Return to the wild west

A PAIR of very different westerns of recent vintage - a rarity, to be sure - are on offer this week and worth discovering or revisiting.

A PAIR of very different westerns of recent vintage - a rarity, to be sure - are on offer this week and worth discovering or revisiting.

One of the most authentic-feeling spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, the 1968 horse opera Guns for San Sebastian (Sunday, 4.15pm, Gem, NSW QLD only) stars Anthony Quinn as a womanising outlaw taken in by the priest (Sam Jaffe) of a small town being terrorised by marauding Indians and their leader (Charles Bronson).

When the padre is killed, Quinn masquerades as a man of the cloth to help the villagers stand up to the menace. One of the few Mexican-set westerns shot in that country instead of Spain or Italy, the film features strong performances by Quinn and Bronson and a typically florid score from Ennio Morricone. French director Henri Verneuil isn't in the same league as Italian maestro Sergio Leone, but the verisimilitude sells the tale.

Twenty years later, South Dakota-born director Christopher Cain directed what surely must be one of the last financially successful westerns to date. Set and shot in New Mexico, Young Guns (Monday, 9.30pm, Go!) is a testosterone-fuelled edition of the then popular Brat Pack, with Emilio Estevez as Billy the Kid and fine supporting work from Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney and Casey Siemaszko.

The older generation is represented by Terence Stamp and Jack Palance as warring ranchers, Brian Keith as a fugitive and John Wayne's son Patrick as Pat Garrett.

It might as well be a western but isn't, as director Michael Bay's satisfyingly complex 1996 action thriller The Rock (Sunday, 8.30pm, 7Mate, Not QLD) has a strong genre feel thanks to solid contributions by a credited and uncredited stable of writers including Aaron Sorkin and Quentin Tarantino.

Nicolas Cage is quite funny as reluctant hero Stanley Goodspeed, recruited to help renegade officer Sean Connery stop Ed Harris and his gang from blowing San Francisco to smithereens from their perch on Alcatraz Island.

In the late 70s, a young writer for Rolling Stone magazine, Cameron Crowe, went undercover as a student at a San Diego high school. His book documenting the experience became the 1982 hit Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Saturday, 11.25pm, Seven, NSW and QLD only) and made immediate stars of Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates.

It still holds up well, thanks to the mostly benevolent script, strong performances and a star-studded soundtrack that includes the first Led Zeppelin song in a movie. (Crowe wheedled the rights to Kashmir out of the band.) Also glimpsed pre-fame are Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Cage, who was then going by his real name, Nicolas Coppola. (He's Francis Ford Coppola's nephew.)

BEST ON SHOW

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (M)
4 stars
Saturday, 11.25pm, Seven (NSW and QLD)

The Rock (M)
3.5 stars
Sunday, 8.30pm, 7Mate (Not QLD)

Guns for San Sebastian (PG)
3 stars
Sunday, 4.15pm, Gem (NSW QLD only)