Horses On Film

A deep dive into IndieWire's’s list of the top 100 Westen Films of all time.

What belongs, what doesn’t, what really are the best 100 Western Films of all time according to us.

Hosts, Cameron Chapman, David Chapman, and Scott MacArthur, along with special guests, breakdown a different Western Film each episode to decide where, if at all, it belongs on our list of Top 100 Westen Films of all time.

Episode 025: Near Dark (1987)

A farm boy reluctantly becomes a member of the undead when a girl he meets turns out to be part of a band of vampires who roam the highways in stolen cars.

Episode 024: umbleweeds (1925)

William S. Hart stars in this 1925 silent film as a cowboy intent on claiming land during the 1889 land rush in the Oklahoma Territory. Though hardened from years of taming the new frontier, he falls in love with a beautiful woman. Before he settles down, however, he must contend with men who wish to bring him harm. In the prologue of the 1939 Astor Pictures revival of this film, Hart gives a moving eight-minute introduction– the first and only time he appeared in a film accompanied by his striking voice.

Episode 023: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

A posse discovers a trio of men they suspect of murder and cow theft and are split between handing them over to the law or lynching them on the spot.

Episode 022: The Misfits (1961)

While filing for a divorce, beautiful ex-stripper Roslyn Taber ends up meeting aging cowboy-turned-gambler Gay Langland and former World War II aviator Guido Racanelli. The two men instantly become infatuated with Roslyn and, on a whim, the three decide to move into Guido’s half-finished desert home together. When grizzled ex-rodeo rider Perce Howland arrives, the unlikely foursome strike up a business capturing wild horses.

Episode 021: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

As the west rapidly becomes civilized, a pair of outlaws in 1890s Wyoming find themselves pursued by a posse and decide to flee to South America in hopes of evading the law.

Episode Bonus 003: Red Sun (1971)

In 1870, Japanese ambassador Sakaguchi and his entourage travel by train to Washington to deliver a valuable sword to the President of the United States, a gift from the Emperor of Japan. On board the same train are two robbers, Link and Gauche, ready to make their move…

Episode 020: High Noon (1952)

Will Kane, the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico, learns a notorious outlaw he put in jail has been freed, and will be arriving on the noon train. Knowing the outlaw and his gang are coming to kill him, Kane is determined to stand his ground, so he attempts to gather a posse from among the local townspeople.

Episode 019: Man of the West (1958)

Heading east to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his frontier town home, Link Jones is stranded with singer Billie Ellis and gambler Sam Beasley when their train is held up. For shelter, Jones leads them to his nearby former home, where he was brought up an outlaw. Finding the gang still living in the shack, Jones pretends to be ready to return to a life crime.

Episode 018: For A Few Dollars More (1965)

Two bounty hunters both pursue the brutal and sadistic bandit, El Indio, who has a large bounty on his head.

Episode 017: Hell's Heroes (1929)

Three bank robbers on the run happen across a woman about to give birth in an abandoned covered wagon. Before she dies, she names the three bandits as her newborn son’s godfathers. Remade as Three Godfathers (1936) and 3 Godfathers (1949).

Episode 016: Dead Man (1995)

On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.

Episode Bonus 002: Maverick (1994)

Bret Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional $3k in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game beginning in a few days. He joins forces with a woman with a marvelous Southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.

Episode 015: The Settlers (2023)

Chile, early 20th century. José Menéndez, a wealthy landowner, hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his extensive property and open a route to the Atlantic Ocean across vast Patagonia.

Episode 014: Forty Guns (1957)

An authoritarian rancher rules an Arizona county with her private posse of hired guns. When a new Marshall arrives to set things straight, the cattle queen finds herself falling for the avowedly non-violent lawman. Both have itchy-fingered brothers, a female gunman enters the picture, and things go desperately wrong.

Episode 013: Red River (1948)

Following the Civil War, headstrong rancher Thomas Dunson decides to lead a perilous cattle drive from Texas to Missouri. During the exhausting journey, his persistence becomes tyrannical in the eyes of Matthew Garth, his adopted son and protégé.

Episode 012: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Two jobless Americans convince a prospector to travel to the mountains of Mexico with them in search of gold. But the hostile wilderness, local bandits, and greed all get in the way of their journey.

Episode 011: The Rider (2017)

Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over after a horse crushed his skull at a rodeo. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of the United States.

Episode Bonus 001: Hell or High Water (2016)

A divorced dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family’s farm in West Texas.

Episode 010: Day of the Outlaw (1959)

Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.

Episode 009: Dances with Wolves (1990)

Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he’s assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.

Episode 008: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Episode 007: There Will Be Blood (2007)

Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview’s motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.

Episode 006: The Proposition (2005)

In 1880s Australia, a lawman offers renegade Charlie Burns a difficult choice. In order to save his younger brother from the gallows, Charlie must hunt down and kill his older brother, who is wanted for rape and murder. Venturing into one of the Outback’s most inhospitable regions, Charlie faces a terrible moral dilemma that can end only in violence.

Episode 005: Blazing Saddles (1974)

A town—where everyone seems to be named Johnson—stands in the way of the railroad. In order to grab their land, robber baron Hedley Lamarr sends his henchmen to make life in the town unbearable. After the sheriff is killed, the town demands a new sheriff from the Governor, so Hedley convinces him to send the town the first black sheriff in the west.

Episode 004: Rio Bravo (1959)

A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.

Episode 003: The Tall (1957)

An independent former ranch foreman and an heiress are kidnapped by a trio of ruthless outlaws.

Episode 002: The Professionals (1966)

An arrogant Texas millionaire hires four adventurers to rescue his kidnapped wife from a notorious Mexican bandit.

Episode 001: Unforgiven (1992)

William Munny is a retired, once-ruthless killer turned gentle widower and hog farmer. To help support his two motherless children, he accepts one last bounty-hunter mission to find the men who brutalized a prostitute. Joined by his former partner and a cocky greenhorn, he takes on a corrupt sheriff.