26 Films: World Gone Wild

World Gone Wild is a 1988 post-apocalypse which is based on the model of the classic Western The Magnificent Seven. It's got a pretty simple plot, a village in the desert is being pillaged by a roving cult which takes the young men. The village needs to hire protectors and well you can pretty much guess the rest. 


I saw this film in the theater when it was released and have owned my VHS copy for a number of years. It's not a great film, but it's watchable and entertaining in it's own way. Stars Bruce Dern and Michael Pare carry the film with enough grit to keep it real, and of course Catherine Mary Stewart is always a welcome addition to any 80s film. As far as I know this is not on DVD and it's likely to be (but it would be a great double disc with Neon City) any time soon.


So this is the last of the films I am covering for 2011. I am not planning to keep the same every other week film write up, but I will have some movie coverage in the coming year.

FFB: The Broken Gun by Louis L’amour (1966)

The recent passing of James Arness has me thinking about westerns, and for whatever reason I could feel a Louis L’amour book tugging at the back of my brain. I only recalled a few things about the book. It was set in the 1950s, the protagonist was a western writer, who is lured to a ranch and ends up hip deep in a mystery, the nature of which I don’t recall..

I turned to Google and came up dry with my searches for about an hour. Finally I was able to triangulate enough information and discover that the book I was thinking of was…. The Broken Gun!

From Amazon:

Ninety years ago the Toomey brothers, along with twenty-five other men and four thousand head of cattle, vanished en route to Arizona. When writer and historian Dan Sheridan is invited to the missing brothers’ ranch by its current owner, he jumps at the chance. The visit fits right in with his plan to solve the century-old mystery—but it turns out that his host isn’t a fan of books, writers, or people who don’t mind their own business.

Soon Dan is living the dangers of the Old West firsthand—tracked through the savage wilderness by vicious killers straight out of the most violent pages of his stories. However, his enemies have made one serious mistake: Sheridan is no pencil-pushing greenhorn, and killing him won’t be as easy as they think.

Now to be honest, here is what I recall from the book… a daring escape from a canyon by our 1950s hero. Yep, that’s it, an escape. That’s not to say that it’s not worth checking out, but to say that like the airwaves of the 50s and 60s there was so much western story telling that much if it seems to bleed together. L’amour of course became the dominate voice in the genre for those decades, just as Gun Smoke and Arness did for the TV Western. I don’t think I have my copy of this book any longer, I am sure that I purchased it at a local used shop…. which I have left unnamed in hopes that it will pass from this earth as it should ….. and devoured it during a time when no one else that I knew was reading westerns. However, as I still could recall the book, even in a small way, it must have meant something to hangout in the back of my brain.

more Friday Forgotten Books can be found HERE

FFB: Down the Long Hills by Louis L'amour

By the time I has graduated from High School in 1991-I think I had read the majority of the books that L’amour had published at that point. Down the Long Hills first published in 1968 wasn’t the first of his books that I read, but it is one that sticks out, mainly because I fondly recall the the TV Movie made from it in 1986.

The plot…. (From www.louislamour.com)

“After the massacre Hardy and Betty Sue were left with only a horse and a knife with which to face the long battle against the wilderness. A seven-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl, stranded on the limitless prairie. They were up against starvation, marauding Indians, savage outlaws, and wild animals. They were mighty stubborn, but the odds were against them--and their luck was about to run out.”

What we have is a classic tale of adventure and courage. It’s as western as you can get, a kid having to make their own way, having to survive without the benefit of civilization and adults. L'amour as always (ok almost always) is very readable and a good entry point for younger readers into the world of pulp fiction.

In thinking about the book again, I am wondering if there are teens out there that are still reading L’amour’s books, or westerns in general. When I was growing up the adults in my life, mostly teachers and school administrator types, seemingly had written the western off as a chauvinist, imperialist form that degraded native cultures, minorities, and women while glorifying violence and colonialism. To them John Wayne was just a right wing nut who taught boys all the wrong ways to be a man, and anything that smacked of a Western was trash… I wonder how many of those types of teachers are still out there discouraging young readers?

As I said I read many of L’amour’s books, but only a handful have stayed with me all these years and Down the Long Hills is one of them.

Is it a dream?

Wow... I just finished watching this film... and it was amazing. Now before you run out and rent it, let me just say that this isn't the action filled, sexy, noisy western of the past, it's dream like, fairly calm, amazingly well acted by all involved, and it looks like a washed out painting. There is so much style in this film, so many great scene of people just standing or sitting in nature and thinking, feeling, seeking, and reflecting. It's a quite film about the seeking of fame, and it's price. It's a long film but it never drags, it never bores and I am sure that it's one that is going to hold up to repeat viewings. I only wish that I had taken the time to see it on the big screen.