The White Buffalo

A loose western re-telling of Moby Dick starring Charles Bronson... you just don't get much more awesome than that. The concept alone is enough to excite me, so it admittedly didn't take much for the film to impress. Even so, this is an interesting and entertaining hybrid film that successfully mixes elements of the western and horror genres. Plus it has Charles Bronson as Wild Bill Hickok, complete with cool-as-ice steel sunglasses and a line in iron nerves.

Bill Hickok (Bronson) is travelling to the Black Hills incognito as James Otis. He is haunted by dreams of a scary white buffalo, and is compelled to hunt this near-extinct creature, even if it means putting himself at the risk of his many enemies. Worm (Will Sampson) is the disgraced Native American chief who seeks to free the tortured spirit of his white buffalo-slain daughter by finding and destroying the beast, an act that will also restore his true name - Crazy Horse. The two legends find themselves forming an unlikely alliance as they track the mythical creature, though only one can claim the honour of killing the white buffalo.

This is an odd idea for a film, but it's not as cut-and-dry as a simple high concept action-horror adventure (if such a thing could be called 'simple'). Primarily, it's about honour and friendship in a lawless time when such things were hard to find. Wild Bill is a gentleman in a land of dishonourable men, everywhere he turns he is constantly at the mercy of gunslingers out to make their reputation by being the one to kill him. So, despite the racism and inequalities of the era, Wild Bill finds friendship in his rival, Crazy Horse. They might both seek the same goal (something that only one of them can claim) but Wild Bill is drawn to the former indian chief due to a sense of kinship based on a personal code of honour. Bill's offsider, Charlie Zane (played with mountain man-relish by Jack Warden) can't seem to see beyond his own prejudices, but Bill can sense Crazy Horse's inherent honour (quote, "Brave men don't back-shoot").

White Buffalo doesn't gloss over the racial injustices of the era, nor does it seek to overcompensate by taking the typical liberal 70s approach to native americans in westerns. Instead it confronts the issue head-on, with Wild Bill acknowledging the incompatabilities of 'red' truth and 'white' truth, highlighting the tragic inevitability of complete and total white conquest, and effectively sweeping away any romanticism one might attach to the era. The film ends with twin sepia photographs of Will Sampson and Charles Bronson as their respective historical characters, accompanied by the epitaphs "Murdered 1876" and "Murdered 1877", a disturbing touch that at once highlights their equality in the eyes of fate and the lack of room for honourable men such as themselves in the violent and anarchic old west.

The white buffalo itself is a creature that more closely represents a Jaws-like threat than any preservationist anti-hunting agenda. The film introduces us to this beast amongst a shadowy, white landscape of snow-capped rocky outcrops (calling to mind the icebergs and arctic of Moby Dick). It's a roaring screen-filling creature with rolling eyes and murderous intentions (accentuated by the blood-red opening film credits). Later we witness it brutally murdering and destroying a whole village of indians, who both fear and revere the white buffalo - implying it to be some kind of sacred and evil spirit.

It's a one-of-a-kind film, and it also features some great larger-than-life dialogue ("colder than a hooker's heart"). Plus Charles Bronson looks the business as Wild Bill Hickok, and he has some great scenes too, and the white buffalo itself is impressive in all it's ambitious glory (though you might have trouble with the various scenes that show it 'galloping' furiously). Some viewers may write this film off as a flimsy excuse for a series of cliched western set pieces, and I think on some level the film is exactly that (producer Dino De Laurentiis was almost certainly just cashing in on the popularity of Jaws...) but to not see through this to appreciate all the elements that work would be a shame. I mean, it's worth the price of admission alone just for the hilariously bizarre moment where Slim Pickens reveals he's been carrying a bag full of live cats for the full duration of a hazardous stagecoach journey. I can appreciate that there are certain aspects of this film that could have been developed more or cut altogether, but there was just something about the sheer audacity of the concept that made the whole thing endearing to me, and I wouldn't change any of it at all.

TRIVIA: This is one of only a few horror-westerns - it's just not a genre mash-up that happens very often. See Related Texts section for some other examples.

DIRECTOR: J. Lee Thompson
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Richard Sale, based on his own novel.
KEY ACTORS: Charles Bronson, Will Sampson, Jack Warden, Kim Novak, Slim Pickens, John Carradine.

RELATED TEXTS:
- White Buffalo by Richard Sale, the novel this film was based on.
- Jaws, the smash-hit horror film that re-energised the 'monster' movie thanks to a heightened sense of realism, and served as the primary inspiration behind this film getting made.
- The classic Herman Melville novel Moby Dick, from which the script takes a lot of it's cues.
- The first season of the TV series Deadwood, which features a more historically-accurated version of Wild Bill Hickok.
- The Plainsman, a big budget 1930s western starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok - and just one of many westerns featuring Wild Bill.
- Some other significant horror-western films are Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula, High Plains Drifter, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, The Burrowers and Gallowwalker.