GREENFINGERS on dvd

Written and directed by Joel Hershman this 2000 movie stars:

Clive Owen as Colin Briggs

Helen Mirren as Georgina Woodhouse

David Kelly as Fergus Wilks

Warren Clarke as Governor Hodge

Danny Dyer as Tony

Adam Fogarty as Raw

Paterson Joseph as Jimmy

Natasha Little as Primrose Woodhouse

Okay so it's not a western but a film about gardening. Not kidding this film is about plants and gardening.

It is based on the real story about the inmates of Her Majesty's Prison Leyhill.

Colin Briggs is sent to a minimum security prison to finish his sentence for murder and be put up for parole. He shares a cell with the elderly but wise Fergus Wilks who is in for killing three of his wives but knows that he will never leave prison as he has cancer.

For Christmas Fergus gives Colin a packet of Viola seeds that Colin plants close to the football pitch. Come the spring they have grown and the Governor is so impressed because plants like that have never grown in the prison grounds before.

As a result the prisoners become gardeners and their garden comes to the notice of the prominent garden expert Georgina Woodhouse. She employs the prisoners as a gardening team for one of her own projects.

Colin is given parole but breaks it so that he can get back into prison to lead a team that enters a display at the Hampton Court Garden Show. Their entry wins them an audience with the Queen because she thought that 'they had been robbed.'

This is really a wonderful film and should be better known. Clive Owen who we knew from 'Sin City' and 'Shoot 'Em Up' shows another side to his acting and impressed.

None of us could believe that we could enjoy a film so much about gardening but we did. It was shown on BBC One last night but I've had to order the dvd as I want it in my collection.

In the following years the prison did exhibit again winning silver and gold medals before winning the prestigious Tudor Rose Award.

POSEIDON SMITH:VENGEANCE IS MINE by Jack Giles

I hold my hands up and admit that I have never read a Jack Giles book.
Until the other day that is.
When it's revision time it's not that easy to take out time to read but by the end of half-term I thought that I should take a break.
'Poseidon Smith:Vengeance Is Mine' was Jack Giles first book published in 1984 by Robert Hale.
The first few chapters follows three violent men who are released from prison after a ten year prison sentence. I got to know these three so well that I disliked them. All they want to do is kill the man who ran off with the proceeds of a robbery and left them to rot in the prison.
The book moves from them to the quiet town of Ruskin, Texas and the happy event that is taking place. The preacher's sister, Andromeda, is about to get engaged to the local rancher - except that the rancher is not all that he makes out to be.
The Sunday School children are to be given a treat and are being shown how a big ranch works.
All arranged by the preacher, Poseidon Smith, who manages to bring people around to doing things that he suggests by making them think that they thought of the idea in the first place.
And Poseidon Smith talks like a preacher and, I think, is what attracted me to this character.
The mood of the book changes and it disturbed me.
The outlaws arrive and a shoot out comes about as they try to escape and caught in the middle are the Sunday School children. There are casualties on all sides and that included the children. I didn't expect that and I don't know if anyone has done that before.
Stung by the tragedy Poseidon Smith struggles with his faith and blames himself. Armed with an ancient pepper pot pistol he hunts the killers down but he does not know until the end just who he is going to face.
The book reads like a film and I could 'see' it all happening.
I asked the author why he included the scene that disturbed me.
"Reality. Back at the time when when Texas was fighting to be free of Mexican rule there was an incident in Missouri. The Mormons had populated an area called Haun's Mill and most people resented the presence of these 'Chosen People' so they took matters into their own hands. They didn't care who they killed in that massacre - men, women and children were fair game. In 'Poseidon Smith' the attitude of the outlaws is 'if it moves kill it' and, in real life, as you see on the news children are the casualties of war.
I don't know what was in my mind when I wrote the book but I would guess that I was thinking something like that at the time. Couple that with this thought - what would have broken Poseidon Smith's faith?"
Despite it all I found this book to be, well, things stick in my mind. That has to be a good thing.

WILD WEST MONDAY: Guest Blog by JACK GILES

Wild West Monday is here and I have my Maths GCSE later this morning and I can't sleep.
Well, that's teenage life for you but to the point. We asked Jack Giles why the western genre is so important to him.

"It would be easy to say that the western takes me back to my younger years but that is what it does.
What westerns do is take the reader back to a time that was while, at the same time, it is a world that can be escaped into. There are a number of things that are happening in the world today that are reflected in what people are reading bookwise.
The western covers a period of time that stretches from the end of the American Civil War to about the turn of the century - the 20th century. It was a hard time with people trying to recover from the war and cope with the peace. Many had to uproot themselves or were uprooted by change and build a new life in a hostile and violent country.
It was also a time when myths and legends were born with figures like Billy The Kid and Wyatt Earp.
All this against a background of cattle drives, farmers fighting to make a living and the rise of the bounty hunter. A harsh time when survival was the biggest prize.
All these elements play their part in the fictional west.
You can go to a movie and come out feeling like John Wayne but a book can take you to places you've never been. Books give you characters that you can relate to in a way that movies cannot. Unlike movies the heroes in books are not larger than life they are more human and find themselves caught up in situations that seem to be against them.
It doesn't matter whether you read Black Horse Westerns or the latest in Jon Sharpe's 'The Trailsman' series it is all good escapism.
Many books are available at local libraries or on Ebay. More importantly books should be available in bookstores and supermarkets - but when will the paperback publishers realise that.
Surely by now they should be realising that in the time of a credit crunch no one wants to read the latest adventure of a Shopaholic. Or that they are publishing books that just sit on the shelves.
Time to bring back westerns and with the growing interest in them it makes sense to put books out into the hands of the reading public."

Thank you, Jack Giles.
Later today I will be putting up a review of a book I read during half-term.

HANNIE CAULDER on dvd

HANNIE CAULDER (1972)

Written and Directed by Burt Kennedy

with

Raquel Welch as Hannie Caulder

Robert Culp as Thomas Luther Price

Ernest Borgnine as Emmett Clemens

Jack Elam as Frank Clemens

Strother Martin as Rufus Clemens

Christopher Lee as Bailey

This is a good revenge movie for the girls.

Boys will like it too even if it to just watch Hannie Caulder do her stuff in nothing more than a poncho and tight fitting jeans.

The Clemens brothers are not very bright and bungle a bank robbery after which they are chased over the border by Mexican soldiers. They lose one of their horses and try to steal another from the way station run by Hannie Caulder and her husband. They kill the husband and gang rape Hannie before setting fire to the house with her inside.

The gang ride off and Hannie escapes to fall in with a bounty hunter called Thomas Luther Price who she tries to get to teach her how to use a gun.

At first he refuses but he gives in and takes her to see an English gunsmith called Bailey who makes her a special gun.

They arrive in town and meet up with the Clemens brothers and it gets pretty violent.

This is a violent film and it is good to see a woman in the gunfighter role. The film is shot in a style similar to that of the Italian westerns but this is a British movie with American actors and an appearance of the iconic film actress Diana Dors as a brothel madame.

We enjoyed 'Hannie Caulder' but I think that we watched it for different reasons.

THE TAINTED ARCHIVE has a petition

The Tainted Archive has a link to an on-line petition that will be sent to publishers to encourage them to put western books in shops and supermarkets. Please sign the petition.

THE BRAVADOS on dvd

The Bravados (1958)

Run time: 93 mins

Screenplay by Philip Yordan based on the book by Frank O'Rourke.

Directed by Henry King

Gregory Peck as Jim Douglass

Joan Collins as Josefa Valverde

Stephen Boyd as Bill Zachary

Albert Salmi as Ed Taylor

Henry Silva as Lujan

Lee Van Cleef as Alfonso Parral

Jim Douglass rides into the town of Rio Arriba just to see four men hang. After taking a look at the men who he doesn't really know he meets up with an old flame, Josefina, and they have a meal together. She is looking after her father's ranch but as soon as Jim tells her he has a daughter Josefina seems to lose interest. Later, though, she gets the whole story and she gets interested again.

Enter the hangman who joins Jim for a drink and they while away their time together. When it gets dark and everyone has gone to church the hangman goes into action. He stabs the lawman who shoots him dead but the four men get the keys and escape.

Jim Douglass becomes a part of the posse because he wants the four men dead for the rape and murder of his wife.

One by one he catches up with them and disposes of them until only Lujan is left. But when Jim catches up with him he finds out that everything is not as it had seemed to Jim.

This film has a plodding start but was worth staying with once the men escaped from jail. Most of the revenge killings are hinted at rather than shown. Each time he meets up with an outlaw he shows them a photo of his wife but he doesn't get the message that they have no idea of who she is.

This film may not appeal to everybody but worth, at least, a look.

WILD WEST MONDAY the third

O.K. so the next Wild West Monday is just two weeks away and publishers are ignoring us.
So, we would like it if there was some support out there for Gary Dobbs and his idea at The Tainted Archive.
We would like our younger readers of our blog to e-mail or write to publishers to show that the younger generation are interested in westerns.
In America there is a company called Bantam books and it's owned by Transworld Publishers and they publish Corgi books here in the UK. Once upon a time Corgi published the likes of Louis L'Amour, J. T. Edson and series like 'Herne The Hunter'.
Another publisher is Penguin Books who also publish westerns in America but not here.
Just a couple of suggestions.
And another thought. If those westerns are only published in America what about those American authors? I mean if their books aren't sold in the UK then they are losing out on royalties - aren't they? Maybe, they should be asking their publishers why as well.


One last thing and this is for the younger generation. It's nice to know that our blog is 'cool' but leave comments sometime even if it's anonymous just so that others know that we are not alone.