By Tristan Bishop
The western and the horror film are two of the oldest genres in film – almost as old as film itself, in fact – and so it’s no surprise that there is a long history of cross pollination between the two. From creepy 1930’s pulps such as Riders Of The Whistling Skull through to 60’s cheapies like Billy The Kid Versus Dracula (yes, really) up to modern times with films like Dead Birds (2004) and the god-awful Cowboys & Vampires (2010), filmmakers have been attempting to give fresh life to both genres by combining the two to various degrees. And, it has to be said, mostly unsuccessfully. The most interesting examples tend to be mid-late sixties spaghetti westerns which, whilst not strictly horror films, often flirted with gothic set-ups (Guilio Questi’s superlative Django Kill, 1967) or semi-supernatural heroes (Django The Bastard). This makes sense, given that the gothic horror film had recently been superseded by the western in Italy; famed horror directors such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti all made westerns at some point in their careers, with some (Fulci’s Four Of The Apocalypse being a prime example) having a way more disturbing edge than others. Since then, horror westerns (in fact, westerns of all kinds) have been a little thin on the ground, with those that do pop up now and again doing little to advance either genre.
Thank god, then, for Bone Tomahawk. Writer/director S Craig Zahler has crafted a genre mash-up that not only contains enough blood and guts for a hardcore horror crowd but, amazingly, manages to be the best western in a very very long time. The set-up is a very simple one – Patrick Wilson plays Arthur O’Dwyer , who is recovering from a leg injury. When his doctor wife (Lili Simmons) is kidnapped whilst seeing to an injured individual at the local jail, he teams up with John Brooder (Matthew Fox), a gunslinger with an ego the size of Texas and an itchy trigger finger, Richard Jenkins as Chicory, a loquacious and annoying, yet faithful old deputy, and Kurt Russell as Franklin Hunt, the archetypal stoic sheriff. The four men learn that Mrs O’Dwyer has been kidnapped by a family of feral cannibals, and set out as a posse to retrieve her. Unfortunately, the Old West was a very unforgiving place, and even before they reach their destination, a combination of injury, character conflict and inhospitable terrain threaten to tear the group apart.
So what we have here has been referred to in many places as The Searchers meets The Hills Have Eyes – and whilst that’s a spot-on description, it does Bone Tomahawk a disservice. Firstly the horror elements basically bookend the film – after a brief intro featuring the legendary Sid Haig (Foxy Brown, Spider Baby), the film doesn’t get back into full-blooded territory until the final 25 minutes. As the film runs for a surprisingly epic 132 minutes, you might think that’s a heck of a lot of time to spend on build-up, but, due to a top-notch script and cast, we find ourselves truly caring about the characters and their mission – in fact, I found myself at several points forgetting there was a horror element here at all. By the time it does come around, the cannibal encounter feels less ‘hillbilly horror’ and more akin to the characters encountering Colonel Kurtz’s compound in Apocalypse Now – their harsh journey delivering them straight into the heart of darkness.
The cast is, without fail, excellent – Fox brings real depth to a character who could so easily just have been an unlikeable slimeball, and Kurt Russell remains one of the most badass actors on the planet, but it’s Richard Jenkins as the deputy who steals the show here, swinging from loveable to irritating in the space of a scene, and providing much of the heart of the film. For a film which is ostensibly about men (the female characters, including Blade Runner’s Sean Young in a brief cameo, are barely onscreen), the script eschews the kind of macho posturing you might expect to find and instead subtly explores human frailty and the reasons that people are driven to extraordinary lengths. As I’ve previously hinted, when the film pulls into the final third, even the most jaded gorehound will not be disappointed – I do wonder if some of these scenes might be too much for a mainstream audience , but despite their extremity they never feel unnecessary, just unflinching.
As a fan of both the horror film and the western, I can’t recommend Bone Tomahawk enough. It transcends its influences to become not only a grim (but exhilarating) horror film, but might also be the best western since 1993’s Unforgiven.
Bone Tomahawk goes on UK theatrical release from 19 February 2016.