Acid Western: An Explanation

The term ‘Acid Western’ was coined after Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, was reviewed by journalist Jonathan Rosenbaum. He called the movie ‘the much-delayed fulfilment of a cherished counter-cultural dream which I’d like to call the acid Western’. A muddled mash of Pythonesque anarchy, violent madness and ‘60s counter culture is thrown into one of film’s best loved genres. It is this overlooked and undervalued cinematic sub-category that I will attempt to explain.

The Acid Western is a genre that is inherently hard to define. It never really began, just sort of slithered into existence, stalking the fringes of the ‘revisionist’ category. There are no formal constraints, and many internal variations. The films inhabit the physical space of the traditional Western, and generally contain Western characters going about traditional Western activities (mostly shooting). And yet they seek to undermine the conventional genre, sometimes openly opposing it. They came out of ‘60s counter culture, with a twisted view of reality and an anti-establishment undercurrent combined with an interest in warped spiritualism. It is as if someone reorganised the genre in a haze of narcotics and muddled politics.

The Shooting, starring a then-unknown Jack Nicholson, kicked it off in 1966, following a gang of hired guns journeying into the abyss. Mexican filmmaker Alexandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970) brought the genre into full maturation, about a gunslinger on a spiritual quest to defeat his nemeses. One or two of the Westerns of Sam Peckinpah can be included, like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and The Wild Bunch, with their excessive blood and flippant attitude to violence. Other definite example include the Biblical parable Greaser’s Palace (1972), pacifist vehicle Zachariah (1971), and historical epic Walker (1987). These were usually B-productions, independently made by maverick filmmakers like Jarmusch, Jodorowsky, Peckinpah, Robert Downey Sr. and Alex Cox. Often commercial failures, Acid Westerns garnered cult followings through midnight showings. Now, thanks to noble benefactors like Amazon, we can see them for the first time.

Seeking Aquatic Enlightenment

Style

It is the style of the Acid Western which is perhaps most remarkable, most bizarre, most like a psychedelic nightmare. Viewers finish the film like intergalactic voyagers returning from a separate area of space, dizzy from alternate reality. Terrifying characters inhabit the landscape: cannibals, juvenile bounty hunters, magical healers, lunatics, transvestites, chamber musicians, blues bands, blues singers, highwaymen, midget outcasts, cults, women with male voices... people who don’t fit into the old West or modern America. They drift about, crashing into enemies, misshapen forms of deity and everything that conservative society cannot offer. The landscapes are beautifully bleak: empty deserts and vast woodlands, in which lurk anything. A lot doesn’t actually make sense, filmed in an intentionally bizarre and unrealistic fashion to disfigure reality, much like an acid trip (I would imagine). So, when Walker claims that it is ‘a real story’, it is quite happy to feature helicopters, sports cars, Time magazine and Zippo lighters. Surrealist is certainly one way of describing El Topo or Greaser’s Palace: like Woodstock with weaponry.

'This one's mine, you had the last philistine!'

                          

Sometimes, it can actually be a more realistic landscape, for example a greater use of accurate clothing to the stylised Hollywood cowboy uniforms. The creators of Dead Man took great care in presenting the Natives’ clothes and habits accurately (John Ford knowingly and happily used Indians from one tribe to play members of other tribes in his traditional Westerns). The characters aren’t tough, brave heroes, rather they are singers, nervous clerks, immature boys and reluctant killers. Desperate men are lionised as saints, like the historical reality of Billy the Kid or other folk heroes.

The soundtrack of this genre is modern popular music, often in the form counter-cultural acts from the 1960s and ‘70s. Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Joe Strummer all composed scores for Acid Westerns, their haunting guitars stinging the nostalgic sepia of history with postwar attitude (Bob Dylan actually launched his single Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door from Pat Garrett). The latter two had roles as gunslingers, as did Country Joe, Iggy Pop and Billy Bob Thornton. Don’t tell me that seeing a ‘60s blues-rock singer or Woodstock folk veteran stumbling around in 19^th century Texas doesn’t make you wonder if you are seeing things. Their placement is evidence that the counter-culture of those tempestuous later decades has appropriated a once-traditional narrative setting. Even historically accurate music has a warped place in proceedings: mariachi players imprisoned in a cage next to their master’s toiletry facilities in Ceaser’s Palace, or the protagonist playing piano and singing boldly in Walker while a ferocious battle smashes through the windows.

Acoustics must be terrible

Themes

The thematic content is far more complex that the customary tale of good defeating bad. It is complicated, dark and compromised. Religion and spiritualism feature heavily, especially Biblical references. Greaser’s Palace is essentially the story of Christianity, with the Holy Trinity, Martin Luther and Catholic Church all wearing ten gallon hats. Dead Man is full of Indian ideals of spiritualism, spurted by the wise Native, Nobody, as he tries to reach the next world. But the most notable example is El Topo. It blends several religions as the hero ingests lessons from all of them, Eastern and Western symbolism slotting together like a theological jigsaw. What recognisable religion there is is confused and perverse: Iggy Pop plays a cross-dressing maniac who adheres solidly to the teaching of the Lord. One can even find God shooting innocent people for no apparent reason. Ironically, it is frequently through holiness that the ethics of the old West are overturned: prestige and masculinity through established social codes are relinquished for ultimate spiritual happiness.

Church as Cult

The Holy Trinity, apparently

Surprisingly, pacifism is a facet of a genre so attuned to killing. For many, nothing comes of violence, only destruction. The black-clad protagonist of El Topo, a harbinger of death, is wracked with guilt over his exploits. The whole message of Zachariah is that pacifism (along with vegetarianism... why isn't this film bigger in North London?) saves your soul. Ultimately, karma's a bitch, and violent tendencies lead to one's downfall

Nihilism is also present. Whereas in the traditional film killing is either righteous or terrible, here it is constant, simple and bloody: an unavoidable part of life. Dead Man’s slayings are deliberately awkward and bumbling. Greaser’s Palace has a character revived half a dozen times after brutal extermination. And of course, there is the extreme violence of Peckinpah’s masterpieces, the Tarantino of his day. I’m fairly sure that he is the only one who shot the slaughtering of hundreds of Mexican soldiers in one scene.

So the journey west does not equal enlightenment and positivity, but death and hell. Whereas traditional Westerns acted as parables of good and evil, and the former’s triumph over the latter, the Acid Western seeks to reverse this. Death lurks in the desert, ready to indiscriminately claim anyone, even if it is dramatically unorthodox.

                                                                             

                                              A particularly bad day at work for the Mexican military

Conclusion

The Acid Western is an utter reversal of the traditional Western, a kick in the stomach for John Wayne’s rose-tinted representation of America’s early history. The genre as a whole is only a vessel in which to tell a tale, in this case done so through a hallucinogenic peyote trip and the desire to prove something big and clever. It's up to you to decide what is an Acid Western: basically is it like going to a cinema owned by Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and George Lennon? These films showcase the best and worst of independent cinema: pretentious malarkey or sublime vision. Either way, it is a unique cinematic bundling which deserves to be explored.

Whaddya Got? Greatest Youth Rebels of Cinema

I began this list by trying to pick my most esteemed film rebels. But with so many, it was an impossible task. They spill out of every cinematic avenue. It is also hard to define a ‘rebel’. Is a slasher murderer a rebel? I suppose, since they are breaking moral and legal conventions. But Michael Myers is not like Bonnie and Clyde. Similarly, people seem to see bank robbers as rebels proper, but not mafia dons. Cary Grant in North by Northwest is a rebel, and one could compile a list based purely on the work of Sam Peckinpah. Also, enthusiasts will enjoy getting all uppity that Johnny Depp got on from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and not Dead Man.

So instead, I picked a more limited and recognisable form: the youth rebel. This archetype largely begins in the 1950s, with that decade signalling the advent of the teenager and youth culture in any recognisable form. Some are good: loveable rogues. Some are misunderstood: piteous exemplars of troubled youth. And some are just bad: murderers and actors of evil. This is the top ten:

Johnny Strabler, The Wild One (1953)

And with this, the rebellious youth was born, screeching across the screen in the form of Marlon Brando. He is Johnny, leader of a motorcycle gang much like the early Hells Angels, intent of smashing suburbia and sticking two dirty fingers up at domesticity. Brando’s men-in-leather snarl through gritted teeth, arrogantly pestering middle America. The film terrified audiences, being banned in Britain until 1968, especially with the opening credits claiming that the story was born out of reality. The lawless anarchy of these vagrants, not restrained by geography, family or wholesome values, terrified pleasant Americans. It was as if marauding Visigoths would burst out of the screen at Brando's insistence.

Jim Stark, Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

A few years on and the teenage rebel reached full maturation with this definitive picture. James Dean as Jim Stark is the teenage rebel: the archetype, the hyperbole, the cliché. Perhaps no one will ever embody juvenile delinquency quite like Dean. He is the start and end point for rebels on-screen. Problematically, he is not a dismissible snotty-nosed punk: he is supremely cool, daring without breaking a sweat, tough and masculine, and ultimately honourable. Basically someone who young viewers would admire and emulate. The middle-class family setting in which he was placed put youth delinquency into everyone’s homes: the situation is so much more real than some temporary motorcycle gang. Perhaps what makes Stark so vivid and immediate is the fact that his rebellion comes from emotional vulnerabilities. He is not evil, just misunderstood. Dean's portrayal flags ideas of estrangement, growing pains and social rejection. This rebel is just trying to get along. But many will only see the jeans, cigarette and assured attitude.

Mick Travis, If.... (1968)

Malcolm McDowell took the rebellious youth screaming into the '60s, fuming and plotting all the way. If Guy Fawkes had been in the Stones, he would act something like Mick Travis. Throughout, he is an undisputed victim, a social replica of one of the resistance fighters in his posters. The viewer will naturally sympathise, because Travis is a representation of all the times that one is wronged by a bigger system. At the crossroads of the old class system and modern Britain, poor Mick struggles to exist. His eccentric personality and unorthodox methods of recreation cause constant battles with the bullies, thuggish prefects who beat and humiliate him. But his solution is excessive even for someone who believes that violence is the only pure act. In one of the most gruesome finales of cinema, Mick and his merry men machine-gun, bomb and snipe their way through speech day. This Robin Hood becomes a mass murderer. It is twisted irony that the iconic school massacre in film should be set in a British boarding school. So however much the viewer tries to condemn him, it is the awkward fact that his terrorist attack elicits a modicum of sympathy.

Alex DeLarge, A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Another of Malcolm McDowell’s tortured individuals: it appears that he is as good at playing rebellious lunatics as Jack Nicholson (he made his name as an outlaw in Easy Rider, but at 32 he was no youngster). This is the pinnacle of youth delinquency: there is no simple schoolyard scrapping for Alex DeLarge. Instead, he and his demonic followers, slaves to his psychotic designs like Lucifer's minions, base their Friday nights out on murder, rape and torture. His tipple of milk spiked with various narcotics would make a contemporary binge-drinking session look like a Quaker service. Of course, after a while he is imprisoned and brainwashed and the whole thing becomes about more than this one character (ethics and that), but while he leers horror into the camera, he is an unstable and untouchable rebel.

Veda Pierce, Mildred Pierce (1945)

The daughter of Joan Crawford's Mildred, Veda (Ann Blyth) really is annoying. So phenomenally spoiled as well. She is the only girl on this list, but really deserves it. Veda was always a bit of a madam (if you declare people to be 'middle class' as an insult then you're probably not destined for a life of deference). She forces her mother to work so that she can have nice dresses, then sarcastically maligns the employment's low status. She is a rebel because she acts above her station, forces others to work for her every desire, and murders to keep it that way. Every social and moral constraint is a boundary to be callously kicked down. It is also interesting to note (maybe) that this film is from before the 1950s, something which perhaps makes her conceited posturing even more stark. In a world of children and adults, nothing in the middle, Veda seems happy to skip any phase which keeps her away from fur and diamonds. In a sense, she is years ahead of her time.

Frank Abignale Junior, Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Frank Abignale (Leonardo DiCaprio) plays the big time mastermind of this list. Given a blank cheque-book, Abignale starts to con his way into riches, and a federal agent’s (Tom Hanks) wanted list. In no time he’s flying Pan-Am jets, having suits tailored like James Bond’s, hoodwinking and outfoxing the FBI, and wearing garish Italian knit. Frank lives the high life for years, simply through indefatigable chutzpah and an eye for fraud. And all before he’s 19. He is rebelling against the poverty that his idolised father (Christopher Walken) is reduced to, fighting the system at every juncture like he is entitled to the wealth that law enforcement is trying to deny. Perhaps the best example of how to live as a rebel success.

Li’l Zé, City of God (2002)

Portrayed by both Leandro Firmino de Hora and Douglas Silva for different stages of youth, Li'l is a monster from Latin cinema. A Brazilian classic from 2002 (clearly a good year for cinema’s young buccaneers), both actors give exceptional performances as this child murderer from the favelas. His first act of terror involves shooting an entire hotel of people, chuckling all the way: a Brazilian Damien. His bubbly joy is almost infectious.  By the time that he has reached adulthood, he has established a drugs empire in Rio because he has slaughtered everyone else. Whereas Alex DeLarge was scary in his hyperbolised wrongdoing, this rebel is terrifying because his is so realistic. 

Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Bueller..? Bueller..? Bueller..?. Ferris Bueller (Mathew Broderick) is hands down the most loveable rogue in this selection (trying to keep it light). He’s possibly the most successful, too: the only one to get away with his nefarious activities, undiscovered and unharmed (the same can’t be said for his calamitous predator, accident-prone school dean Edward Rooney). Wanting a day off from his mind-numbingly boring school, Ferris tricks his whole society into believing that he is ill. His masterful manipulation of circumstance is not delusional hubris: it's genius. While tributes flood in and rumours fly about his condition (in reality a recording of coughs and some licking of his palms), the don of deception is driving Ferraris, dining in the same restaurant as his father and singing Twist and Shout on a float during Von Stauben Day celebrations. And he does it with a charming smile and stream of witticisms straight to the viewer ('it's a little childish and stupid, but then, so is school').

Chris McCandless, Into the Wild (2007)

Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) just can't handle society anymore ('society *cough* *cough* *cough*' in his eloquent phrasing). So, instead of lashing out at it, he rebels by simply leaving. After a baptism in a public toilet, the reborn 'Alexander Supertramp' abandons civilisation and lives in the wild. So extreme is his rebellion that he severs all contact with family. His previous life ceases to exist as he wallows in Kerouacian asceticism. No by-law or grieving relative will turn him from his course. Ultimately, Chris dies alone due to stubbornness, selfishness, and complete lack of remorse or empathy. His rebellion is so complete that it kills him.

McLovin, Superbad (2007)

So desperate is high-school nerd Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to rebel against the legal constraints of U.S. liquor laws that he hastily buys a fake ID with just one name on it. And so McLovin was born, embodiment of the geek rebel, torch-bearer for the outcast mutineers who want to revolt against the tyranny of social order. The funniest of the pick, this phenomenally annoying dweeb should be considered a die-hard rebel not because he buys alcohol illegally, shoots a police firearm or torches a patrol car. No, it’s because McLovin manages to become cool in one evening, scaling the social ladder from the bottom rung to the top, gaining whooping approval of the high school royalty. Something which Jim Stark never managed. 

Django Who? Why 'Once Upon a Time in the West' is the Best Western

This is a Western directed by Sergio Leone, with music composed by Ennio Morricone, starring Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. Rotten Tomatoes rates it as the 6^th top Western, with Empire, Total Film and Time magazines all listing it as among the hundred greatest films in history. Yet it is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which gets the popular Spaghetti recognition, the cultural references and the oft-repeated soundtrack. But Once Upon a Time in the West is the greatest.

Background

Once Upon a Time in the West is a winding epic which pits several gunslingers against each other on a vengeful collision course, set at the end of the Old West. They are all trying to fulfill their own desires: money, revenge, survival. It is a more sombre and serious film than the earlier Dollars trilogy, a series which could at times seem like a playful chuckle at the Western genre. Here, Leone has created an unforgiving world in which only the toughest survive. Children become adults quickly (if they live), and there are few ‘in thees world there are two taypes of peepole my frieend’ caricatures. It is a harsh slice of reality.

The brutality of existence is a major strength of this film. There are bursts of death, destroying bad guys, good guys, children and animals. Leone wanted to show the build-up and reaction to violence, so the action is often curt. In many ways, the film is about the aftermath of violence: it is the effects of killing which dictate the characters’ movements.

It is also a highly emotional tale. Familial slaughter, vengeance, and warped justice drive the plot. The characters don’t simply act because they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but because of deep emotional wounds sustained in the tundra of frontier America. This engages the viewer, elevating the film above stock Westerns.

If for no other reason, watch for the final shoot-out: one of the best in cinema. It is a rare example of a Mexican stand-off which has genuine feeling, split by a gut-wrenching flashback explaining the situation. And the soundtrack (which I will discuss later) is more than the usual tense musical accompaniment.

But why is it better than every other Western? Well, of course, that is an impossible claim. But consider its virtues: a vivid portrayal of life, death and emotion, contained in a gripping narrative with consummate acting, topped by a remarkable score and flawless style. It is a rare mix.

Characters

Charles Bronson stars as the mysterious Harmonica in a titanic performance as the wronged loner. He is this film’s Man with No Name: no past, no future (perhaps not totally accurate). The restrained majesty of his acting is superb. With his tough immigrant upbringing and WWII combat, Bronson looks convincing and natural in this landscape. His face is marked with expression: intelligent eyes smile through leathery skin. The actor manages to suggest an intricate persona with a wounded history without revealing anything, which makes Harmonica so intriguing. The reason for his presence is only made clear at the end, in an show-stopping visual explanation. Essentially, Harmonica is so much more complex than the leads in, say, The Magnificent Seven.

Henry Fonda spits and shoots his way through the film as hired gun Frank, who revels in the killing of children and the destroying of lives. His sparklingly clear blue eyes belie (or perhaps exaggerate) the sheer evil of his existence. Frank is a maniac: Fonda forces you to realise that.

Claudia Cardinale and Jason Robards support, as the widow of one of Frank’s victims and as an outlaw caught up in the violence respectively. Cardinale is a forceful presence, rare for a woman in this genre. She conveys the tough vulnerability of her troubled character excellently. Robards also does well in what is a secondary position, furnishing the hounded Cheyenne with a rounded and realistic performance.

Pace

The pace is slow and deliberate, yet at no point is Once Upon a Time in the West boring or lacking dramatic tension. Consider the opening scene: During ten minutes of crushing near-silence, a group of gunslingers prowl round a ramshackle station in the vast, empty desert. We see the grimy, unshaven faces of the sweating killers, their skin reading like an autobiography of a life of frontier desperation. The only significant noise is a rusty sign swinging in the lonesome wind, occasionally punctured by an irritating fly or the splashing of stale water. A menacing Charles Bronson appears, taunting his foes with laconic threats and a harmonica. Insults are traded, the audience holds their breath, and within a flash everyone on-screen has lead in them. Only a masterpiece could hold the viewer in its thralls through such a protracted period of hot boredom, every movement seeming significant, building the tension to an ecstatic finale. And that is how the whole picture goes, all two and a half hours.

Style

Viewing Once Upon a Time in the West makes one feel as if they are in the old West, not a film set. A major strength of the film is the fact that we see a lost world: throughout the film, the nascent railway-building nears the town, a metaphor for civilisation conquering the wilderness. The grime and dirt is hyperbole, but completely necessary to transport civilised audiences back into an age of peasant brutality. Sombre Natives ramble by honky-tonk bars containing scarred drifters. Dust whirls mercilessly over the Chinese railway labourers. One can almost feel the splinters in the rough wooden huts. There is no place for aesthetic revisionism or Wayne-style clean American heroes in this evocative landscape. Any delusions that frontier America would be a fun and quirky place to knock about in quickly evaporate with the onslaught of reality.

Music

The soundtrack showcases Leone at his best: great music on its own, but it combines with the on-screen events to induce real primitive emotion from the audience. There are several pieces, broadly matching the different characters. In Fonda’s theme, a clanging, roaring guitar pierces the baying harmonica, reminding us of Bronson’s omnipresence while juxtaposed with the grinning evil of Fonda’s gang. The score stirs itself into a fitful melodrama of strings as the slaughter takes hold. Bronson’s theme is simple: a mysterious Harmonica playing slowly and deliberately, like the character. It is curious, watching the action before committing, a hint of violence in the stalking. Cardinale’s is dulcet and emotive, the swaying voice and violin creating pathos for the only woman in this masculine struggle, without becoming melodramatic or cheesy. Robard’s is generally merry, tinged with tragedy, again much like the character. It is haunting, epic, emotional, a masterpiece of art. 

Much like the film.