My father's favorite genre of film was the western--BY FAR!! He could watch them all day, almost any day that there was not a decent college football game on. He was worse than me with my 1950's atomic age stuff on Fridays (I've been doing this for a while now.....) Here's one that spooked me from childhood. I used to watch with my dad, probably before I should have for the age that kids probably should watch this sort of stuff (for example, he'd never let me watch Dirty Harry around the time we started watching this together!). In any case, this one made an impression on me. When I was a really little kid I was always glued to the classic Universal pictures from the the 30's, 40's and 50's--I had a "spooky bent" to me from the beginning. So, when I first saw this, the weird music and the fact that this guy was most probably some type of spirit or revenge from beyond the grave really got me caught up. My father had a solid a attachment to this film, even if it generally made him uncomfortable. He would usually say something to the effect of "at first I thought he was some sort of a relative come to town, then I see that dang gravestone....damnit! He's a dead man come back!" I asked him why he liked it, he said it was compelling (well he didn't use the word "compelling"--but that's more or less what he meant) He also mentioned several times later on that when the film came out that there was a bit of uproar about it; that even he knew that many people that "settled" the west were horrible. Not everything was some kind of ideal from a John Wayne movie--and he loved John Wayne movies for the most part (well at least those from the 50's & 60's). Not that bad for a mixed blooded man in the Southeast, basically trying hid his ancestry. So as bleak as this film can be for many, it holds a special place for me.
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