“You’re not goin’ nowhere, ya bottom-dealin’ Hombre,” the gambler-gunfighter exclaimed, “We’ve got us a few apparent paradoxes and their effect upon contemporary religious thought to discuss!”
The Frontierado holiday is coming up fast – on Friday, August 2nd, in fact. Today we’ll revisit the rules of Frontierado Poker for newbies to the holiday.
Here are the rules for Frontierado Poker, the game that is Continue reading
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Top Frontierado Movie
SILVERADO (1985) – I’ve never made any secret about how Silverado is, to me, THE official movie of the Frontierado holiday. The film has all the high spirits and family appeal of Star Wars plus the well-choreographed action scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. On top of that Silverado features all the highly stylized gunplay of the best Spaghetti Westerns but NOT the mud, blood, sweat and brutality of that genre.
This movie is pure escapism and features
the kind of preternaturally accurate gunslingers that I jokingly describe as “Jedi Knights in the Olllld West”. These guys (as well as most of the villains) can literally shoot the needles off a cactus, simultaneously draw and shoot with pin-point accuracy and can just “sense” when some low-down hombre might be pulling a gun on them, even with Continue reading
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Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale and, for some reason, Ray Stevens. (I’m kidding!)
Frontierado is Friday, August 2nd!
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is, to me, the definitive Spaghetti Western. This movie incorporates all of the best elements of Italo-westerns and has the additional advantages of actual artistic merit and some location filming in the real American West. One of the most distracting elements of many Spaghetti oaters is the fact that the films were mostly shot in Spain’s Jarama Valley, which is great for a Spanish Civil War buff like myself, but that valley doesn’t really resemble the American west that the stories are set in.
Sergio Leone got to shoot some scenes for this flick in Monument Valley and such authentic scenery definitely helps in a film that exploits visuals to a degree unseen since the age of silent movies. This is undeniably an action film, but Leone and his co-writers on the script ( Bernardo Bertollucci and Dario Argento. I’m serious!) intentionally used the framework of an archetypal western plot about the railroad, land-grabbing and westward expansion, yet made it all seem fresh.
I often jokingly call this movie Evil Is A Man Named Frank, because, in a masterpiece of reverse-casting Leone put Henry Fonda himself in the role of the conscienceless, sadistic and predatory Frank, the lead villain. Watching the Continue reading
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Bear River Tom Smith
The Frontierado holiday is coming up on Friday, August 2nd and Balladeer’s Blog continues presenting holiday- themed articles. I know that in reality the gunfighters of the old west were thugs and worse but Frontierado is about the myth of the American west, not the grinding reality.
As the glorious day approaches and we are all making our holiday preparations enjoy a sampling of this group of colorful characters who don’t get the attention – or movies – they deserve.
1. BEAR RIVER TOM – That’s our top-ranked figure in the photo to your left. One of the few actual gunmen to wear a fancy two-gun holster, Bear River Tom Smith’s myth begins with his birth in 1838 in New York City. He either did or did not serve in the Union Army in 1861 (accounts vary) but was definitely part of the NYC police force by 1862. In 1867 he headed west, working as a laborer laying track for the Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska.
By 1868 the crew he was with had reached Wyoming, where the Hell On Wheels town of Bear River sprang up around their work camp. Bear River was to wild, lawless railroad towns what Dodge City, Kansas was to wild, lawless cattletowns. Bear River Tom put his guns, fists and law enforcement experience to Continue reading
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POSSE is a terrific western about a gang of African American gunfighters (plus the goofiest Baldwin brother) involved in an action-packed epic journey across the American west. The Frontierado holiday (which will be here Friday August 2nd) is the perfect time of year to hunker down with this film while drinking a Cactus Jack or a Deuces Wild or two. I’ll review the recipes for those mixed drinks in a few days, for now we’ll focus on the third-place movie on our countdown.
Posse stars Mario Van Peebles, who also directed, as Jesse Lee, the brooding, revenge-driven hero of the saga. He and all but one member of his gang, our titular posse, are soldiers fighting in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898. A dangerous assault they carry out turns out to be a Continue reading
Filed under Blaxploitation, FRONTIERADO
Tom Sawyer
The TOM SAWYER I’m referring to here is the 1973 musical version which is unforgiveably forgotten by many people. This musical has some incredibly catchy songs, memorable dialogue portions and terrific performances from all cast members, young and old.
Most importantly the film nicely distills the essential elements of Mark Twain’s popular story in a nearly seamless way. Anything you loved from the book when you read it is to be found here: Tom’s tall tales to Aunt Polly to explain why he’s late for supper or didn’t show up at school, Tom tricking other kids into paying him to whitewash a fence for him, Tom and Huckleberry Finn witnessing Injun Joe’s murder of Ol’ Doc, Tom chivalrously taking a thrashing for Becky Thatcher, Tom and Huck running away and being given up for dead and of course Tom attending his own funeral.
All that and a great musical number during an excellently mounted 1870’s Fourth of July Celebration. Injun Joe gets a much more merciful end in this movie than he did in the book, so that’s a plus, too.
Johnny Whitaker, known to generations of Continue reading
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FRONTIERADO IS COMING ON FRIDAY, AUGUST SECOND!
With the Frontierado holiday almost upon us what better time to examine three more figures who helped make the American west wild?
Lottie Deno
3. LOTTIE DENO – Equally comfortable dealing faro, playing poker or shooting a pistol Charlotte “Lottie” Deno was one of the most famous female gamblers of the old west, along with Poker Alice. Lottie didn’t engage in nearly as many gunfights as Poker Alice did, but she didn’t have to, since she was very skilled at maneuvering lovesick men into doing some of her killing for her. Even her no-good husband Johnny Golden was bumped off by two of Lottie’s male conquests.
Lottie, who said she learned card-playing from her father, was a former southern belle who came west after the Confederacy fell. She spent three years in San Antonio dealing faro and playing poker in, among other places, the iconic vaudeville saloon of Jack Harris, where Texas Ben Thompson and King Fisher were killed the same night in 1884. Fellow gambler Frank Thurmond began a romance with Lottie but when he Continue reading
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What is Frontierado? Frontierado is a Continue reading
Filed under FRONTIERADO
The exaggerated stories that surround the figures of the American West appeal to me as a classic example of the human tendency toward embellishment. In my non-believer’s heart I genuinely feel this tendency lies at the core of nearly all the superstitious nonsense in each of the world’s “holy” books and in all of ancient mythology.
After all, these figures of the Wild West were in action less than 200 years ago, yet look at all the superhuman deeds that are ascribed to them and the outrageous drama that we’re told their lives were filled with. These real-life characters who were often just thugs and criminals have been posthumously transformed into icons whose sagas now bear little resemblance to their actual lives.
I feel that serves as a blueprint for how all mythic belief systems operate. When you magnify the distortions of just 200 years by 10 times or more you can see what tiny little kernels of truth may actually lie buried in the accounts of gods and demigods who are said to have roamed the world ages ago.
All of which Continue reading
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Computer image reconstruction of what Buckshot Bryant’s mysterious visitors may have looked like … if filmed by a urinal cake
At last the day is here! All through the year we waited and now the celebrating begins in earnest! Frontierado, the greatest holiday this side of Life Day for Wookies, has galloped into town and bellied up to the bar for a drink and a hot meal.
Special greetings from me, the Blackwater Kid, to Amarillo Rose, Dusty Murtaugh, Doc Albany and her husband Casino Bill Kost, Cyclone Rachel, Buckshot Bryant, Lady London, Cactus Cathy, Kid Equus and Doc Robyn, plus the M.I.A Six-Gun Sara!
There are even more people celebrating Frontierado with us this year than last year, but various obligations have prevented me from writing official Sagas for all of them.
This holiday is being observed in the USA, New Zealand, the UK and Australia just like last year, but this year we add Canada, Germany and Japan to the list of nations that have Continue reading
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