort of Weird Western setting, substituting Martians for Native Americans....
• deity: Yig
• deity: Wendigo
• location: K'n-yan
• race: K'n-yanian
• cult/organization: Men in Black
• race: standard Gothic fare such as Vampires, Werewolves, Ghouls, Zombies, Witches, Human Cultists, etc.

Keeper Notes

• Something strange is going down at the old Corbitt mine, closed under mysterious circumstances during the American Civil War. A group of intrepid Civil War veterans, prospectors, bandits, gunslingers, drifters, and/or other Western adventurers are hired to find out what is happening, and fix it, so the mine can be re-opened.... ("The Haunting" scenario)
• It might be a fun scenario to see what happens if Western outlaws were to meet Herbert West's reanimated horrors.... (Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter)
• A Wild West showman hires the investigators (a group of aging cowboys, actors, eccentric scientists, bounty hunters, and other adventurers0 to seek the origin of a strange creature discovered in an uncharted corner of the Western desert, for use in his show, but the gang find more than they bargain for in the form of a "Lost World", terrifying monsters, and a mysterious "Gypsy" cult led by a spell-casting mystic.... (Valley of the Gwanji)
• As the end of an age draws near and the stars become right, a prophet's instructions guide a group of imperfect initiates on a dangerous path through a surreal post-apocalyptic Dreamland to the holy mountain where they hope to gain enlightenment from the undying leaders of the Cthulhu cult.... (The Holy Mountain)

General Notes

Reviews

• Film - Author_andor_Location, ([URL link]) - "QUOTE"

Synopses (SPOILERS)

mark, but be sure to remove the marker when categorizing....

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