Also on tap: John Wayne in “Hondo,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.”
Here’s our weekly overview of choice options for home-screen viewing. (Note: All times listed are Eastern.)
Rancho Deluxe
Novelist Thomas McGuane wrote the casually droll screenplay for director Frank Perry’s love-it-or-hate-it cult-fave comic western, about two laid-back cattle rustlers (Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston) in then-contemporary (i.e., 1975) Montana. Slim Pickens is a scene-stealing delight as Henry Beige, a grizzled stock detective (and former horse thief) who’s hired by a wealthy rancher (Clifton James) to corral the rustlers, while Elizabeth Ashley engages in similar larceny as the rancher’s sexy yet neglected wife, who yearns for a little “gothic ranch action” and “some desire under the elms.” Jimmy Buffett enhances this eccentric mashup with a slew of original songs on the soundtrack. (10:30 pm Monday, Encore Westerns)
Hondo
John Wayne is said to have ranked this gritty 1953 drama — director by John Farrow, father of Mia Farrow — as his personal favorite of all his westerns. And while his diehard fans might hold other Wayne classics in higher regard, there’s no denying that Hondo remains one of his most popular movies. (So popular, in fact, that it inspired a short-lived TV western of the same title in 1967 — with Ralph Taeger serving as a game but unsatisfying substitute for The Duke.) As Hondo Lane, an Indian scout, ex-gunfighter, and dispatch rider for the cavalry whose best friend is his mangy dog, Wayne plays the rugged loner as surprisingly sympathetic to the Native American cause, even while protecting a homesteader (Geraldine Page) and her young son (Lee Aaker) from their increasingly (but not unreasonably) hostile Apache neighbors. (12:35 pm Thursday, Encore Westerns)
Ride Lonesome
Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher collaborated on seven memorable westerns, but the best of the bunch is this lean and leathery 1959 drama scripted by Burt Kennedy. Scott plays bounty hunter Ben Brigade (Scott), who’s implacably determined to transport a captured outlaw (James Best) across Indian territory. Two semi-reformed bandits (a pre-Bonanza Pernell Roberts and a callow James Coburn) want to wrest control of Brigade’s captive in order to claim an amnesty offered for their past crimes. But Brigade isn’t interested in amnesty, or even a reward. Rather, he wants to lure the outlaw’s older brother (Lee Van Cleef) into a forced feeding of just desserts. (9 am Saturday, TCM)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
The second chapter in John Ford’s so-called “Cavalry Trilogy’’ — Fort Apache (1948) and Rio Grande (1950) are the others — showcases John Wayne as Capt. Nathan Brittles, a career soldier who must complete one final mission before retirement: Prevent a full-scale Indian war following the massacre at Little Bighorn. As we noted in our July 2007 centennial tribute to The Duke: “There is a mood of autumnal melancholy throughout this classic, as Ford and Wayne depict Brittles as representing an old guard that must, inevitably, make way for the new. For all its scenes of courage under fire and grace under pressure, this is a beautifully sentimental film, focused on rituals and rites of passage. Wayne is dead-solid perfect, combining hard-bitten professionalism and wistful, world-weary sadness in just the right increments.” (12 noon Saturday, TCM)
The Shadow Riders
Three years after they co-starred in The Sacketts, a well-received 1979 miniseries based on a novel by Louis L’Amour, C&I reader favorites Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott reunited for a second successful L’Amour adaptation. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (McLintock!), this 1982 TV-movie focuses on brothers Mac (Selleck) and Dal Traven (Elliott), who fought on separate sides during the Civil War, but join forces for a postwar rescue mission when they come home to find members of their family have been abducted by an outlaw gang of former Confederate soldiers. (8:15 pm Saturday, getTV)
