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The Appropriate Tune: 'Buffalo Stance' by Neneh Cherry
Originally this year’s western entry was going to be for The Ox-Bow Incident, but this movie sounded like the title of an album by a jazz-tinged prog rock band, so I went with it instead. I also found out it was directed by J. Lee Thompson, the man behind the underrated Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and the underfunded Battle for the Planet of the Apes, which is a good(?) sign. Let’s see how she goes.
Released in 1977, The White Buffalo was directed by J. Lee Thompson, written by Richard Sale and produced by Pancho Kohner, based on the novel of the same name by Richard Sale. Charles Bronson stars as the legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock, traveling under the pseudonym James Otis, as he heads West looking to make his fortune. Willie Sampson Jr. plays Crazy Horse, famous warrior and chief of the Lakota, is already West because he lives there. These two men have the same problem: a white buffalo, or rather the white buffalo given the settler’s itchy trigger fingers. Wild Bill has been bedeviled by nightmares of a white buffalo, and a white buffalo ran roughshod over Horse’s tribe, killing children and getting him exiled from his tribe. Both of these men want this thing dead, so their paths will inevitably cross. Will they kill the white buffalo, or will the buffalo kill them instead?
Another reason that I decided to go for this movie was that wikipedia listed this film as a fantasy western, and that piqued my interest. I mean westerns have been crossed with other genres before, spy fiction, science fiction, horror, martial arts, but not often enough that I’d consider it common. Especially so after the 70s and the end of the spaghetti western boom, when the genre’s commercial relevancy almost completely dried up. Studios have tried to get things going, but since the results were shit like Cowboys vs. Aliens, Jonah Hex and The Lone Ranger, clearly they weren’t trying that hard. 1977 is closer to the Golden Age though, so I had some hope.
The White Buffalo isn’t fantasy though, as it turns out. The titular white buffalo is certainly treated by the filmmakers as a supernatural presence, bringing to mind the infamous subway scene in American Werewolf in London, but aside from being very strong and aggressive it doesn’t really behave out of the ordinary. I mean it’s basically the bovine version of Moby Dick, and while the white whale was a symbol of obsesion or divine retribution or what have you it was still just a whale at the end of the day. The only real fantastical element was Hickock’s dreams of the thing, but given how common visions and such are in stories relating to Native Americans I barely gave it a second thought. Pulp western might be a better term, as that tiny bit of weirdness fits right in with the Conan and Doc Savage books.
Speaking of Wild Bill Hickock, why was he in the movie again? Of course I know why Hickock would be in a western story given his status, and I know why Charles Bronson would be in this movie given his filmography, but he seems kind of superfluous? I mean Crazy Horse is the one with a reason for revenge, he’s the natural fit for the protagonist, both in the story and in real life, and instead we have Wild Bill having bad dreams and grimacing for 90 minutes. You’d think that at the very least he’d get an arc where he’d learn not be such a racist asshole, and he kind of does, but also not really? I don’t think not being racist towards one guy counts as not being racist, and he doesn’t ever seem to show remorse for anything he did. That could be because Charles Bronson has a face that looks like it was carved out of shoe leather though.
So yeah, not exactly the most progressive film to come out of ‘77. Lot of casual racism from the white side, justified with ‘well you attacked us too so same thing both sides’, and a lot of broken English from the native side that sounds a half step above Tonto speak. On the one hand I can respect that we’re not pretending relations between settlers and indigineous peoples were peachy keen, but on the other hand I’m not interested in hearing that shit for 5 minutes, much less 90. Can this story be done properly? Obviously, cinema is loaded with stories of two people with radically different backgrounds, but there needs to be a sense of reciprocity, of mutual understanding. Riggs and Murtaugh learn about each other, their problems, their quirks, and so grow to respect one another. They try to do the respect between warriors thing but it doesn’t ring true. Hickok doesn’t give a shit about the plight of the Natives and any talk from Crazy Horse about the two being brothers rings hollow because they have no chemistry together nor enough screen time to build that chemistry. Way too much time spent on Hickok fucking around frontier towns and not fucking Kim Novak.
Also can I say that I don’t get the appeal of Charles Bronson? Yeah, yeah, stoic badass and all that, but he’s never seemed all that badass to me. More like a wax statue of a cro magnon that’s been sitting in the sun too long, or everyone’s shitty uncle that won’t shut up about Ayn Rand. I could forgive it in Once Upon a Time in the West because that’s a fun film, but I find him to be a very dull actor. For all his faults, Clint Eastwood at his peak exuded charisma and danger in equal measure, a guy who could legitimately beat your ass if you were on his side of the screen. Bronson looks like he would kick your ass, but he has to hurry and get to the early bird special at the Cracker Barrel. The idea that Kim Novak’s character would want to jump the bones of this basset hound looking bastard is one of the great illusions of Hollywood.
Unfortunately I’m leaning towards a no on the recommendation for The White Buffalo. It’s got a decent number of gunfights, visually there’s some great ideas (the scene where Hickok’s view of town is obscured by enormous piles of buffalo bones looks amazing), and I think the design of the white buffalo and the shots of him moving are very well done, but I just couldn’t get invested. Even without all the redskin shit I don’t think my opinion would improve all that much, although it does prove that J. Lee Thompson can pull off a genre when you give a budget that’s not comprised entirely of the change found between the couch cushions. There’s the framework of a fun movie in there, enough that some people might get some enjoyment out of it, but of all the weird western films in the world, all two dozen of them, this probably won’t be hitting the top of the queue anytime soon.
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