It’s been said that Westerns are to America what Shakespeare is to England. The Western genre has been an important and iconic part of our heritage, whether in film, TV or in print. And one of the most popular and prolific Western authors was Louis L’Amour.
L’Amour had a long career writing Western fiction, which he liked to call “Frontier Stories”. L’Amour wrote 89 books from 1930 to the late 1980s. Many of his stories were made into movies and all his books are still in print. He was a favorite author of Western film superstar John Wayne. “The Louis L’Amour Western Collection” brings three film adaptations of L’Amour novels to DVD for the first time.
The first of these L’Amour adaptations is The Sackets, a two-part made-for-TV retelling of two of L’Amour’s novels (The Daybreakers and Sackett) from “The Sacketts” series. The story follows the three Sackett brothers: Tell (Sam Elliot), Orrin (Tom Selleck) and Tyrell (Jeff Osterhage). The story begins in Tennessee when we learn that elder brother Tell left home a few years earlier. While playing cards with a man named Bigelow (who he bravely but stupidly calls a cheater) Tell kills Bigelow in self defense, which starts a feud between the Bigelows and the Sacketts. Tell later becomes a gold prospector. Back in Tennessee, Orrin’s bride-to-be is killed early on in the film. Soon after, he and younger brother Tyrell leave home. The wandering brothers join two old cowboys, Tom Sunday (Glen Ford) and Cap Roundtree (Ben Johnson) who are herding cattle to Santa Fe. The two veterans educate the youngsters in the old school way of cattle herding. En route, they meet rustlers who want to stampede the herd. Tell meets up with his brothers and Roundtree decides to join Tell in prospecting. When Orin and Tyrell finally arrive in Santa Fe, they find themselves embroiled in a racial conflict between Mexicans and Whites. There is a climactic gunfight between the three Sackett brothers and the evil Bigelow brothers.
This poor man’s Lonesome Dove is basically two stories in one which occasionally intersect. One plot follows eldest brother Tell and the other concerns the young brothers, although Orrin seems to be the focus of that story, even though tom Selleck was a few years away from his breakaway success in Magnum PI.
The cast is outstanding. Aside from Elliot, Selleck, Osterhage, Glen Ford and Ben Johnson, we also have veteran character actors Jack Elam and John Vernon making appearances. As far as made-for-TV Westerns go, you couldn’t ask for a better cast.
Directed by Robert Totten and written by Jim Byrnes, The Sacketts is an authentic portrait of the times. It’s not a shoot-em-up western. It focuses on the personal journey of the three brothers.
Since it’s a miniseries, the running time is a bit long and therefore the pace is a bit slow. It’s all a bit too causal. There are no big surprises or plot twists here. It’s okay as TV movies go. The biggest flaw is that it’s rather low-budget and therefore no money was left in the budget for re-shooting scenes, which leaves some mistakes. For instance, the scene occasionally switches from day to night in no logical pattern. Also, there are no saguaro cacti in Texas (it was filmed in Arizona). This is a mediocre effort.
The second film is Conagher, which also stars Sam Elliot. Directed by Reynaldo Villalobos and written by Jeffery M. Meyer, this film is much better than The Sacketts and is very true to the original L’Amour novel. Much of the dialogue is lifted word for word from the book of the same name.
Mrs. Evie Teale (Katharine Ross, the female lead of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is a widow struggling to survive in the old west while raising her two children in a remote homestead. She works as a cook at an old stagecoach station stop, which is due to be eliminated. Along comes Con Conagher (Elliot) an honorable, hardworking cowboy. They meet by random chance and, as you may expect, they become close. Their lives intertwine as they fight outlaws, Indians, nature and their loneliness.
Conagher is not only a love story between two people, it’s also a love ode to the West and the people who won the frontier. It was tough solitary life back then and the film, like L’Amour’s book, pays homage to the heroic, adventurous spirit of those who lived it.
Sam Elliot captures the character of Conagher perfectly. He’s gruff and decisive with an air of danger about him. Yet he can be courteous, and he’s a perfect gentleman to the lady. Elliot is one of those actors like Clint Eastwood and John Wayne who seems like he was born to play a cowboy.
Conagher is a cowhand at a time when cowhands are becoming obsolete. The vocation he does so well is vanishing into history. Conagher’s wandering existence is reminiscent to Shane, Hondo and The Magnificent Seven.
The final of the three films is Catlow. Directed by Sam Wanamaker and starring Yul Brenner, this is an entertaining Western comedy. Richard Crenna and Leonard Nimoy (Spock) co-star.
Catlow (Brenner) is a smooth and cheerful cattle rustler. He and his outlaw gang are pursued by a Sheriff (Crenna) and a gun slinging bounty hunter (Nimoy). The gang wants to steal a fortune in gold which had been stolen by Mexicans during the Civil War. Catlow and company try to avoid complications but that becomes impossible. On the way, they must confront Apache’s, cutthroat criminals, vengeful women and Mexican authorities.
Yul Brenner actually gets to do some comedy here, which is not his usual forte, but he pulls it off. One of the highlights of the story is the friend/enemy relationship between Brenner and Crenna, who try to outsmart each other. There’s a nice chemistry between the two actors.
This is a humorist western, full of comic observations, getting laughs via clichés the Western Genre. The cast look to be having great fun. The plot is a bit episodic and disconnected but it’s all in good fun. It’s worth seeing for Brenner and Crenna.
This is a 4 disc set.
DVD Bonus Features
There are no bonus materials in this DVD set.
"The Louis L'Amour Western Collection" is on sale May 18, 2010 and is rated PG13. Western. Directed by Reynaldo Villalobos, Robert Totten, Sam Wanamaker. Written by Jeffery M. Meyer, Jim Byrnes, J.J. Griffith, Louis L'Amour. Starring Glen Ford, Katharine Ross, Leonard Nimoy, Richard Crenna, Sam Elliott, Tom Selleck, Yul Brenner.
