Month: October 2016

The attempt to focus on Halloween/Horror based Westerns in October continues with the cult classic Ravenous! A cannibal horror yarn, talking place in the wilds of Northern California during the Mexican American War, this 1999 feature balances a lot of craziness within its runtime. From the impressive ensemble cast to the strange, discordant musical score to the unusual cannibal mythology, Ravenous defies easy description with it’s dark comedic tone. More or less ignored upon release, its gained a cult following because of its total weirdness. It’s one of those movies Dad would never have watched without this podcast, and so thanks for helping facilitate that! Conversations range from our various experiences with star and lead cannibal (and Full Monty headliner) Robert Carlyle, the finer points of the cannibalism superpowers, the effectiveness of a completely outrageous musical score, Dad’s ignorance of the rich, Wendigo folklore out there, the unfortunate circumstances surrounding character actor Jeffrey Jones, what the grossest moment is, and the sad paucity of Horror-themed Westerns. This film was a request from Keef from Scotland, and thank you Keef, it was an excellent pick.

In the end, we talk more about Halloween, including my recent visit to Salem, Massachusetts. Other movies discussed at the end are the new Ben Affleck thriller The Accountant and the seasonal masterpiece Halloween III: Season of the Witch. You can reach us at westernswithdad@gmail.com, where you can make requests like this one (more weird ones, please!) Also, please rate and review us at iTunes, because it helps visibility on the podcast! Next week, we’ll be returning to the traditional western, with the oft-remade John Wayne classic Rio Bravo, another listener request!

Ravenous was released in 1999. It was directed by Antonio Bird and stars Robert Carlyle, Guy Pearce, Jeffrey Jones, David Arquette, Jeremey Davies, Stephen Spinella, Neil Mcdonough and John Spencer.

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Because there’s an exciting new HBO television series based on it, we decided it was time to take an in depth look at the Michael Crichton SciFi classic, Westworld! Featuring Yul Brynner, playing off his Magnificent Seven performance, this dry run for Jurassic Park features a Western-themed amusement park of the future, where guests can live out their cowboys and indians fantasies (and fantasies of a more lurid sort as well). In classic SciFi tradition, things go haywire and the cowboys run amok! It turns out that calling it a classic is probably a gross overstatement, but it’s hard not to have a little bit of fun with this whackadoo premise, and Dad and I certainly did. Topics of conversation range from Dad’s nostalgia for the Disneyland parks (which he visited as a child the year of its opening), the history of scary clowns, a lot of wistful theme park talk, the desire to live out western movie tropes, the morality of robot sex, the complete and frankly unbelievable fallacy of the science as presented in Westworld, and the likelihood of a park fully encumbered by rich schlubby fat guys. It’s a lot of having fun at the movie’s expense, which is pretty much what the movie deserves. We also spend a bit of time discussing the first few episodes of the thus-far vastly superior HBO series, and as a note, the music included in the episode is from that (it’s just way better).

After that, we spend a bit of time talking about other things we’ve watched, in this case, the Laurence Olivier version of Wuthering Heights and the Donald Sutherland Venice-based horror film Don’t Look Now (which we completely spoil, by the way. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it and skip over that part). Next time, we’ll be celebrating Halloween with the Horror-based Western, 1999’s Ravenous. More cannibalism! See you then!

Westworld stars Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin, and was written and directed by Michael Crichton. Reach us online at westernswithdad.com, or by email at westernswithdad@gmail.com!

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