15 Great Western Films if You've Seen All The Classics
Check out these underrated gems and new interpretations of the Western genre.
While it's undeniable that Western flicks in the classic sense are much fewer and further between nowadays, there are still plenty of interesting stories being told taking inspiration from the themes and settings of Westerns! Plus, there are plenty of off-the-beaten-path cowboy flicks that you may not know yet. No Sergio Leone or John Ford films allowed, you already know those!
Westworld (1973)
If you loved the HBO series but haven't seen the original film it was based on, it still holds up! This film came from a screenplay by Michael Crichton, and it pioneered digital image processing techniques to create pixelated POV shots from the perspective of its android characters.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
While this originally might seem like more of a horror film, this Iranian vampire film has the inspiration from Westerns all over it. The vampiric hero, known just as The Girl, was a play on the lone antihero protagonist we often see in these films. The shots are clearly inspired by classic spaghetti westerns as well.
Hannie Caulder (1971)
This early Raquel Welch western film is a known inspiration for the Quentin Tarentino classic Kill Bill. Welch plays a frontier wife who asks a bounty hunter to train her as a gunslinger after a gang of criminals kill her husband and destroy her home.
Flaming Star (1960)
This Elvis Presley picture is one of the more decent films from his mostly reviled turn to acting. These films came to be known in the art world when Andy Warhol used stills from them to create several silkscreen paintings including Eight Elivses.
Last Man Standing (1996)
At the height of his action hero fame, Bruce Willis starred as a gun-for-hire in this action film that bombed at the box office. It is a credited remake of the Akikra Kurosawa classic Yojimbo, which also famously inspired Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars to the point where Japanese company Toho sued the Italian filmmaker.
Nope (2022)
Yes, this sci-fi thrill ride from visionary writer/director Jordan Peele is certainly a Western too. The film is a beautiful sendoff of the legacy of black cowboys and shows how they are entwined with the birth of cinema. The mysterious, all-consuming UFO at the center of Nope is thought to be a commentary by Peele on Hollywood's history of erasure and exploitation of people that helped build it.
Ravenous (1999)
If you want to watch a Western and don't mind it having some horror and comedy tones thrown in, you should check out this underrated 1999 film which starred Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle. Pearce plays John Boyd, who is stationed at a remote U.S. Army base in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and learns that the soldiers there have taken to cannibalism.
Near Dark (1987)
If you're still intrigued by the idea of vampires in a Western setting, check out this Kathryn Bigelow flick from the late-80s that is considered a cult classic today. A young man Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) has to leave home after he's bitten by a mysterious woman and becomes a vampire, getting tied up in a group of roaming fellow vampires.
Tampopo (1985)
This delightful Japanese comedy film, featuring an early-career performance from a young Ken Wanatabe, is about a truck driver who works to help revitalize a struggling ramen shop run by a widow named Tampopo (Nobuku Miyamoto). Tampopo was billed by its director Juzo Itami as a Ramen Western, a reference to the classic term Spaghetti Western which was applied to Western films by Italian directors.
The Last Movie (1971)
Hopper directed and starred in this meta-drama about a stuntman on a Western movie hot off the success of his film Easy Rider. Hooper allegedly followed the script only loosely in production, and had a difficult and elongated editing process. The film was a critical and commercial failure upon its initial premiere, but has achieved cult status for modern audiences.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
This 2007 revisionist history film about the murder of infamous outlaw Jesse James was a box office flop upon its first release, but it's lauded as one of the best films of the year for its mature visual language and excellent lead performances by Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck.
First Cow (2019)
One of the undisputed champions of the modern Western is the director Kelly Reichardt, who has made several beautiful and contemplative films in various American West locations. First Cow is no different, and it follows a traveling Chef in Oregon who forms a friendship, and eventually a business partnership, with a Chinese immigrant seeking his fortune.
Red Sun (1971)
It's long been known that Samurai films and Western films share DNA, with landmark Westerns like The Magnificent Seven being an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai. Well, in this Franco-Italian co-production Red Sun, massive stars from that era came together including Tosirō Mifune, Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, and Alain Delon.
The film follows Mifune and Bronson's characters as they try to recover a ceremonial Japanese sword that was stolen from an ambassador while he was on a train to Washington D.C..
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Yet another great flick that got a bafflingly mixed reception on its release. Spider-Man and Evil Dead director Sam Raimi took on the Wild West, featuring a criminally uncommon female protagonist with Sharon Stone as The Lady as well as a standout performance by a young Leonardo DiCaprio.
BONUS: Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958)
If you want to see the movie Clint Eastwood himself called the low-point of his career, it's available in full on YouTube.
Jacob is a Temporary Partnerships Editor at Hearst based in Queens, New York with his partner and cat Tiger. He loves learning and writing about Film and TV, Video Games, and the weird histories of unexpected subjects.
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