One saddletramp's multimedia, cross genre search for the perfect western.
Some sexy times.
Spiders.
SIPDERS?!? Yup, spiders.
That’s The Rush in a nutshell. Oh, and Mountie, too.
The Rush is interesting graphic novel that is a mix of weird
west and family drama, with a healthy dose of survival horror to boot. The art is fantastic, the writing is crisp,
characters are multi-dimensional and believable. Go read it, true believers.
I usually like short novels, but this one could have used a
few hundred more pages. In this self-described
“A Mystery of the Victorian West“ we get, in no particular order:
· Murder mystery
· Helena Blavatsky
· Spiritualism
· Tarot
· Bisexuality
· Incest
· Labor unrest
· Violent union strikes
· Class warfare
· Mining politics
· Drug-induced hallucinations
Oh, and one of the main characters is a white woman who
lived with the Cheyenne for years in a prior book and is readapting to white
society with her new husband. The book
is good, well researched, well written, but it’s a lot to absorb in a little
over 300 pages.
Fun fact- the title comes from the eminently quotable Oscar
Wilde: "After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you
wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not.”
Years ago, pre-pandemic, I ran across a young woman on
Youtube named Dare.
Dare, then in her early twenties, was a performer at
Disney World who was absolutely convinced that she would make a career as an
actress, singer, and model. That was a
lot of brass for someone putting bikini videos on the internet (often shot by
her Mom) like thousands of other young women.
Dare had so much character and charisma, and such an honesty on the
screen, that I kept checking in.
Now it’s 2023 and Dare has a hugely successful career as an actress,
internet model, cosplayer, runway model, youtuber, and just released a single. Quite a career.
She also has a long run of cowboy-flavored cosplays, so we’ll
be kicking off next year with Dare.
See more here: https://www.instagram.com/daretaylorofficial/
In the summer of 1999 I was really excited to see Wild Wild
West, with Will Smith as Jim West and Kevin Klein as Artemis Gordon. I was a big fan of the original series and
Smith was on a roll with his buddy action comedies. Unfortunately, that was also a busy summer,
including a move to our first two bedroom apartment, and we didn’t make it the
Wild Wild West at the first run theater.
Okay, we’ll see it at the second run.
Then that window was closing, on the last day that we had to move out of
our apartment.
I must have been whining about missing the movie, and
annoying Mrs. Slap, so she kicked me out to go see the last show at the second
run. The right move would have been to
say “no, honey, I love you and supporting you and our family is more important
than seeing potentially the greatest movie ever”, but we’d only been married a
couple years by that point and I was stupid.
Off I went to see the masterpiece Wild Wild West.
It sucked.
I came home to find Mrs. Slap dirty and tired from the final
cleanup of the old apartment. I caught a
look that I had never seen before and, more than two decades later, don’t think
I’ve seen since. We recovered and loved
that new apartment for the next two years.
Lesson learned.
His first weird western, Bad Wind Blowing, was one of my favorite reads when I jumped into the genre, and I gave it a glowing review here. The Lou Prophet series was still running strong with great writing, but was starting to fade a bit as Brandvold was getting more into writing under house names for series like Longarm. His writing was becoming more just the typical paperback western, but surely something like a weird western would let him write something vibrant and unique.
So how was the book? There are… goblins in the west? The Civil War ended with orcs? Somehow things are just still humming along? Something like that. There was a plot, perhaps, and maybe some
characters who were flatter than the Llano Estacado. I read a few very forgettable chapters, put a
bookmark in it, then said I’d get back to it.
That was about eight years ago.
I’ve picked it up occasionally, flipped through, and just couldn’t care
enough to got back to it.
To be fair, here's the official description: "A novel about werewolves, ghouls, and cowboys, all fighting for their piece of the American frontier.
The Hell’s Angels are a gang of werewolves who have escaped from Hellsgarde Federal Penitentiary. They were the ones who tore the Confederates into submission at Gettysburg for Lincoln, thus ending the Civil War. Now they’ve headed West—to join the legions of other ghouls . . .Sounds good, I wonder if we'll get it one day?
I miss those early days when
Brandvold’s writing was fresh and it was all still new to me. The buffalo are gone, the railroad’s come
through, and the cat house has turned to a Starbucks.
Have you seen this movie yet? If not, do so with utmost haste. It really is a marvel, and if I write very much about it I will be giving away some of the great twists. In short, Ravenous is the story of a US Army officer who, after being grievously wounded in the Mexican War, is assigned to a sparsely populated “fort” in deep in a mountainous frontier. Things go… strangely, and a substantial amount of mayhem, murder, and madness ensue. Add in fantastic acting (from Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeffrey Jones, Jeremy Davies, John Spencer, Neal McDonough and David Arquette), beautiful scenery, and a haunting score, and it’s a winner.
It might be a horror movie, a
cannibal movie, and/or a western, and one film critic saw it as a gay romance. See it and let me know.
Here at Slap Bookleather the posse is eager to round up a bunch of weird western content for the spooky month of Halloween. We'll kick things off with this pinup from the Western Horror game Darkwatch, reviewed way back in the first year of the blog!
Here's an apt description of this movie: See the naked young Franciscans whipped with cactus. See the bandit leader disemboweled. See the priest ride into the sunset with a midget and her newborn baby. What it all means isn't exactly clear, but you won't forget it.
I tell you I tried. I really did. As someone who likes creepy, sci-fi, existential, weird, western, and art films, I am right in the target demographic for Jodorowsky. However, I have not been able to make it through a single movie or comic book of his. El Topo, his "masterful" western, is no exception.
Hey, there's a genie in it, does this count as a weird western? Maybe the Merkabah Rider makes an appearance. Crap, perhaps I should watch it...
Here’s the review right off of IMDB:
Extremely low-budget porno has a woman working in a Western town where she's forced to perform sex. After the act she's cleaning out a spittoon when a genie pops out granting her a wish. From here we see various sex scenes involving the genie who manages to use his magic to change who he's having sex with, how many and, as the title states, their skin color.
BAD BLACK BEULAH is just one of the many forgotten
porn titles to turn up on Exploitation.TV and if you're a fan of these things
then you'll probably enjoy this one. The film was shot on an obviously small
budget and it seems like the majority of the cast were probably picked up at
the bus terminal and asked if they wanted to make some cash. There's certainly
nothing special or overly memorable here and I'm willing to guess that the
people who saw this in 1975 were probably on 42nd Street and this came on as
the fourth feature.
Again, if you like this low-budget features that
clock in less than a hour then there's plenty of sex here.
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| Firearms safety is important |
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| Church social. Or an orgy. Hard to tell. |
I tried.
Dear Lord, I tried.
I tried because I respect Danny Trejo.
I tried because any weird western film deserves a respectful
watch.
I tried because of the images below which promised that there
had to be something cool and fun and decadent to be seen.
But, ultimately, I gave up after an hour.
