Ramrod (1947)

Ramrod (1947) is a darkness on the range film noir western tale of bullying double crossing and rivalry from one of the style's favourite directors, André De Toth, one of the pioneers in the film noir western genre jam of the 1940s.

The permutations of film noir began to play across nightmare scenarios in the urban, criminal, historical and now western styles of story telling,.

In the shadow-draped alleys of 1947, it was not all shadow-draped alleys and the Western too felt the noir influence from time to time. This picture called Ramrod hit the silver screen, helmed by the Hungarian maestro Andre de Toth, and is now considered to be an example of cross-over style, that most amazing of constructs, the film noir western.

The Badlanders (1958)

The Badlanders (1958) is a western revenge noir which bills as a bold reinterpretation of the timeless classic The Asphalt Jungle (1950) reimagined against the rugged backdrop of the Wild West.

In this cinematic tapestry, the echoes of the past reverberate across the sun-scorched plains, as the sins of the urban jungle find new life amidst the untamed frontier.

Drawing inspiration from its predecessor, The Badlanders makes moves to homage to the gritty realism and moral ambiguity that defined its predecessor. Yet, with a daring shift in setting and tone, the film breathes new life into the familiar narrative, imbuing it with a sense of vitality and urgency befitting the rugged landscapes of the West.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) is a color film noir classic with a neo-Western setting, offering a thrilling paranoiac small-town murder story in which Spencer Tracy roughs up against some brilliantly played rough and tough local talent in a desert town.

Directed by John Sturges and starring Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine, Bad Day at Black Rock is the sure-fire best deepest and most entertaining colour film noir of the era — if indeed we are classifying it as such!

The film was based on a short story called Bad Time at Honda by Howard Breslin, published by The American Magazine in January 1947. Filming began in July 1954 and the movie went on national release in January 1955. It was a box office success and was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1956. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"

The bad-ass desert town-dwellers, led by film noir's own Robert Ryan are as immortal immoral crew as cinema ever created. They would be great with their own mini-series, Thugs of Black Rock, or similar.

Blood on the Moon (1948)

Blood on the Moon (1948) is a wild Western with film noir credentials. Those credentials are sounder than may first appear, and are real.

Robert Wise, the director of Blood on the Moon brought the urban, psychological, shadowy, violent and complex aspects of film noir to this movie, making it very likely the greatest admixture of the Western genre with the film noir style.

It begs the question as to what film noir and Western have in common, and it's likely the fact that both of them ultimately deal with morality.

The lead elements of film noir are first and foremost visible. These are a difficult to follow and relatively layered plot of crosses, triple crosses and identities.

These typically complex stories are also played out in the shadows where possible. Blood on the Moon not only opens with an epic and miserable rain storm, and in that storm is the figure of the drifter, stoically on the wander, the forever hired hand, here played by Robert Mitchum.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Johnny Guitar (1954) is a bluff and luridly coloured fantasy Western, that has found its way on to the film noir style sheet by dint of its role reversin' fun, and its hard hitting characters. 

Joan Crawford is a saloon owner, holding on tight to her all-American right to stay on her land and not have it bought up by the corporate or in this case local interests who have their own ideas about the railroad that's rolling through.

The townspeople don't want her, for reasons that are not immediately obvious. 

But she has a nemesis; and just as she leads the saloon with its bored but well dressed staff of croupiers, the good townsfolk of this small and wild Arizona settlement, are lead by a similarly dangerous firebrand of a woman, in this case Emma small - - played by Mercedes McCambridge, whose vengeful vendetta seems to want her to see Joan Crawford driven out of town and hanged.

Romance, hatred and violence combine in Johnny Guitar to create one of the most popular noir Westerns in the canon.