New DVDs: 'The Films of Budd Boetticher'

Budd Boetticher, the filmmaker and bullfighter, worked best as a one-trick pony.

His great cycle of low-budget westerns starred the leathery, vaguely robotic cowboy star Randolph Scott, in adventures that didn't change all that much movie-to-movie.

The opening shots showed Scott making his way on horseback across hard country, in search of something, often revenge.

The ying-yang plots started simply, and proceed to layer on the complications in careful measures.

Typically, the life-and-death drama played out by a campfire, with the men drinking coffee and a woman rustling up some grub. Death threats came in the language of noir. Sexual terror loomed for the lady, perhaps. Hopalong Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

In westerns, "There's John Ford and there's Howard Hawks and there's Budd Boetticher," says director Taylor Hackford, who rolls out to honor the late filmmaker on Sony's essential new five-DVD set. Along for the ride are Boetticher fans Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese.

"The Films of Budd Boetticher" focuses on the "Ranown" B-movies made in the  late 1950s. (Ranown took its name from star Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown.) The movies were produced with high-pressure shooting schedules of about two weeks.

Scorsese says, "You can look at them as one long extended movie (presenting) variations of themes and ideas. ... An epic story of this one character (Scott's)."

While most of the six Ranown films are excellent, Scorsese says, "Seen together, they take on another quality. They communicate with each other. ... It was a unique universe that was being created."

Boetticher brought his training as a gringo bullfighter into the films, with both the dramatic and violent standoffs playing out with careful movements and a certain protocol. 

"There are rules of conduct and honor," Scorsese says. "This is a big part (of the Ranown cycle)." The feature-length docu on disc 1 demonstrates there is much of Boetticher's matador aesthetic in Sergio Leone's legendary three-way shootout at the conclusion of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Eastwood says he wishes he'd worked with Boetticher, who died in 2001.

Hackford credits Boetticher with forging the first "sympathetic bad guy" in westerns. Casting was a big part of the Ranown success story; the villains included then-relative unknowns Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, Lee Van Cleef, Pernell Roberts, Claude Akins and James Coburn.

Typically the bad guy aimed to kill Scott, yet admired him as a man and a gunfighter. The showdown had to wait: Indians, the badlands and other threats to survival united the two, at least for two reels.

Scorsese cites the "austerity, amazing frankness and the wonderful relationships between the men," such as the "strange camaraderie" between Scott and Boone in "The Tall T." 

The Boetticher box set includes four killer films -- "The Tall T" (1957, with Boone and Maureen O'Sullivan); "Decision at Sundown" (1957, with John Carroll), "Ride Lonesome" (1959, Roberts and Lee Van Cleef); and "Comanche Station" (1960, Akins, Nancy Gates). Then there's "Buchanan RIdes Alone" (1958), a lesser work that plays like "Gunsmoke" and works in plenty of laughs.

Writer Burt Kennedy gave life to three of the scripts here and contributed to a fourth. (He also wrote the Boetticher-Scott classic "Seven Men From Now.") Nobody in these movies speaks in paragraphs, but Kennedy's carefully wrought short sentences proved long enough.

Charles Lawton Jr. and Lucien Ballard alternate on the cinematography, starring the wilderness of Lone Pines, Calif.

"The Films of Budd Boetticher" includes the solid documentary "A Man Can Do That" (which also discusses his matador films such as "Bullfighter and the Lady"), as well as feature-length commentaries from film historians and Boetticher pal Hackford. Jeanine Basinger's talk on "The Tall T" is especially good, such as when she discusses Elmore Leonard's tale: "This story has a good bone structure."

Video quality is mostly good but the color appears unstable here and there, with browns and greens wrestling for control in some of the badlands shots. Audio is good and clear.

* * * * *

"What We Do Is Secret" dissects the short punk rock career of one Darby Crash, frontman for the DIY band the Germs.

The movie scopes out the rage and outrageousness of L.A.'s early punk scene, but does so as a surprisingly traditional and sappy backstage drama. The movie plays unevenly and doesn't approach the authority and impact of, say, the recent New Order biopic, "Control."

Still, the movie has its charms, in a grubby guilty-pleasure sort of way. Recommended for punk rock sentimentalists.

 The DVD's extras tell an interesting story about this ultra-low-budget project, shot start-and-stop as the money came and went. That director Roger Grossman was able to produce a coherent feature film under the circumstances is fairly remarkable. In the extras, Grossman recalls his illegal shoots, chronic bad luck and what it was like working with the surviving Germs. Shane West and Bijou Phillips star. 

Having spent many late nights afoot in L.A., I confess a soft spot for any film that goes on location at Oki Dog. 

New and notable DVDs:

The Films of Budd Boetticher (Sony)

Futurama: Bender's Game (Fox*)

The Gregory Peck Film Collection (Universal)

The Howdy Doody Show (Mill Creek Entertainment)

Kung Fu Panda (Paramount*)

Moscow Zero (Sony)

Return to Sleepaway Camp (Magnolia Home Entertainment)

Shrek the Halls (DreamWorks/Paramount)

Spin City (Shout! Factory)

Swing State (Morningstar)

Waterworld: Extended Edition (Universal)

What We Do Is Secret (Peace Arch Entertainment)

The Wild Wild West: The Complete Box Set (Paramount)

* = Blu-ray available

Comments

[NV]

I see that a few luminaries speak highly of Budd and his work here with Scott. I've seen these movies before on TCM (Only because that station shows movies in widescreen unlike AMC). The movies are good.

For me Scott's best western was Peckinpah's Ride The High Country but that's another story. Anyhow, I am not discounting the direction, writing or mood these movies bring to the genre. But all this praise... Hackford adding Budd to the Ford and Hawk list, etc. ...

I feel that there is one director from the same period doing just what Budd and Scott did but for me on a much better level -- in fact I would say that 3 out of the 5 films are genre classics. I speak of Anthony Mann's James Stewart westerns.

Now my question is this... where is a special edition boxed set chockfull of brimming extras on these classic 50's westerns from Mann? Winchester '73, Naked Spur, Far Country, Man From Laramie and Bend of the River.

[Glenn]

NV -- I think of Boetticher as more of a Sam Fuller type than the one and only John Ford. The Boetticher indie budgets were more like those for TV episodes than Hollywood features. Comparing Boetticher and John Ford doesn't make much sense, unless you're talking about use of the vistas.

Also, I would point to Scorsese's comment that these Boetticher westerns collectively rise in quality when you look at them as a cycle, not as one-offs.

From Mann, I especially like "The Furies," out on Criterion and reviewed elsewhere on the DVD blog. A Mann/Stewart westerns box set would be amazing.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, NV.

[new movies on dvd]

When it comes to westerns I prefer spaghetti westers. Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, or even Enzo Barboni's "They call me Trinity with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.