"It Rains..." begets "Drowning Machine"

And so Royko begat Coudal, and Coudal begat Gruber. Gruber begat It Rains...You Get Wet. And lo, it came to pass that It Rains... begat Drowning Machine. And from one generation to another so it was that all had favorite Western movies. Verily did they all name them. Henceforth, in no order of favorites did Drowning Machine call out her ten favorites (not all of them critical successes):

Destry Rides Again Only the greatest saloon scene in all of Western filmdom!

Silverado An incomparable cast and the most rousing film score of any Western.

No Name on the Bullet  Far and away Audie Murphy's best Western. Too bad the trailer makes it look like just another grade-B oater, because the mounting tension and the utter coldness of Murphy's killer character lift this one well above average.

The Sacketts  This two-part made-for-TV movie was an instant favorite with me. Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott were made for Westerns, while the cast is full of familiar Western names: Glenn Ford, LQ Jones, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, Gilbert Roland, and more. And yet the movie was all but stolen by the almost-unknown actor, Jeff Osterhage, as Tyrel, the youngest and deadliest of the Sackett brothers. Selleck, Elliott, and Osterhage also teamed up to make another TV-Western, The Shadow Riders.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid  The best part of naming this one as a favorite is that I don't ever have to justify it. Everyone recognizes it as a classic.

El Dorado  Everyone tells me that Rio Bravo is the better version of this story. Yet I can hardly sit through RB (it's way too long) while what is essentially the same story in El Dorado only has to show up on the screen and I'm glued to it. Classic John Wayne line: "I'm lookin' at a tin star with a drunk pinned to it."

High Noon  Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this is one I don't have to justify. But if I did, I could cite Gary Cooper's performance: his best ever; the musical theme that is so powerful, tender, and tense; and Zinneman's outstanding direction. It's a great Western that is the epitome of its genre, and manages to be about so much more than bang-bang-shoot'em-up.

Open Range This film makes use of one of author Robert Crais's favorite themes: that people are seldom what they seem. As Boss Spearman and Charley Waite face ever-increasing adversity, these two men who've known each other ten years discover new depths and darker sides to their characters. As Charley tells the pretty lady, "I'm not who you think I am, Sue."

Blue  Okay, so even I'll admit this isn't a great film. Nevertheless, this tragedy about a young man torn between the world he was born into and the world in which he was raised is elevated by Terence Stamp's portrayal of the title character. No, Stamp's accent isn't always of the American West, which makes his persuasiveness as Blue all the more remarkable. A Western Romeo & Juliet, if nothing else gets you about this 1968 film, the score by Manos Hadjidakis will do it.

Is Sunset a Western or not? I say yes. Any film with James Garner playing Wyatt Earp has to qualify as a Western, no matter the time and place of the story. Better, this film is not only a Western, it's also a nifty Hollywood-soaked, hardboiled murder mystery. One reviewer dubbed Garner and Bruce Willis as "the slickest screen pairing since Paul Newman and Robert Redford." I'll buy that.