Rent The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972)

First Class Revisionist Western - The Culpepper Cattle Co. review by GI

One of the best of the cycle of revisionist westerns made in the 70s, influenced by Sam Peckinpah's westerns and with hints of Sergio Leone's spaghetti western style. From the opening credits of sepia photographs this film posits itself as an authentic retelling of the west. In this case it's focused on the cattle drive, a familiar subject in the genre, but here the myths of the honest, hard working frontier life of a cowboy are sharply deconstructed. This is told through the central character of Ben (Gary Grimes), a young boy who joins the cattle drive of Frank Culpepper (Billy Green Bush), a no nonsense cattleman taking his herd across the wilderness to Colorado. Ben has dreamt of being a cowboy but he quickly learns it's a lowly job, with no honour or camaraderie and a life spiced with sudden death and violence. His presence and inexperience as well as his innocence eventually cause a chain of events that gives the violent men around him some redemption when they face up to a domineering land baron. The film is violent without heroics. The men face a final showdown but do so for selfish reasons and in the final analysis Ben realises everyone is just out for themselves and others lives have no meaning. This is a western that is rather excellent and one that rarely gets mentioned today. Yet it deserves to be ranked with the great westerns of the late 60s and the 1970s for its attempt to show the American west as historical drama rather than myth and legend.