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Overview
Do you like Westerns? Cowboys, Indians (Native American/First Nation), gunfights, horseback riding, etc? Yeah? Well, you may be surprised by this western.
Most of the standard western tropes don’t exist here. In fact, many of the horror movie tropes don’t exist. What you get is a passion project that is definitely different than most. And the horror aspects are heightened when you understand the time period and how different it was from today’s world.
This movie also has an A list actor, which we don’t get often in our reviews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Tomahawk
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2494362/
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Transcript
So season two, episode two we were talking a Western bone Tomahawk and not your father’s Western. No, it’s really not.
[00:03:55] Rhys: Hey, before,
[00:03:57] Stephen: before it started, by the way. Yeah. I have to give a shout out to a special fan. We have a fan. I had a fan approach me in the wilds on the street. So shout out to Jack and you know who I’m talking about. Oh, ran into him after Dr. Strange comes up. Are you? And I’m like, yes. Who are you? I didn’t even recognize him.
He didn’t look as tall as he used to. It’s cuz you’re growing
Steve.
[00:04:22] Stephen: It must be. I hit my gross spurt when I hit puberty last week. yeah. Hey Jack. Yeah. Shout out to Jack for actually listening to us and then saying he enjoyed it. At least he’s a smart young man to lie to the old guys, so yeah, there appreciate that.
So anyway, back to the bone Ock, which is not your father’s Western, at least not my father’s Western. It’s not,
[00:04:43] Rhys: although as problematic as it turned out to be, it could be your father’s Western. Oh, really? The movie is a collaboration between the us and the UK. It was done in 2016. And when I say collaboration, it was directed, acted, written and shot in the United States, but all the financing came from great Britain.
[00:05:06] Stephen: So great. Britain has personal experience with lots of great westerns.
[00:05:11] Rhys: Yeah. I’m not exactly sure why that’s a weird one,
[00:05:14] Stephen: but we seem to get that a lot.
[00:05:16] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. And this is it hits that little bizarre niche considered Western horror. And there’s very few out there, but a lot of times they tend to be well done films.
[00:05:29] Stephen: Yeah, it really was. And it had a big name, at least one big name though. There’s several people I recognized. Oh, it had
[00:05:35] Rhys: lots of big names. The box office on this was $382,579 on a 1.8 million budget. So this did not make a whole lot of money. No. And for those of you that like no name, Western spaghetti, Western Sergio Leoni and stuff.
[00:05:54] Stephen: It is not that it almost could be re-skin in different types of movies. The it’s a pretty, it could be a sci-fi in an outer space easily, which I guess a lot of westerns could but star wars . Yeah, exactly. Firefly. Yeah. But there’s. There’s not a lot of the Western tropes.
It seemed very accurate in most spots though. Yeah.
[00:06:22] Rhys: There’s a couple and we’ll get to it. But you’re right. It’s a Western shoot, I’ll think of it before the end of the show, but yeah. This premiered at fantastic Fest on October 1st in 2015 the movie is very well put together and it’s reflected in the fact that it got 20 award nominations and it won nine awards.
That includes the Catalonia international film festival, native American film festival, the Southeast Gerard may film festival, which we’ve talked about in the past Pura chainsaw awards. That’s interesting. So it won an award that sponsored hosted by native Americans. Yeah, that’s really cool because I did make a comment that I’m like, wow, it’s a little tough, cuz it’s very not PC, but I bet it’s extremely accurate to the
time period.
And that’s where we get into that’s where we get into the whole mess of everything. Oh, okay. The film received mostly positive reviews. Some people criticized it because it’s a really long movie. It’s about two hours and 15 minutes. Yeah. Or their PA or the pacing. They felt that it was a little slow and
[00:07:34] Stephen: it, yeah, if you thought Sam and Fredo walking, the mortar was a while.
Yes. Wait till you walk across the desert. yeah. The bigger issue in this is the racism that’s built into the plot. And it’s not so much that it was that the guy who wrote it went out to intentionally to be racist, but his writing is kinda lazy and it’s lazy enough to promulgate racist tropes.
[00:07:58] Rhys: However, this same kind of lazy writing based racism, it’s a common issue. And it can be found in all kinds of horror films or expanded into themes of cultures and stereotypes. It happens all the time. And the time period though, I got what I got across from the acting from the story is they weren’t trying to make a point of it.
[00:08:21] Stephen: It was just, that’s how everybody was, how everybody thought Western town type thing. Is it really that. They weren’t trying to be racist, which I don’t even know if the term existed back then. It was just, that’s how they grew up. That’s how they thought that’s how life was. And they probably didn’t even question it.
And I, that’s what I got out of what I was hearing,
[00:08:44] Rhys: I actually watched like a 15 minute screen about how you should not watch this movie because it’s so racist. Just to hear what the guy had to say, and he makes some decent points and then he makes some that are just over the top.
And as we get to him throughout the movie, as we’re talking about it I’ll bring him up
[00:09:02] Stephen: just I’m definitely of the camp that we shouldn’t rewrite what happened in the past, even if we’re trying to change it now that that doesn’t make sense to me. And I don’t think it helps being able to see that type of thing with a hundred year difference.
Almost people are more relaxed. They accept it more and they can see it better. If you did a modern movie set in New York with gangs and stuff, it probably wouldn’t have the same impact. The racism as this movie did. My thought and opinion not been psychologically studied or anything, but you should
[00:09:36] Rhys: be
[00:09:36] Stephen: psychologically state.
Thank you. Yeah. That’s they had me tested. I’m not crazy. This movie was shot in Malibu in 21 days. Wow. Start to finish when the camera started, it took them 21 days to shoot this. Poof.
There’s not a lot of special effects and stuff. So it wasn’t like a lot of post production, right?
[00:09:57] Rhys: Yeah. The culture clashes in this episode occur between humans and race of humans called the cites.
But it’s also between you have this guy named Bruder and he is this kind of worldly. Gentleman who has moved into the town and the citizens of the town itself. Because he considers himself above them all and it comes up several times. And Bruder is also, you have culture clashes between Bruder and anybody who is not like Caucasian.
Yes. Every other race is inferior to him in his mind. And I’m glad you mentioned that, cuz I, I made note of that too. I’m like, wow, there’s multiple culture clashes. And it’s even a little bit which we mentioned in one of the other movies the townspeople versus the outlying people that live in farms on stuff.
[00:10:44] Stephen: There’s a little bit of that between Kurt Russell’s character and the whatever’s name was with the leg. I didn’t write it down. Sorry. There’s some of that in there too. Yeah. This was a passion project.
Really? I wouldn’t have guessed that.
[00:11:00] Rhys: And it leaves it it leaves you with this independent feel to the movie.
Yeah. Yeah. And it technically is an independent because it wasn’t distributed or funded by any major studios or distributors. It has actors that are ALIST actors who are getting paid far less than they normally would because they liked the script. So it’s important to note that it looks like a big budget film and it really wasn’t.
Wow. Okay. It was written by a gay guy named S Craig Zar and he wrote and directed this film. It was his first he’s a published author, so he was a writer before he was a director. He doesn’t have a brother in Cleveland. Does he?
I have no idea where he is from. I Z’s not exactly a big.
[00:11:50] Stephen: Popular name and the there’s an artist up in Cleveland that did my book covers name LER. Oh. I’ll have to find out. Kurt Russell had run, Kurt Russell had read one of his earlier books and loved it so much that he provided the cover quote for the book. Nice. And so when Zar was doing this movie he decided to reach out to Kurt Russell who was interested in doing it.
[00:12:14] Rhys: Zar is written a total five films and directed three of them. And this is the only title of his you’re gonna know of the movies that he directed. This movie represents his rough draft of the script. He never wrote anything else. He just sat down and wrote the whole thing out. And I think perhaps some of the controversy that surrounds his film might have been resolved if he’d.
Gone back and taken the second read through,
[00:12:44] Stephen: but had somebody else look at it. Yeah. I can see that if it’s your passion project, you want what you want for sure. Yeah. It’s stars, Kurt Russell we’re talking white E from tombstone here. He plays sheriff hunt. He’s been in 102 different films starting with Dennis, the MENA in 1962.
[00:13:04] Rhys: Wow. He was in the man from uncle Gilligans island. The Virginian lost in space. The fugitive Daniel Boone gun smoke Hawaii five O hit his stride in movies with escape from New York. The thing he was in that horror, great horror pedigree there Silkwood big trouble in little China, tango and cash backdraft.
Captain Ron tombstone we’ve mentioned he was in the original Stargate. Yes. The grand house furious seven, the hateful eight. Deep water horizon, the fate of the furious guardians of the galaxy two, once upon a time in Hollywood F nine, the fast Chronicles
[00:13:44] Stephen: recently, he was Santa Claus too, on the Christmas Chronicles on Netflix.
Good shows. Oh, okay.
[00:13:50] Rhys: He was also had a little blip in what if playing ego again? Oh yeah. Yeah. So he plays sheriff hunt. The other like ma I don’t wanna say major star, but like a big role in this movie is a guy named Arthur who is played by camp. Patrick Wilson. Yes. He’s been in 57 films lots of them, the fandom of the opera hard candy, which is on the short list for another season here.
All right. Running with scissors, Lakeview terrace, the Watchman American dad, the, a team insidious. Prometheus the conjuring it wasn’t until I was making this list that I realized, oh my God, he’s the guy from insidious and the conjuring series. Yes.
[00:14:34] Stephen: There you go. I knew, I re I’m like, oh yeah, he’s one of those faces that I recognize and can never place that’s it.
Oh yeah, that was it. And of course, insidious chapter two, the Fargo TV, Batman V Superman conjuring too. Inid is the last key, the nun, he was in Aquaman, the Annabel film they’re all tied into the conjuring. He was also in the tall grass. Oh
yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:57] Rhys: He’s the dad who goes crazy in the tall grass.
Oh, spoilers. If I know you didn’t explain all shows about
[00:15:02] Stephen: spoilers.
[00:15:03] Rhys: So Matthew Fox plays brew and he says he enjoyed making this film more than any other film he’s been involved with.
[00:15:11] Stephen: Nice. He had a great fact.
[00:15:13] Rhys: So yeah, he liked it so much. This is the last project he’s worked on.
Worked on up until recently. Huh? Wow. So he took a hiatus. He’s been in 24 total films. Once you might know he was in wings, he was in speed racer loss and world war Z. Okay. So he’s been in a few things. Richard Jenkins plays Chicky he’s been in 115 films, including Silverado Spencer for hire Hannah and her sisters.
The witches of Eastwick Richard Jenkins is one of those guys who tends to show up in classier films right. Than,
[00:15:48] Stephen: yeah, he’s another one I totally recognize. But it’s you’re always that side character, yeah. Yeah. The Indian and the cupboard the Manhattan project, there’s something about Mary, the mod squad, snow falling on Cedars burn.
[00:16:02] Rhys: After reading the tale of DPO eat prey love. He was in the cabin in the woods. So this is in his first foray in horror. He was one of
[00:16:09] Stephen: the main guys controlling the
[00:16:11] Rhys: machinery. He was in Jack Reacher, the original movie. White house down the shape of water, the last shift, which is also on a short list for a season here.
Nice. Okay.
[00:16:22] Stephen: Tying it all together.
[00:16:24] Rhys: Yeah. I think the last two we’re gonna talk about are again, I’m pretty sure. I of feel like they were cast to let you know when you started watching this movie, what kind of movie it was gonna be just in case you had any doubts? The first was David Arquette who plays Pervis.
Yes. He’s been in 145 titles and I started to list him and I was like, you know what? He has been in. Every television show, literally every you he’s been in friends. He’s it’s just like anything you can think of he’s been in. So I skipped the TV stuff. Like
[00:17:00] Stephen: Kurt, Russell, you’ve probably seen him in lots of stuff.
[00:17:03] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Buffy the vampire Slayer was like one of his first movies that he was in. He’s the guy from scream. He was in ravenous, never been kissed Muppets from space. He was in a couple Muppets movies. Eight wanna
be
[00:17:16] Rhys: a Muppet movie. Oh yeah. And he’s done a lot of WWE stuff, which is really interesting to me cause he look like a big
[00:17:24] Stephen: wrestling guy.
I’m going to guess he plays some redneck
[00:17:29] Rhys: could be the other guy who was definitely a nod into the horror genre was Sid ha. He plays buddy. He’s been in 150 films. Oh, wow. He premiered on the untouchables in 1962. Oh, cool. He was on the original Batman television show. He was on the original star Trek episode.
The man from uncle his first foray into horror, to my knowledge as I was researching, this was spider baby, which if you’ve not seen that gem, it is definitely worth a watch.
[00:17:58] Stephen: That sounds
[00:17:59] Rhys: great. Gun smoke. Get smart mission. Impossible. Wonder woman. I didn’t even know there was a TV series in 1973 of wonder woman.
I thought Linda Carter was the first. Nope. Apparently there was one in 1973. He was in that. Wow. Again, this guy’s been on every television show ever. And then you get into the modern era where people are gonna know him because he’s good friends with Rob zombie. So he was in house of thousand corpses, the devils rejects Lords of Salem, re from hell, all of which are Rob zombie specials.
He was in hatchet three call back to last season kill bill two Halloween, the 2007 version. So
[00:18:42] Stephen: like how you gotta say the year version yeah. Of those. So yeah, he’s been in so many things and as soon as you see him, at least nowadays, you’re like, oh, that’s the guy from all the horror movies.
[00:18:56] Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. The cave system that was in this film at the end, towards the end of the film is the same set that they used in Ironman. That’s where Tony stark was building. The original Ironman suit is same cave
[00:19:10] Stephen: system. So you have the trouble nights posing look Tony’s car was here, iron man there’s lots of other actors and actresses.
[00:19:17] Rhys: This is something else I found really interesting who were cast as they started to get into production, it just clashed with their schedules. So they had to opt out. It includes Jim broad bent, Peter scars guard, Jennifer Carpenter, Timothy Olohan he’d have been great in this. Yeah. Michael WinCo, a lot of big names who signed on, they wanted to be part of this film, but just because of scheduling.
Couldn’t make it
[00:19:42] Stephen: happen. And I love hearing these actors, Kurt, Russell being one of ’em that I wanna do this. It’s not the money, it’s not the fame and glory. It’s not gonna be a big blockbuster. That kind of tells me a lot about their integrity and quality. Yeah. You don’t, and it’s the same list of people that you don’t hear on TMZ all the time, so right.
Figure that out. There are two really striking notes for me that are background notes that run throughout this whole film. The first is the very sparse use of music I
have. Of course I put that down right there.
[00:20:18] Rhys: there is virtually no music throughout this whole song. There is a drum beat when the title card comes up as they start to leave the towns, there’s a forlorn little musical thing.
[00:20:29] Stephen: Yeah. Three measures or something.
[00:20:32] Rhys: and then when you get to the end There is a song written specifically for the movie it’s called for doomed men ride out that they performed during the final credits. There is a frontier town, a community of settlers and rogues and honest folk, little did they know of the ancient race that dwelled beyond their borders?
Four doomed men ride out. That’s the first line of this kind of really doesn’t rhyme kind of
[00:21:00] Stephen: song. That sounds very token ish though. It sounds like something the elves would sing.
[00:21:05] Rhys: Yeah. So yeah, you have this very limited use of music throughout this, which isn’t necessarily indicative of a Western, but the next part is let get, like I asked to interrupt, do you think leaving the music out helped or made the movie a little less than it could have been.
[00:21:25] Stephen: So there
[00:21:26] Rhys: are certain films that immerse you in what’s going on to the point that you don’t even notice that the music’s not playing Castaway is a perfect example of this. I was probably halfway through Castaway when I realized, oh my gosh, the only sounds are the ambient sounds, cuz he’s not even talking.
Yeah. And I that’s one of those cases where it really helped, I think with this movie, there were one or two times where I was like, eh, they probably could have used some music there. But for a lot of the time, I didn’t even, I didn’t even really notice that it wasn’t playing. You know what I mean?
[00:22:02] Stephen: I agree. I was trying to figure out cuz there were like the bar scene we’ll talk about in a couple minutes. I was like, there seems like it needs a little bit of music that it, or something to help push the tension and what’s going on. I agree. I think I. Arguably, you could probably find places to put it in that it would’ve enhanced.
That section doesn’t need a whole John Williams score through the whole movie. But yeah. So anyway, I was just curious on your thoughts on that. Cause I wrote that same thing down. I noticed of course, but no dogs got killed that I could see. So correct. The drug lights might have, but we don’t know that. No, I’m sure they kill pretty much
[00:22:39] Rhys: anything they meet
[00:22:41] Stephen: anyway, you were gonna say what the other thing, and this hap this is happens in westerns a lot, some of the best westerns this PUA when they speak.
[00:22:49] Rhys: Oh yeah. They dress and they look and they act like complete backwards buffoons, but they speak with the vocabulary and a cadence, which is far above the station that you expect. Yeah. And this happens Clint Eastwood movies were good for this. Tombstone. Yeah. A real good example of this and this movie is the same way.
And it starts at the beginning of the film. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. And so the movie starts with Pervis played by David Arquette. He is leaning over to somebody with the Dulles knife ever, trying to slice their throat while they’re sleeping, as his partner buddy goes through their stuff.
And again, that Sid hag. So as soon as the movie starts, you have two horror movie veterans on screen. And I make a note of this later for a large chunk of this movie. This is just a Western, it’s a little goer than most westerns. And some of the violence they don’t shy away from it.
But it doesn’t really enter into the horror genre until the end.
[00:23:57] Stephen: Yes. It. Had that offbeat feel for a horror. Yeah. And, but the beginning I made note that this beginning sequence was a bit comical and then it went into horror, which is a very horror thing to do you get that opening that you’re a little chuckling and then suddenly something horrific happens and you’re totally immersed into it, but then they got away from it again.
So it definitely had a weird feel to it before that kinda Shakespeare
[00:24:25] Rhys: grave Digger feel.
[00:24:26] Stephen: Yeah, actually that’s perfect. And there, you how many westerns were based on Shakespeare anyways? So I guess that fits dead man was the other movie I was thinking about quirky Western passion, project, big names, Johnny depths in the movie, elevated language and speech.
[00:24:45] Rhys: A very bizarre film. Yeah. To be classified as a Western, but it’s still a Western technically, so yeah. I knew I’d come up with it before the end of the thing so Pervis is their slicing, this guy’s throat as buddies going through everyone’s stuff they’ve already killed everybody else.
And from your, their conversations, you can tell they’ve done this a lot and they’re a good partnership. They work well together and I
[00:25:10] Stephen: love this because it wasn’t like the normal Western where they walk up. All right. Give us your money, stick ’em up. It was while they’re sleeping, we’re just go cut their throats.
Yeah.
[00:25:19] Rhys: Makes it’s the logical way to go about it if you’re
[00:25:21] Stephen: gonna do it. Yeah. Loved it. And that’s pretty interesting for David Arquette character. think that big. Yes. And as soon as they start talking, there’s that Patcha the whole, they start speaking. They’re talking quickly, they’re using high language.
[00:25:36] Rhys: They’re even talking about important things while the characters appear to be uneducated individuals, they’re debating about how many arteries are in the neck that supply the brain with
[00:25:45] Stephen: blood. You’ve gotta cut all 17.
[00:25:48] Rhys: six damnit. Yeah. It turns out Purvis. Didn’t kill one of the victims who attempts to shoot him, but he saved
[00:25:55] Stephen: all the arteries.
That’s right. With that dull, last knife, it’s not surprising. He saved by buddy, but the gun goes off and the sound draw some curious folk on horseback. And if you can say anything about Purvi, he’s got good ears because he can hear the horses while they’re SIL a ways out. Yeah. So they decide they’re gonna head up into the rocks to hide on the way they hear this ominous howling sound.
[00:26:19] Rhys: And this is almost like. Soundtrack because this howling sound occurs throughout the film and they don’t really call attention to it necessarily when it happens. Sometimes they do. And sometimes they don’t, but if if, especially if you’ve already seen it before every time you hear it, you’re like, Ooh, that’s not a good
[00:26:40] Stephen: sound.
And this is where I was like, okay. So where, what exactly is this leading to? Because that sound is an awful lot. Like the big foot sounds you hear with all the big foot shows and hunters and all that. And in a minute, you know what happens, it was even questionable. Was that a person or was that a big foot?
Where is this going? So that and like you said, though, it was one of those not, let’s not show the monster right away type of yeah. Things get worse as they continue. They find animal skulls laid out in a decorative formation, culminating in a circle of stabs and skulls, human included, attached to these stabs.
[00:27:17] Rhys: Purvis is concerned, but buddy isn’t, he is we’re gonna go, we’re going through and we’re gonna go through you get another one of those whistle, howling sounds. And buddy just opens fire at the rusting grass only to have it answered by catching an arrow in his neck.
[00:27:33] Stephen: And they like to do that a lot.
Just a sudden, bam, there’s an arrow with sticking through a person he falls over Pervis runs and this human figure comes out of the Bush. It’s really just a silhouette. That’s all we can see. And he finishes off buddy with you’re not really sure at this time what it is, but it turns out to be like the jaw bone of an ass.
[00:27:53] Rhys: They sharpen down one side of it. Purvis takes one shot wildly, and then just keeps running. And then the title screen comes up. There’s that one? That one drum note THP it tells us the name of the film. And then It goes to another title screen, which tells us that we’re jumping 11 days into the future.
11 days later now, after they jump to 11 days into the future, that card fades out and you get this picture of a town called bright hope. You see a sign that says bright hope you see a tree, you see a building and it is so quiet. I thought something had happened to my playback. I was like is this frozen is but it wasn’t, it’s just a super silent shot.
We see Owen’s Owen Wilson’s character sitting on a couch. He’s reading a newspaper. His leg is splinted. And he’s arguing with his wife. Samantha played by Lily Simmons over whether he’s sculpting or not. It turns out he’s heard himself falling off a roof. And he is lamenting that he’s missing opportunities and his wife’s lamenting that he’s not happier to be stuck at home with her.
Yeah. It turns out he’s a cowboy. He like hurts horses or cattle from point a to point B. And the cattle drive left without him.
[00:29:16] Stephen: He sounded like he’s like the foreman, the the head guy or something is what sounded like. Yeah.
[00:29:22] Rhys: So he was not happy. The scene cuts to a dark period of time.
It like goes from this day where he’s hanging out to a dark period of time. We see Purvi at the foot of a tree he’s burying a bag of loot he had from earlier. And there’s a building with lit windows in the background. And then there again, there’s that howl in the distance. The camera cuts to inside what appears to be a relatively empty saloon.
There’s a piano player asleep at the piano. Somebody sweeping. The bar keep is lamenting that the BES have read out, rode out, leaving behind women, children, and dead Enders, as he says that bartender is actually played by Fred Melamed. He plays Clarence. That’s the name of the bartender. Again, one of those guys who’s been in a million things, classy films.
He’s been in 113 different movies, including the Manhattan project. Ish, char silk stockings, Hannah, and her sisters, and the guy who’s done voiceover on everything like NCAA football, 98, the video game, the multipath of Superman video game, grand theft auto five, the ALO three fallout 76. He was in one division.
So this guy’s been around a lot for the bit part that he’s
[00:30:37] Stephen: playing. So when you say classy movies, you mean interpreted as the type we won’t talk about? Yeah.
[00:30:45] Rhys: The high brow films that we don’t see too good for
[00:30:48] Stephen: us.
[00:30:48] Rhys: Yes. In walks Broer, he’s wearing a white suit and hat he’s immaculately clean. He gives this kind of cursory look at the African American gentleman who’s sweeping.
And then he completely ignores him and walks up to the bar. The bartender knows him, serves him a drink, and he goes to play the, pay the pianist to wake up and play some music. So he goes over They have this whole discussion about how much it’s 3 cents per song or three songs for a dime. And he’s shouldn’t it be cheaper?
And the piano player’s no, I get tired after three songs. So it’s gonna cost more.
[00:31:23] Stephen: I love the, that with the piano player, because really doesn’t add a whole lot other than atmosphere, but it was totally different than any other. You always see the piano player with the sleeves. He looks like a card shark in there.
No, he’s happy in play unless they’re gum to him. And then it’s like just trying to play, but this guy was like, yeah, screw you give me money. Oh. And then he has a fee, a whiskey fee to, yes.
[00:31:47] Rhys: Even start you owe him, yo owe a drink early
[00:31:50] Stephen: capitalism and it’s best.
[00:31:52] Rhys: Yes. He had a pillow on, on the piano itself.
So he moves the piano pillow. And that’s where the, it costs you a drink to have him play in bro DS in his white suit. And just as this conversation about the piano was over a man in a black suit enters. Yeah, the little symbolism there that we’ve never seen in westerns. And then we cut away instantly to the Sheriff’s office, almost uncomfortably so someone walks in and before you can even recognize who it is, spoiler alert, it’s Purvis, the camera jumps right to the Sheriff’s office, chicky comes in and asks the sheriff for some of his soup. There’s a lot of conversation about what kind of soup it is and the fact that, oh that tastes about right. So this is good news. The sheriff gives him some, pours him a drink, and we found out the trickery is a backup deputy. His wife appears to have passed and he was on his way back from the cemetery.
He saw someone he didn’t know at the edge of town and you’re thinking, oh that’s a little paranoid, burying a case and changing his clothes before heading into town. That’s not paranoid anymore. That’s actual suspicion. So the sheriff and Chicky head over to the learned goat to investigate. As they go out we cut to Arthur and his wife convincing him that it’s a good idea for him to be stuck at home because they’re just hanging out, having sex.
Right. Back at the bar, the bartender is pouring. Purvi a drink. As the sheriff comes in and the bartender grumbles, he is like, come on, man. It’s the only customer I got. But the sheriff proceeds to question Purvis who claims that his name is buddy, and he’s there to meet someone. And the sheriff calls him was bluff with this beautiful idea.
He’s what day is it? And Purvis, can’t tell him. And he is that’s an odd thing for you to like, be here. And tried to beat somebody.
[00:33:43] Stephen: I like what you were saying about the classy talk and all that. And Kurt Russell’s character is a little off beat for most sheriffs in westerns and spaghetti westerns, especially because that they showed him cooking.
They showed him making something and it wasn’t just beans or something. It was, yeah, it was corn chowder. Yeah. And then he’s very calm about it and he uses his smarts. That type of trickery, you don’t see a lot in westerns. That’s very brutal, straightforward.
This was very much calm, methodical, and yeah. You’re lying and yeah. So it shows a lot for Kurt Russell’s character. It’s probably right. Why he liked the part so much.
[00:34:21] Rhys: Yeah. When the sheriff finally confronts him about burying the bag Purvis decides he’s gonna take off. He runs into Chicky who tries to stop him.
He knocks Chicky down and the Sheriff’s just not having any of it and puts a bullet in his leg. And he immediately falls down to the floor, passed out,
[00:34:38] Stephen: which it turns up later. That’s not the first time he stopped somebody by shooting him through the leg. yes, it’s his signature.
[00:34:47] Rhys: He tells Bruter to go get doc Taylor and put some coffee in him.
If he’s liquored. We’re back to Arthur and his wife post coitus, as she mother HES him, she’s cleaning his wound. And when you look at it, you can see it. Wasn’t just a break. This was a compound fracture because there’s like a break in the skin. He playfully says she’s taking good care of him.
And he asks if there’s anything he can do for her. And she brings this poem that he wrote while he was on the trail and she wants him to read it to her and he’s actually too shy to do it. He’s about to try and there’s knock at the door and it’s brutal there to get Samantha because the doctor is passed out drunk and Samantha is like the town’s backup doctor.
So she grabs her bag and he escorts her back. We get to the jail and we meet young Nick who is beating trickery at a game of checkers. He’s one of four brothers. Samantha’s not happy to be there because the sheriff has a habit of shooting people in the leg. That’s just what he does. The sheriff summarily just dismisses Bru.
Nick, it turns out is a full on deputy, not a backup like Chicky, and he’s supposed to help Samantha with pulling the bullet out from Purvis leg and then escort her home when she’s done. And then the sheriff and Chicky. Before he goes home. The sheriff stops by to tell ath Arthur, what his wife’s up to.
And in the conversation, we discover that the camp, the sheriff has a wife who is ill. They were afraid it was pneumonia, but it was just bad cold. After the sheriff leaves, Arthur tries reading his poetry out loud. He’s like practicing maybe for when Samantha comes home, but, and he insists it. It ain’t poetry.
It’s just his thoughts. He was writing down while he was on the trail. Back at the jail Purvis wakes up as Samantha’s removing the bullet, she needs to finish up. And as she says that, we hear that howling sound again.
Now we cut to one of the guys who works at the bar, his name moves Buford. He’s got a lantern. He’s headed out to take care of the horses for the night and they’re odd horn. Those odd howling sound is going on. He opens the barn door and is talking to the horses and he is killed by that bone Tomahawk that we mentioned earlier.
And again,
[00:37:01] Stephen: we don’t really see this person or creature, whoever.
[00:37:04] Rhys: Nope. Very just see that he gets struck down. Yeah. We cut to Arthur. He wakes up in bed. It’s dark he’s alone. So Samantha’s late coming back. Cut to the next morning. The Sheriff’s with his wife, who’s cutting up vegetables and with a big ass knife.
That knife was huge. You get one big knife that does everything rather than trying to pay an important buy all these little knives.
Yeah. They’re arguing over a hi her doing work cuz she’s been ill and he thinks she should be taking it easy. But Clarence the bartender shows up at the house and he went to take care of the horses in the morning and found Buford’s body.
And the horses are gone when he went to the police station, it was empty, including the jail cell. So the sheriff grabs Chicky and they head over to the barn to investigate. Nobody’s there. None of the horses there, just the remains of poor Beauford,
[00:37:58] Stephen: which is very gruesome to look at. Cause is insides are literally sitting next to ’em when they show that.
So it is pretty gruesome. If you
[00:38:06] Rhys: are into horror movies, it’s not beyond the pale of what you’ve seen. Yes. If you are coming here after watching say the good, the bad and the ugly, this is very graphic. Yes. They head to the jail only to find out. No, one’s there, there’s an arrow in the wall, but it’s not any arrow style that the sheriff recognizes and it wasn weird looking.
Yeah. Yeah. Kinda a little curly thing.
[00:38:33] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting. So to, I’m gonna jump a little bit here. And this is thinking after the movie. So we’re, we can associate the howling with what happened. That’s obviously what they want. But looking at this later, what is the real reason for these people creatures to come into this town other than revenge, because Purvis got away.
They seem to have avoided groups of people, they get ’em out. So for them to follow Purvi and get him and all these surrounding people in this town of people, it just, I don’t know it just seemed like it would be odd for them even later. But it I guess the revenge aspect is what it was about is the only thing I could see.
[00:39:26] Rhys: I came across an interview with. What’s his name? Soler. Yeah, the writer. Yeah, Zor. I came across an interview with him and again, like the guy who did hold the dark really seemed pretty Hollywood. You know what I mean? The way he was talking and his mannerisms, I’m just not a big fan of that, but he was, he, the way he introduced the film is you have these two guys who disrupt a sacred burial mound.
Yes. Because as Purvis is running away, he knocks one of the stacks of rocks over. Yes. And that is what brought the
[00:40:06] Stephen: Charlo DS out. And I guess that does make sense. It just seemed, it must be very strong, their religious. Convictions for this group which it seemed like it is to go that’d be kinda like us following Aquaman down to Atlantis, to exact revenge.
It totally out of our element and totally a place where we have no advantage or anything, so it was just interesting. I
[00:40:33] Rhys: get what you’re saying. And at first I thought, but the horses why did they kill Beauford? And then I thought if you’re gonna make the trip anyways, yeah, horses are worthwhile, right.
Might as well take the
[00:40:45] Stephen: horses. And we, and jumping ahead a little bit spoilers they probably ate the horses and that’s a lot of meat, so it
[00:40:52] Rhys: is a lot of meat for sure. The sheriff also finds Samantha’s bag. So he sends Chickie to get someone called the professor and to bring him to the bar. So the sheriff heads over to see Arthur.
And he tells him that Samantha’s been taken and Arthur heads to the bar, the sheriff closes up his house for him and grabs his boots. And I love that’s. One of the things I love about this character is the sheriff knows better than to argue with him to say, Hey, you’re on crutches, your legs badly broken.
You we’re, we got this. He’s he’s not even gonna, doesn’t even try to argue with him. The professor shows up he’s played by Zane McLane, McLaren. He has been in he was in Hawkeye. He was in Dr. Sleep. And I love his role of the sheriff in res reservation dogs.
It’s awesome. Yeah. I He’s a great actor and it’s a shame in my mind how often. What little he is in this film. He informs the sheriff that the arrow doesn’t belong to a tribe, but to cave dwellers. The professor goes on to say they aren’t considered Indians, but trig, Leites they’re cannibals.
The professor won’t go after them. Brer accuses him of not wanting to go against his own. And he is no, it’s because you’re all going to die. But he will show them where they’re at on a
[00:42:15] Stephen: map, which is interesting because what you said earlier with the Raman stuff, and Brer considers himself above the, those lesser beings.
Here’s one that he considers a lesser being that seems smarter than him and that probably wrinkled him a lot. It was, there’s another little bit of a culture clash because he’s smart and from a different race than Bru in B’s mind, yeah. So there’s a clash right there. Again, lot. You could probably pick out lots of little things like that throughout this.
[00:42:49] Rhys: Yeah. And this is one of the, one of the big things that people who don’t like this movie complain about with the racism is that if you take the professor out of it, you just have. Indians versus Cowboys and the Indians are cannibalistic savages, right? In an effort to paste over that a little bit, they put an Indian in for five minutes who says, oh no, they’re bad.
Even to us. and that’s what I mean by lazy writing. Yeah. He could have come up with a better way to distance this these are not native Americans, these are something far
[00:43:28] Stephen: beyond, I can see that. And this is right where I made the note. This movie isn’t very politically correct, but it’s probably accurate.
[00:43:37] Rhys: correct. And so I actually did some research on cannibalism and native American tribes. There were reports that I don’t necessarily hold in very high esteem about the ICO being cannibalistic, but they were made by like Augustinian. Monks who were here during colonization and how you can always twist things, however you want to justify what you’re doing.
Yeah. But it must not have been unheard of because there are actual notes in the SU nations about how cannibalism is a, so for them to have rules against it, it must have been something that existed. I just don’t think it’s anything that was prevalent or anything
[00:44:24] Stephen: like that. Yeah.
And I, I think there’s probably some cases of maybe going on a war hunt against an enemy and then eating parts of them or brain like eating the Buffalo and getting some of their essence or something like that. I can see, but I don’t know of any specifically. So you have four guys, you have Arthur and the sheriff and Broer and Chicky is going.
[00:44:49] Rhys: There’s this scene where Arthur’s packing stuff up and the Sheriff’s packing up and Chicky just stops and drops off flowers at his wife’s grave, which I thought was touching. Yeah. I love throughout the whole thing too. He’s oh yeah. He’s almost comic relief, but not quite it’s enough to lighten the mood throughout the movie without making him like a bubbling.
[00:45:10] Stephen: I IBACE.
[00:45:12] Rhys: And I think a very accurate portrayal of an older gentleman. Yeah. All of us as we’re getting older, I’d like to think that I’m gonna be out there doing all this stuff. And the truth matter is I’m not because I’m older now and my body’s taking a bit of a beating just like his,
[00:45:29] Stephen: so it’s not the years.
It’s the miles.
[00:45:32] Rhys: Yeah. They ride off and as they do, that’s where the song comes in. Yeah. I made three measures of it. This somber music is they ride off. They stop after a bit. And Bruder helps Arthur off his horse. They rely a lot on Arthur’s trail knowledge, cuz he is a cowboy. I That’s what he does, but they’re at the edge of his trail knowledge because they’re right at, nobody goes the direction they’re headed.
So they fill their water skins and head off into this beautiful country. And this is another, like the second big Western trope that we have here, giant beautiful vistas of the west. And people shot in such a way that you see how big it is. Yes. Because you have all these people shot, small, big backgrounds.
They refill their water skins, head off into this beautiful country. They stop for a night and Bruder stringing this line with bells on it. And he offends Chicky by indirectly insulting the sheriff by saying that he’ll, if anybody rings that be he’ll shoot them dead and he’ll do it before anybody else in the party gets a chance to.
So Chicky calls him out and we see how arrogant he is. He’s I’m the smartest guy here. I’m the most skilled, I’m the handsomeness guy. I am just super awesome.
[00:46:47] Stephen: And the whole, see, I can relate to him a lot, cause I often feel that way.
[00:46:52] Rhys: the whole reason that he said he was going along was because, and they call him out on it as a brag.
He says, I’ve killed more Indians than anyone here. And someone says, is that a brag? Sounds like you’re bragging. The sheriff says, it sounds like you’re bragging. And he’s it’s not a brag. It’s just a fact. BR is one of the soldiers who fought in the Indian wars. So he has been out. And has killed lots of people and we found out later just how many people he has
[00:47:19] Stephen: yeah, he knows.
[00:47:21] Rhys: Yeah. He’s kept track. So he strings up this line with bells on it and anything that rings those bells, cuz he asks if anybody’s sleepwalks, if anything rings those bells, he’s just gonna shoot first asks questions later they prepare a meal and Arthur tries to give a blessing, but he is broken up by the loss of his wife and he can’t get through it.
I found it very interesting that he crossed himself, which indicates that Arthur was of Catholic backgrounds. Which I don’t know how common place that was in frontier settlers.
[00:47:51] Stephen: Yeah. And, but maybe they did it on purpose and it helped set ’em apart or something. Could. I just, a lot of times when you see things, when religion comes up in movies, especially horror movies, it’s always the Catholic church.
That’s cuz it’s very visual to see that someone’s crossing. Yep.
[00:48:09] Rhys: It’s got a whole lot of visual cues. Yeah. Trickery and the con and the sheriff have this conversation about books and a bath. And at the end of the conversation, Ru sits up and shoots and you hear a coyote Yelp and run away.
So it shows yeah. BR might be arrogant, but maybe he’s got reason to exactly. The next day we see that Arthur is flagging a bit. They stop for water and Arthur stops to check his wound. It’s really not good. He pours some alcohol on it and changes the bandages. Then contemplates taking some opium.
The sheriff calls him out on the opium and he gets pissed off and says he hasn’t had any. And then he hands it over to the sheriff to keep him from temptation and apologizes for yelling at Chicky that night Chicky text Arthur’s leg and the topic of amputation comes up. Chicky had amputated legs in the past.
I’m assuming civil war that night, Chicky oh, they hear something and they draw weapons on this guy named Ramiro. He and his friend meekly surrender they’re Mexican and Bruter shoots them anyways. The Sheriff’s upset. Guns are pointed at each other. You have this whole Mexican standoff for lack of a better term.
B’s logic kind of seems sound that these are like people who are out looking for people.
[00:49:28] Stephen: To rip off there’s a couple culture clashes right there. They were Mexican against a bunch of white guys. That could be it right there. It, they were PO at this point, possibly thieves so it’s a, if you stop it, I could see a college class discussing the ethics.
Should he have shot them or not? If he brings ’em in and then they shoot their guys, then should he have shot ’em earlier? Or was he right in waiting till while they killed us? So now we’re good to do it. There’s a lot of ethics in that and westerns did that a lot. So that fit very well.
It crossed my
[00:50:05] Rhys: mind more than once when I was watching hold the dark. When the sheriff goes up to talk to Chuk at the door. Yeah. How many lives would’ve been saved if he had just shot him right there. And that’s a granted that’s against the law. But. The superheroes, you get that same argument.
[00:50:24] Stephen: If they capture this big super villain and put ’em in prison if they’re going to escape again and kill a thousand people again, is it really making you that bad of a person to kill them? Cuz you, oh, my moral ethics don’t allow me to kill a person. So I’ll let them live so they can kill a thousand people ethically, which is better, yeah. But then you go all the way back to season one, episode, one with martyrs and you know what happened to Lucy? Was that
acceptable? Exactly. It’s the same argument. It’s a good discussion. Brought out through movies. Yeah. Chicky goes to inspect bodies and he finds that one of them has a cross on him.
[00:51:05] Rhys: Arthur asks that they were armed and trickery replies they move camp to somewhere else. That’s easy, easier to defend. And we wake up to find somebody, a stabbing Bruter Arthur shoots, the guy, the horses are gone with the exception of BS, who he says would never let a greaser ride in. Cuz he’s so charming.
The horse is wounded. So he gets up to kill it and put it out of its misery and they are now horseless. So he was proving. And even with all his prep, he was had to kill his own horse. You know that that, that could be a good discussion there too. but there’s
the argument.
Was he right? Or was this like companions of those Mexicans who came across their murdered friends? That’s true. And were just out for vengeance, cuz if you were just gonna steal the horses, just take the
[00:51:51] Stephen: horses. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. But they were doing the same thing that Purvi and buddy were doing at the beginning of the show.
And as far as we know, they had no impetus to do it other than stealing money.
[00:52:03] Rhys: That’s true, but pur and buddy, when they did it. They slipped people’s throats while they slept, they stabbed them but this guy stabbed him in the arm, you know what I mean? Yeah. Which doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a killer disposition.
[00:52:16] Stephen: Maybe they were just
[00:52:17] Rhys: incompetent could be Arthur’s gonna fall behind no matter what. So he plans on making up ground while they sleep. They plan to compact their gear, just down to the essentials sleep during the day and travel at night. Arthur just packs up and heads out right away to give himself a head start.
Chicky still is hopeful and Ruter remains all by himself. He’s lost his horse. So he cuts Arthur limping along by himself in the dark. Then in the morning, then during the day, and during that stretch of the day, the rest of the party catches up to him. They travel along together and Chicky wonders about his horse in the afterlife and BR bitches about him just rambling.
Chicky asks if you’d rather listen to shuffling footsteps in men breathing, the party leaves Arthur behind as they do and rotor foreshadows his future by envying, Chickie’s dead
[00:53:08] Stephen: horse. Yes. So again, a slight lighthearted moment. As they’re walking, of course, I didn’t quite understand what’s the benefit of them getting ahead of Arthur and then he catches up and gets less sleep when he actually needs more and they move at the same pace.
Any, I don’t know. I just felt like they should have just stayed with him, but that really didn’t have much to do with the movie. I think it was kinda the show that pushes
[00:53:35] Rhys: himself. Yeah. The Sheriff’s whole thing was we need to get there as soon as we possibly can and I’m not gonna stop you from coming, but we’re not gonna slow down from you.
Yeah. Yeah. He was very consistent. And I guess it shows the times also The party wakes him up at dusk. And Bruter says something about rescuing Arthur’s wife some smart ass comment and Arthur punches him in the face, stepping on his broken leg and he collapses as he does. Bruter admits of having had feelings for Samantha Long ago, but she refused him and he’s passed it.
Chicky checks the wound. And they’re like, we’re gonna have to take this off and he refuses to have it done. He makes chick, he said it trickery gets out this hammer. They give him some opium and then set his leg and he’s out. They leave him at dusk, just laying their past out. They’re traveling along and they hear a how as evening falls.
Bruter recognizes it as the same. How from back at bright. He goes on to admit that during the Indian wars, he killed women and children and trickery asks him why he hates. So hates them so much. And it’s, he says it’s because they killed his mother and sisters. He says that he killed 116 total over the period of the Indian wars.
Rhys: recognizes the, how they hear that evening. It’s the same that he heard back in the town of bright hope. He then goes on to admit that he killed women and children and Chicky asks him why he hates them so much. And he says it’s because they killed his mother and his sisters.
Yeah.
We cut daylight. They’re really close now.
[00:00:26] Stephen: And how has been giving louder and really starting to sound scary and ominous, I must
[00:00:31] Rhys: say. Yeah. Yeah. Bruder in a peace offering let’s chick or use the German. That’s his fancy
[00:00:37] Stephen: telescope, which I like how they refer to it. It’s like the only thing Germans make is this telescope.
So you can know exactly what we’re talking about, I guess was before they were doing the BMWs. Yeah.
[00:00:50] Rhys: They’re looking out across this place to a rift that has several different valleys and they’re supposed to be finding, I can’t remember what the name of the valley is they’re looking for, but that’s where the cites live.
So they decide to check the nearest valley and move from one to the other, but on their way down to the first valley, they find horse tracks, which leads them towards the correct. As they move in, we see those same skull decorations along the trail walls that we saw back with Purvis and buddy. Yep. Brewter leads this way into this narrow canyon walled area.
He’s gonna go in and if they don’t hear from him in 30 seconds, they’re just supposed to go. But he throws this rock out, which lets them know that he’s okay. So they head in and they see an open cave up on a cliff base. They start to plan an assault. And while they do, they get hit with rocks, lots of rocks at an era,
[00:01:43] Stephen: again is a Bigfoot trope.
So you have the throw rocks and yeah, big foot throwing rocks. So still at this point I’m thinking is it a big foot movie? It’s not, is it monsters? Yeah. Or maybe these creatures were what. We call Bigfoot now that we, whatever. So
[00:02:05] Rhys: a rock catches trickery in the head and then one hits Broer left arm and breaks it.
Yeah. The sheriff takes an arrow to the left arm and the tri Luddites rush them trickery manages to shoot one with a shotgun. The sheriff manages to shoot two, so that’s three down. Every time they shoot one. They make this strange accordion like sound when they die. Bruder takes the repeating rifle and the dynamite and tells the other two not to come back until he’s used the dynamite.
He says he’s far too vain to live as a cripple. He wants a cigar. So Chicky helps him with a cigar and he admits to having killed 116 Indians and they leave him and he says, he’ll kill as many as he. He flips one over and sees what makes these odd sounds. We’ve been hearing. They have a piece of bone that they’ve attached into their throat by just below their larynx.
Yeah. When they exhale, it gives this whistle sound. Just as Bruter makes this realization, another one shows up and throws a Tomahawk hat him the camera cuts away and we hear a. Not now the guy who went on that H that whole long screen about why you shouldn’t even watch this movie, cuz it’s so racist.
One of his points was he didn’t like the fact that Bruder the racist bastard that he is got a hero’s death. And I thought that’s a little ridiculous because that’s just his character. yeah, that was just his character. And that’s just how his character. I don’t know that Zeor, when he wrote this was like saying, I agree with this guy and I agree with his stance on other races.
I’m going to elevate him to a high place in culture by having him die as a hero. I think it was just. Here’s this guy, and this is the situation he’s
[00:03:56] Stephen: in. Yeah, the true. But I don’t necessarily agree either, but you can’t dismiss it as oh, you can’t argue that fact and there’s, you could support it.
So I at least
[00:04:08] Rhys: give him that as the sheriff and trickery are leaving, chick gets hit in the hand with an arrow. The sheriff shoots another guy. and then one jumps out from behind and grabs Chicky and another one knocks the sheriff to the ground and begins to strangle him. After a brief struggle, the one who knocked out Chicky knocks the sheriff out as well.
And they’re being drug off. Chicky wakes up briefly to see the one Broer shot lying dead. And Bruter with a jaw bone stuck in his skull.
[00:04:36] Stephen: Yeah. That was pretty gruesome. That’s some powerful hit there. Yeah.
[00:04:40] Rhys: And right here, I put up until this point, this movie could have just been a pretty standard, albeit gory Western film.
Yeah. And this is where it kind of the wheels fall off at the base of the cliff, one of them throws his head back and yells, which combines with the resonator in his throat to make this odd, eerie, howling sound. After two calls, a line is thrown from the cliff and they’re tied around Chicky and the sheriff who would drug up the cliff face.
The jostling wakes up the sheriff who comes to in a dark cave, just outside of a cage. Samantha and Nick are in the adjacent cage and tells ’em to get into the cage or the trites will kill him. It turns out Nick’s not doing well. And as for purpose they ate. And so now we find out that the cites are cannibals as they’re having this conversation.
The cites turn in Samantha says, no, not him. And we get a good look at the cite. As he comes in, they’re covered in white clay coating. They have bones shredded throughout their skin in various places. This one guy has them through his cheeks. They look like mandals almost. He turns and gives a shriek to another and another cite comes in and they drag Nick out.
And I
[00:05:51] Stephen: like the covering because they live out in the desert, they’re out and about all the time. So that’s an animal protection covering yourself in the mud and protecting yourself. It’s early sunscreen, but it gives them a really horrific look. It does.
[00:06:05] Rhys: They strip Nick and he wakes. He goes on to confirm for the sheriff, that Purvis was evil and he killed a lot of people.
And then he explains that Purvis desecrated the tri ludite burial ground, bringing them into bright hope. He then asks the sheriff to send his belongings back to his brothers. And the sheriff tells ’em that a whole cavalry of deputies are on their way to kill all the cites. Then they proceed to very graphically scalp him and then hold him upside down as they split him in
[00:06:32] Stephen: half.
Yeah. That was really gruesome. Don’t go watching this one with the kids oh, for sure. Or date night. Yeah.
[00:06:39] Rhys: Some time passes and we see one standing outside Samantha’s cage chewing on what looks like a severed lowered leg. I’m assuming belonging to Nick. He paces out and Chicky asks the sheriff about the posse of deputies coming to the rescue.
Is it true? And when he finds out that there really isn’t a posse coming to rescue them, he wants to know why the sheriff said it. And he said, if they were doing that to me, it’s the only thing I’d want to hear. Samantha then asks. Asked about Arthur and they tell her that he was injured and he was convalescing trickery then says they left a trail and she asks why.
And when they say so he could follow she’s like frontier life is so difficult. Not because of the Indians are the elements, but because of the idiots, which
[00:07:26] Stephen: is one of my favorite lines of all time, I love that.
[00:07:29] Rhys: Yeah. The sheriff in trickery end up calculating how many they’ve killed and their number’s pretty far off, they say, But the sheriff shot three by himself, Chicky shot one.
And Bruder killed one. So they’ve killed five by my count. Yeah. Yeah. They ask Samantha how many are in the clan? And she says 12 males, maybe more with two pregnant crippled blind females. And that comment just goes by and you don’t give it a second thought till the end of the movie. The sheriff asked trickery about the whiskey Val and which.
Whether or not he’s got it. And Chicky does, but it has Tinture of opium in it. And the Sheriff’s plan is to use it to poison the tralo
[00:08:11] Stephen: DTEs. Which you gotta love the they just carry around this stuff to help. You get knocked out a little bit when your leg needs cut off, but don’t take too much cuz it will kill you.
Oh yeah. Given we’ve got stuff like that nowadays, but their measurements aren’t exactly accurate. Two fingers worth.
[00:08:31] Rhys: Yeah. We now cut to Arthur he’s asleep. He wakes up with a gasp and sees that his legs been set and he slowly makes his way to the valley. He’s really struggling. He falls down a slope.
He tells his leg, it’s not gonna stop him. He takes some opium. He keeps on going on the way he looks down and literally falls asleep on his feet. He hears cites calling and it wakes him up and he petitions to God. He’s like why? This is why I’ve been praying to you all these years. He’s crawling across a dry Creek bed covered in stones.
And I kept thinking the four stone marker won’t help you much down here. Cause there’s stones
[00:09:06] Stephen: everywhere. I was wondering about that, but whatever,
[00:09:09] Rhys: he lays down to rest and proceeds to fall asleep with his hand on his gun, back in the cave, the trilobytes three of him return to the cages and the sheriff pretends to be drinking from this flask.
Chicky begs him for a taste and the cites go for it. He hides it away, but they draw a knife and he seemingly surrenders it. One drinks, some and spits it out. Another drinks, some, a third drink, some as well, throwing the empty flask on the fire. When they leave Samantha proceeds to tell the sheriff based on how much they drink, what will happen, one will fall asleep, one will die.
And the third won’t be affected at all. Back in that dry Gulf Arthur’s asleep and two tri Luddites sneak up. They fire and arrow it in which startles him awake. This whole scene stresses the importance of taking your time and aiming. Yes. The cite doesn’t really aim. He fires and misses. Arthur wakes up and he shoots both of them, but he goes through six bullets doing it and he kills one of them outright shoots the other one who and breaks his bow and wounds him.
The other one looks for the Tomahawk. His friend dropped, picks it up and walks over and as he’s is doing it, Arthur’s rapidly trying to reload. And then Arthur shoots him. So he fired seven bullets to kill two people. then Arthur notes, the whistle
[00:10:29] Stephen: and cuts it out. Yeah, that was pretty gruesome too. The stringers and stuff.
[00:10:33] Rhys: Yeah. After he pockets it, he wipes his hands and continues on his way. He makes it to that. Cut with a sheriff and trickery were taken, sees their gear and realizes he needs to proceed with caution, looking around he notes. He thinks there’s a back way. Smart guy instead of taking the main path. Find a way around.
So he begins to make his way around the back way, lays down and pulls out that bone whistle and gagging while he does it, manages to blow through it, replicating the whistle
[00:11:04] Stephen: sound, which I was like, wow, that’s a really smart thing to do
[00:11:08] Rhys: it. Does it draws one another can, one of the cites out and he shoots it.
It’s still alive, but suffering. And he puts it out of its misery. Crawling a little further. He sees the burial ground and he asks, God, are you seeing this? So apparently he really expects some divine intervention, which you could argue. He gets, yeah. Back in the cage room. The sheriff asks Samantha if she’s eaten and then Chicky has this whole thing where he talks about a flee circus.
Yeah. And whether or not the fleas are actually alive and whether or not it’s real. Samantha is aware of the act. And she seems to confirm for him that yes, the fleas were real me, just like she wants to make people feel better. Yeah. That’s just her person. This little discussion is interrupted by an angry wailing and two cites come in dragging the dead third.
They open the cage with the two men in it and the sheriff rushes them, but there’s two of them and they drop him pretty quickly and Chicky again. Perfect example of the old man tries to get out. They just kick him back in the cage. Then they tie the Sheriff’s feet together, open his shirt, cut him open.
On the left side, take the flask from the fire and stuff it into the open wound in his belly. Yeah,
[00:12:29] Stephen: that was horrible. Yes. Not quite as bad as poor Nick, but
[00:12:34] Rhys: yes that wakes him up cuz when they tackled him, he hit his head and he was a little dazed. They take the repeater and shoot him in the arm and then they point the barrel at his testicles.
But they don’t know how to cock a gun. Yeah. So they pull the trigger and nothing happens.
[00:12:50] Stephen: And this is another little culture thing, cuz Hickory calls ’em dumb savages or something like that. They can’t even figure out how to use a gun. I think they did quite effective with arrows and skull bones to kill people in rocks.
Yeah. So just because and it seems like these dumb savages. Can’t figure out how to cock a gun. Got you in prison. There’s a little culture thing there
[00:13:13] Rhys: and in five minutes they figure out how to cock a gun. Yeah.
Really quick. There’s a howl from outside, which draws their attention in one heads out of the Cape to investigate while he is away.
The other accidentally figures out how to cock the rifle. Then there’s another gunshot from a gunshot from outside the cave and a screech. And that draws the guy’s a. The sheriff feels out to Arthur to tell him there’s an armed tri Luddite in there. And the tri Luddite shoots the sheriff in the belly opposite side of the flask.
Yeah. Thinking the Sheriff’s handled the bore tu tri Luddite turns to investigate the commotion outside, but the Sheriff’s not handled. He grabs a Tom Hawk off the floor and brings it down, cutting the cites right foot in
[00:13:57] Stephen: half. Now that was not only a super sharp piece of bone, but super strength from a guy that’s dying from a shot in a flask wound.
Yeah. That was like, wow, that’s impressive.
[00:14:10] Rhys: The tri screams in pain and Arthur’s in the doorway and shoots him. He’s not quite dead yet. So the sheriff. Proceeds to take the Tomahawk and behead him. Yeah. Again,
[00:14:21] Stephen: super strengths. yes.
[00:14:24] Rhys: Seeing Samantha Arthur immediately goes over and kisses her. The sheriff tells him there’s at least three more out there and he’s gonna stay behind and kill the remaining ones.
And sheery should escort Arthur and his wife home. Arthur asks him if there’s anything he can do for him. He says, put the repeater in my hand. And as the O Dwyers leave, Chicky sticks around just a little bit. And the sheriff tells him to tell Arthur what his wife has seen. And then he says, say goodbye to my wife.
I’ll say hello to yours.
[00:14:54] Stephen: Yeah, that was a good line. That was pretty good.
[00:14:56] Rhys: The survivors make their way out the door where they see the two amputee women. When they mean amputee women, like their legs and arms have been cut off just below the tors. And stakes have been driven into
[00:15:08] Stephen: their eyes and the stakes are still there.
Yes. That’s that was really
[00:15:12] Rhys: horrific yeah. And Arthur just passes ’em by he had been doing them a kindness to actually shoot them both in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Once he gets outside, he blows on the whistle and no one comes, so then they decide they’re gonna. Chicky picks up a stone cause he doesn’t have any guns.
And he is following behind on the way back. Arthur stumbles a bit. And Samantha helps him. She says, she’d love a kiss, but he she’s offended by all the crap that he’s been putting in his mouth of late , which wasn’t great. They then hear three gunshots in the distance Chicky smiles and throws away his rock.
And then we roll credits and cue the trumpet music for doomed men ride out.
[00:15:53] Stephen: So that is bone Tomahawk. There we go. So if you’re looking for a typical Western, this isn’t it, wouldn’t definitely not typical horror. This really isn’t it either,
[00:16:05] Rhys: even if you’re looking for Western horror, you might not wanna stop here.
Yeah. If, because this is a pretty
[00:16:10] Stephen: grim film. It is. I, if you’d like a lot of the like indie art films that we do, this is definitely one of ’em. It fits into that. That slot really well it’s got some, a few Western tropes, but doesn’t feel Western. Like it, it’s only a Western story almost yeah it was interesting if not. Yeah, it
[00:16:34] Rhys: was. And I I’m sure this wasn’t planned, but honestly the kind of racist themes that are in it. Sit in an unsettled manner with me almost as much as some of the imagery that you see in the movie as it plays along. Yeah. It’s it’s like a good pairing it’s not it neither of these things or things that should be necessarily celebrated. But they work well together.
[00:17:02] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of good films that’s, you know what they do. And we mentioned several right here, it opens up questions. If you were watching this in an ethics class, you there’s many spots to pause and discuss saying like you mentioned, Martys, there’s another one with ethic and moral type discussion that you could have very easily.
Hor horror can bring that out. Yeah, it’s very well just like sci-fi can bring out your current culture and political things that you can’t necessarily do in a modern drama. Sci-fi can do it. Horror can bring out some things like this and it fits well. And again, for the time period I would say this is probably closer to accurate how they thought and talked than most of the westerns we’ve.
[00:17:51] Rhys: Yeah. If you were easily offended by this stuff, you definitely don’t wanna watch this film. It’s right. Gonna upset you. Yeah, but it goes back. I had this conversation with Brian this past weekend about the horror movie why I like them so much. And I’m like, they can say a whole heck of a lot in the little bit that you’re sitting there watching they can bring up super big issues that you’ll sit and think about for days on end.
And you never know what’s gonna happen. The person you think is a hero might die 20 minutes in and you’re just sitting there going, what in the world of it’s a complete mystery as you’re going ahead. So
[00:18:30] Stephen: yeah, and definitely the stuff you’ve picked out for us to review and talk about does not fit typical.
It’s not insidious, it’s not Jason and yeah. So
[00:18:40] Rhys: I don’t waste our time reviewing bad movies.
[00:18:43] Stephen: We’re we watch elevated horror. Yes. We save the bad
[00:18:48] Rhys: movies for when you know, we’re hanging
[00:18:50] Stephen: out together. Yeah. For personal choices. Yeah. yeah. We
[00:18:53] Rhys: don’t make you guys sit
[00:18:54] Stephen: through us talking about those.
All right. So there we go. What’s next. What’s the third episode.
[00:19:00] Rhys: We’re going back to Ireland and this one’s called the
[00:19:02] Stephen: hallow hall. Nice. Can’t wait. All right. Another one I haven’t seen. That’s what I’m
[00:19:08] Rhys: aiming for.
[00:19:09] Stephen: good. So there we go. Look for the hello and hopefully by the time people are seen hearing, watching this one, which if you don’t listen on the podcast, There’s also YouTube.
If you’re on YouTube, go check out the podcast, the website has it all. By the time that comes out we’re trying to get on a regular schedule. They’re coming out how many there’ll be when there’ll be it’ll help our hectic lives along with being more professional, which we’ve already as retained.
I’m very professional strive for professionalism. Yes, that’s my goal. All right, ma’am talk to you later.
[00:19:42] Rhys: Take it easy, Steve.
