Two Mexican westerns from Vinegar Syndrome

The betrayed husband (Pedro Armendáriz Jr) channels Peckinpah's anti-heroes during the climactic battle in Rene Cardona's Guns and Guts (1974)

Mexico looms large in the Western genre, in both its Hollywood and spaghetti iterations, but until now it hadn’t occurred to me that Mexican filmmakers might have made their own Westerns; that unasked question is firmly answered by the recent Vinegar Syndrome release of a pair of movies which seem to straddle the boundary between the classical Hollywood and Italian versions of America’s defining myth of masculinity and violence.

Year End 2021

The Count (Udo Kier) is worried about his blood supply in Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula (1974)

It’s been a good year for movies on disk, with a remarkable range of releases from many companies which are devoting considerable resources to rediscovering, restoring and preserving movies in numerous genres. Ranging across nationalities and spanning cinema history, there was plenty to divert attention from a real world which has become so depressing and exhausting.

Blasts from the past

Criterion’s complete Lone Wolf and Cub 1972-74

Recent viewing, Summer 2018

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence (2014)

Claude Autant-Lara’s wartime romances: Eclipse #45

>