Quigley Down Under
Oh! Howdy! I didn't expect to find this here! I check this thread like once every 2 months. I just happened to do it today because I was going to ask if anyone was familiar with the Australian mini-series
Bordertown, but instead I get the pleasant surprise of a Quigley review!
More brutal than I was expecting. The beginning makes me think comedy, but this story is dark and unrelenting.
Four years out now, it's clear things are getting a bit fuzzy for me. This is not an aspect of the film I remembered until you mentioned it.
There is humor to be had though and it provides a sense of catching one's breath. Alan Rickman's perfectly timed inflections and Tom Selleck's deadpan delivery and the way he holds his rifle when introducing it to the men, give me the biggest grins.
Laura San Giacomo delivers as well, both the light and the dark. I'd really like to see more of her work.
I'd love to hear about it if you see any.
Two other things that impress me a great deal with this movie--the excellent score
It really is excellent isn't it. It's the first thing you hear in the film I believe... over the opening credits. I swear, a good song to go with the opening credits endears me to a movie quicker and better than just about anything. It's kind of like "whoa now, what's this! Here we go! I'm loving this already!" It's all about fostering good will towards your movie... get the audience on board, charm them! Get them in a headspace to give your film the benefit of the doubt and stick with it. Quigley does that I think.
and the timing of the rifle sound effects! (whistles) "Gosh almighty!" Writing this makes me recall that smirnoff may have written about this somewhere on the forum. smirnoff, can you find it?
Ah, I believe you're referring to my review of
Gun Glory (1957). It's funny, I'd just been thinking about this film recently having watched rewatched
Buck. In Buck there's a whole sequence where Buck's friends and family attempt to keep own cow separated from the heard. They last 10 or 15 seconds and then the cow scampers 'round them. Then Buck does it and it's something else entirely. The level of control is astonishing. Anyways, Gun Glory has, if anything, an even MORE impressive display of horsemanship. I talk about that in the review as well. Watching Buck again made me wonder how many people and horses in the world could do something like that.
As for the gun sounds here's the relevent bit.
A very strong western whose attention to small details pays big returns.
For instance, the sound of a gun fired in a wide canyon... it should sound different than a gun fired in a closed cabin, am I wrong? Well I'm sorry to say that most westerns I've seen from '57 don't care about such things. Even the great ones. Gun Glory is an exception, and a very good one. It's only one scene, an it would've been easy for someone to say "eh, lets just use the sound effect from the last shootout", but they didn't. Instead they captured something real, distinct, and wonderful. They gave an entire scene a deep and affecting authenticity. The sound is unmistakable; after the initial concussion, an echo returns sounding like a whip crack. One other film I know of has captured this sound correctly: Tremors.
Listen for yourselves if you like: Gun Glory and Tremors.
I look forward to rewatching Quigley now to pick up this detail and add it to the list of "superior gun sound effects in westerns".
Smirnoff's review is here
Thanks for hunting that down Dave!