TOP 10 Westerns of all time...
What are your top ten western movies of all time??
shareThis is an easy question on IMDB. I did a Power Search of the top hundred English western movies wih over 1000 votes. Here are the top ones in rating order down to Yuma, with rating following the title.
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948) 8.5
Wind, The (1928) 8.4
High Noon (1952) 8.3
Ox-Bow Incident, The 8.3
Unforgiven (1992) 8.3
Wild Bunch, The (1969) 8.2
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) 8.2
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962) 8.1
Rio Bravo (1959) 8.0
Searchers, The (1956) 8.0
3:10 to Yuma (2007) 8.0
Dances with Wolves (1990) 7.9
Hud (1963) 7.9
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) 7.9
My Darling Clementine (1946) 7.9
Stagecoach (1939) 7.8
Destry Rides Again (1939) 7.8
Blazing Saddles (1974) 7.8
Big Country, The (1958) 7.8
Way Out West (1937) 7.8
Red River (1948) 7.8
Gunfighter, The (1950) 7.8
Outlaw Josey Wales, The (1976) 7.8
Winchester '73 (1950) 7.8
Magnificent Seven, The (1960) 7.8
Brokeback Mountain (2005) 7.8
Shane (1953) 7.7
Lonely Are the Brave (1962) 7.7
Giant (1956) 7.7
Mark of Zorro, The (1940) 7.7
Tombstone (1993) 7.7
Dead Man (1995) 7.7
3:10 to Yuma (1957) 7.7
1.Ox-Bow Incident
2.The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3.Treasure of The Sierra Madre
4.Little Big Man
5.High Noon
6.Once Upon a Time in the West*
7.Dead Man
8.Unforgiven
9.Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
10.The Magnificent Seven
11. The Searchers (would make the top 10 except for its glorification of racism)
* My number 1 Western of all time but I wish I could include Kurosawa's
Shadow Warrior (Kagemusha) as a and Itami's Tampopo as "samurai Westerns"
Another person who just didn't get The Searchers at all.
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Fill your hand you son of a bitch!
dspear7-1 - This list made me smile. 'Brokeback Mountain', 'Giant' are 'WESTERNS', really? They are good movies, but I would not list them as Real Westerns.
Also, not one Sergio Leone movie... I find that incredible.
Big Jake...John Wayne at his indomiable best
The Magnificent Seven
Trinity Is Still My Name
The Lone Ranger (1950's film version...an excellent work)
Unforgiven
Red Sun...Toshiro Mifuni as a displaced (and anacronistic) samuari working with Charles Bronson to retrieve a stolen antique
Little Big Man
Man of the West
The Cowboys...the Duke and a bunch of kids and its not mauldin; also Roscoe Lee Brown's greatest role.
Westward the Women...Unique and remarkable story of women-only wagon train.
and, for sheer audacity...
Sukiyaki Western Django, even if Rent-one Tear-a-ton-off is in it.
top runners up:
River of No Return...M*A*R*I*L*Y*N
The Misfits...western with jeeps and, again, M*A*R*I*L*Y*N
The Funniest Western: Blazing Saddles...Mongo only pawn in game of life.
the Scariest Western: Curse of the Undead. Vampire gunslinger who cant be shot but gets killed by preacher.
The Saddest Western: Old Yeller
The Goofiest Western: Zachariah...rock bands play modern instruments as pose as gunmen in the wild west.
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Just want to respond to a couple of comments...
The Searchers in NO way glorifies racism, and if you think that you weren't paying attention. The film was a blatant comdemnation of the attitude of John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards, annd half the point was showing how similar Scar (the main Indian and Edwards really were). So is the movie racist just because they fought Indian? Because that really happened...
I also had to laugh when someone said that Leone's films were more "realistic" than other westerns. REALLY? Eastwood killing about 50 guys in a movie and 4 guys at once is REALISTIC? You have every right to prefer Leone's movies (I personally don't if you can't tell), they are certainly epic, but they are in no way "more realistic" imo.
Ok... my top 10 at the moment (subject to lots of change), in no order...
The Searchers (classic in every way, imo one of the top westerns)
High Noon (great music I think, a great movie period)
Shane (THIS is gritty and realistic, and is a really good film)
The Magnificent Seven (flawed in alot of ways, but I still like it because of how fun it is)
Stagecoach (one of the first great ones)
This is where it gets really hard for me to choose... for now I'll say
For a Few Dollars More (my favorite Leone film, I think the characters are better than in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly)
Rio Bravo (really good)
Unforgiven
Red River
Hmmmm, it;s too hard, there are multiple films I could put here, I'll leave it at 9 I guess.
As you can see, I prefer traditional Westerns, but I really enjoy all kinds of Westerns, even "anti-Western Westerns".
It's interesting what people listed as their picks and broadly I agree with most, but honestly, any list posted here without at least one Sergio Leone film cannot be taken seriously.
Here’s mine… in no particular order, except for 'Once upon a Time' which I will always be #1 in my book...
Once upon a Time in the West
The Good, the Bad and the ugly
For a few Dollars More
Unforgiven
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
High noon
Hang ‘em High
Wild Bunch
True Grit
The Searchers
And for 11 I'd add Dances with the Wolves – I just wish Costner didn’t do the narration. Would have been much better movie without it IMO.
The best new western for me is No Country for Old Men.
"It's interesting what people listed as their picks and broadly I agree with most, but honestly, any list posted here without at least one Sergio Leone film cannot be taken seriously."
I would agree. I would say for spaghetti western fans you need AT LEAST one John Ford film (and to be fair, I think most do), and fans of traditional westerns should still have one Leone film on there at least. I don't rate them at the top of my list usually (unless I'm in the right mood), but some of them have to be in the mix.
1) Once upon a time in the West
2) Fistful of Dollars
3) The Searchers
4) The Great Silence
5) The Good the bad and the Ugly
6) Magnificent Seven
7) High Noon
8) Unforgiven
9) The Wild Bunch
10) Outlaw Josey Wales
Honorable mentions : Shane, Duel in the Sun, Ox-Bow incident, and Django
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-Hombre
-Buck and the Preacher
-Tombstone
-The Big Country
-Lonesome Dove
-The Magnificent Seven
-Unforgiven
-Young Guns
-The Outlaw Josey Wales
-The Searchers
The truth is spoken here.
From the Home Office in Columbus, Ohio:
1. Dances With Wolves
2. Unforgiven
3. The Magnificent Seven
4. The Outlaw Josey Wales
5. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
6. The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance
7. Hombre
8. High Plains Drifter
9. High Noon
10. Jeremiah Johnson
Honorable Mention:
11. Pale Rider aka High Noon Drifter
12. 3:10 To Yuma (Original)
13. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
14. Shane
15. TIE: The Jack Bull & Tombstone
Worst Western:
1. Pearl Harbor. It did take place in our most western state, and you got to admit it sucked.
Surprised at the the John Ford cavalry trilogy getting such a poor showing, maybe if you could could count it as one it would be in more lists.
And does Lonesome Dove count, being a TV mini-series? So many have included it (for obvious reasons, it is better than most movies of any kind) that I will go with the flow.
My 10, in no particular order:
Lonesome Dove, sublime on so many levels.
Monte Walsh, (1970 Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) in an under-rated classic about two partners adapting to the changing west. Bittersweet song used through out haunts you afterwards. If you like westerns you should see it. Unbelievable it's not available on DVD.
Outlaw Jose Wales, a wronged man turns vigilante/criminal but his essential decency lurks beneath the roughness, great script, good plot, and a character for Clint to shine in.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Like several films in one, some great set pieces, some very poignant moments, inventive, theatrical and dramatic.
Little Big Man, (Dustin Hoffman). A great entertaining yarn covering various periods in the life of an old man who lived through several different adventures in the West
Shane, a simple iconic tale told brilliantly, with style , and of course, menace.
High Noon. Ditto. Dont we all go through 'what if it was me' scenarios at various points?
Last of The Mohicans, (1992), maybe you dont think of it as a western, but what else is it? It a great film, with a fabulous score. The soundtrack CD is well worth having. And Madeleine Stowe is just gorgeous in this.
Dances With Wolves. Great cast, well made, good score, great story. (borrows a bit from Soldier Blue (1970) if I remember rightly.)
Matewan. Is it a western? Feels like one when you watch it. A 1920 Miners strike in West Virginia culminates in a violent shoot-out. Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, and others in a great cast make this John Sayles movie a classic. David Strathairn as the sherrif is particularly good. There are some great lines in the script. "When did you get that old gun?" The New York hired gun sneers at the hillbilly who has him in his sights "The War against the Spanish?"
"Nope" says the hillbilly, who spits a chaw of tobacco, the re-sights on the yankee and says meaningfully: "The War between the States."
And in conclusion, if we are accepting Lonesome Dove as a contender, surely we must mention Deadwood. A regular series rather than a mini-series, but of movie quality for sure.
I love The Last of the Mohicans, it's one of my favorite films but yeah it really isn't a western. It's a pre-Revolutionary War flick about the French & Indian Wars. It predates the U.S. revolutionary period and I don't really think of the stuff that went down east of the Mississippi back then fitting the concept of what a true western is.
I've seen Matewan also and you yourself said it's about a 1920 coal miners strike in West Virginia. It's a wee bit of a stretch to call it a western... it was an okay film- hell Lone Star was a much better Sayles film and closer to a western to me- at least it was in Texas.
Interesting topic about what makes a "western". I don't think Lewis & Clark's adventures out west qualify as a western- and the whole mountain man/trapper era is kind of a gray area to me. Ya gotta have COWBOYS, horses, wagons, cattle-drives, six-shooters, Western/SW Plains Indians, the U.S. Calvary, homesteaders and gold-seekers involved. A western to me usually has to include at least some of these things, be located somewhere west of the Mississippi, and take place roughly after say the 1840s.
I keep hearing positive things about that Deadwood series I guess I should check it out through Netflix if it's available on it. Lonesome Dove makes a lot of best western lists including mine, I think it qualifies as a western "movie" no problem. I'll tell you though- without Robert Duvall it ain't nearly as good.
I like Ford's The Searchers more than any of his cavalry trilogy (other than Stagecoach which is right up near the top), though they are important films in the genre. Outlaw Josey Wales is Eastwood's best film, and Shane is one great film too.
Thanks for reminding me about Lone Star, another great film not available on DVD. Let's hope we dont have to wait too long.
It is an interesting topic alright, what makes a western, and there is a whole other area of 'modern westerns' such as Lone Star, Three Burials for Melquiades Estrada', The Electric Cowboy, etc.
If I could could suggest you can have westerns without indians, westerns without cows, even westerns without America (Quigley Down Under and probably a few more aussie films) but I think the one essential would be gunplay, or is there a western without guns? There probably is, but I bet it has horses. Is there a western without horses? Maybe there is but I bet it has guns.
So maybe the rule should be at the very least horses or guns, with a frontier or a (Western USA) wilderness setting.
By the way I have just realised the kids growing up don't seem to get exposed to westerns the way we did. I grew up with Alias Smith and Jones, The Virginian, Lancer, High Chapparal, Bonanza, and many more, but my kids (here in Ireland) never see a western series on TV. My daughter recently came home from school declaring herself a 'Seat-belt Sheriff' as a result of some safety programme run in schools, but she had no idea what a sheriff was. I'm sure my kids would enjoy old westerns more than the school-drama/rom-com rubbish served up to pre-adolescents these days.
I was going to say that Lone Star is available on Region 1 DVD but I see you're in Ireland. Yes, that should definitely be available for Region 2 etc, a shame. Not a western but Sayles "Limbo" filmed in Alaska was good too.
Yes I grew up with those TV westerns you mentioned although some of the later ones I didn't watch much. Bonanza was the big one for me, our family watched that instead of Gunsmoke. The term Sheriff seems so American and is so connected with the American west that you forget that there was the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood for instance.
I recently watched the entire season 1 of Deadwood via Netflix, very good and very HBO with the foul language! I felt one season's viewing was enough and from what I've heard that was the best season anyway. Felt a bit too set-bound but the drama was pretty interesting. There's no way the people back then actually used the same vulgar language used in the series (or the amount) but I realize the intent was to show how rough life was in the mining camps compared to the more cultured society back east.
I just saw the newly restored How the West Was Won on DVD and I was pleasantly surprised by it. I hadn't seen it in decades and I've never seen it in the 3-strip Cinerama process. There are some slow spots and it's definitely hokey and old-fashioned in some sense but overall I enjoyed it. The location cinematography is outstanding and everything is very crisp and sharp. The action scenes are amazing. It looks like a brand new film. The soundtrack is very good also. I live in Seattle which has one of the three remaining Cinerama-capable theatres still in use (along with ones in Los Angeles and England) and I'm looking forward to a future showing of this film as it was intended to be seen in actual 3-panel Cinerama. It should be a lot of fun.