Revisiting Budd Boetticher

For Senses of Cinema, in 2017 to include a dossier devoted to Budd Boetticher may seem a little ‘apropos of nothing’: this is a filmmaker who has always existed on the margins – never rising above the level of ...

Oscar “Budd” Boetticher was truly one of a kind, as both a film director and a man. He was a boxer and a bullfighter (becoming only the third white matador in history) before embarking upon a prosperous Hollywo...

Directed by Don Siegel from a screenplay by Albert Maltz, it might seem odd that Two Mules For Sister Sara has a place in a Budd Boetticher dossier, given that he was not involved in production, nor seen on set...

The Good Lord really made this place for movies. There’s everything there. There’s sand, there’s rivers, it’s made for motion pictures. What I would do that other directors did not do, I knew every inch of Lon...

Budd Boetticher (pronounced “bettiker”) was primarily known for his work as a director in the Western genre, but I didn’t want to tell him that. Boetticher refused to be pinned down with any labels, and describ...

The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond occupies a curious place in the canon of Budd Boetticher’s work. Though he directed a few films with criminal elements, such as his superb thriller The Killer is Loose (1956), ...

In the realm of Hollywood cinema, the phrase “actors' director” is a fairly common descriptor, thrown about casually in the popular press and used as shorthand by critics to characterise a filmmaker who priorit...

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. But it will be my decision.” -Robert Stack, Bullfighter and the Lady In the opening five minutes of Bullfighter and Lady (1951), viewers may well start wondering if they ha...

On 24 May 1972, The AVCO Center triplex theatre opened on Wiltshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. On two of the screens were the Paramount product the venue had secured a deal to distribute – the Woody Allen vehicle ...

Budd Boetticher’s unique approach to screen villainy started, oddly enough, with John Wayne. This icon of American/Western goodness and heroism had befriended Boetticher when the star’s production company stepp...

There is a moment in Budd Boetticher’s Seven Men From Now (1956) when Lee Marvin’s character voices the observation many of us have already made.  Regarding the lead female character Annie Greer, played by Gail...

A biographical and critical overview of this greatly admired filmmaker and seminal stylist of the Hollywood B-movie tradition.

Decision at Sundown (1957 USA 77 mins) Source: Sony Classics Prod Co: Ranown Prod: Harry Joe Brown Dir: Budd Boetticher Scr: Charles Lang Jr., based on story by Vernon L. Fluherty Phot: Burnett Guffey Ed...

Comanche Station (1960 USA 73 mins) Source: Sony Picture Classics Prod Co: Ranown Prod, Dir: Budd Boetticher Scr: Burt Kennedy Phot: Charles Lawton, Jnr Ed: Edwin Bryant Art Dir: Carl Anderson Mus Dir: Misch...

Behind Locked Doors (1948 USA 62 mins) Source: PC Prod Co: Aro Productions/Eagle-Lion Films Prod: Eugene Ling Dir: Budd Boetticher Scr: Eugene Ling, Malvin Wald, from Wald's story Phot: Guy Roe Ed: Norma...

An overview of the Western myth and the art of Boetticher.

The legend of Boetticher here paid tribute.