East meets West in one of the best

It would be ridiculous of me to deny my love of science fiction or thrillers. I wear my heart on my sleeve. But one of my personal favorite genres is the Western. There’s just something so mythic about the elements and the characters and the history, they rope me in with the greatest of ease. In 1958, William Wyler (Ben Hur) directed what for my money is one of the all-time Western greats, The Big Country.

Gregory Peck stars as an east coast sea captain who moves out west to join his fiancé’s ranch, only to find himself treated as an outsider, resented by ranch foreman Charleton Heston, but also caught up in the middle of a bitter range war with neighboring rancher Burl Ives. The cast is amazing – Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charles Bickford and an unforgettable Chuck Connors. Wyler makes extraordinary use of his widescreen canvas to capture some truly epic locations. Peck is at his finest as he finds himself scoffed at and derided as a “fancy dude” by the roughneck ranchers who don’t understand him.

Initially I wasn’t sure how older Westerns would come across on Blu-ray, then I saw John Ford’s The Searchers and my jaw hit the floor. Ever since then, I’ve been hoping that The Big Country would get the Blu-ray treatment and it’s riding into town on May 24th, surprisingly as a Walmart online exclusive. Possibly a sign of things to come, if studios continue to be leery of the costs involved with releasing older catalog titles. You can’t beat the price, they have it at $9.86!

If you don’t like Westerns or think you always know what to expect from them, then definitely check out The Big Country, it’s overflowing with classic scenes and is one of the true greats of the era.