The Types of Westerns

Maybe when you hear western, you immediately think of some corny John Wayne movie with two guys having a phony shootout at high noon. While there are some like that, there are many different types of western. These are the primary types.

Classic Western
Essential Film: High Noon (1952)
These are the westerns you probably think about. They're old and usually involve a very simple plot in which the protagonist always triumphs over the antagonist after some grand duel, and the good guy always, "gets the girl".

Wayne Era Western
Essential Film: The Searchers (1958)
Very similar to the classic western, John Wayne's school of western differed in having a slightly more campy feel, with the protagonist making frequent corny jokes. Wayne also created the standard device of using Native Americans as antagonists.

Spaghetti Western
Essential Film: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Cost efficiency attracted some Italian filmmakers to begin shooting low budget westerns in Spanish deserts. These films were usually almost plotless, but full of action and "lone gunfighter" mythology.

Revisionist Western
Essential Film: The Wild Bunch (1969)
As the New Hollywood movement began to take hold of the film industry, counterculture filmmakers unleashed a new type of western. These new westerns were faster paced and began to clear out much of the myth that had accumulated in westerns during Wayne's era.

Acid Western
Essential Film: Walker (1987)
Blending the exaggerated violence common in spaghetti westerns with counterculture ideology and unconventional filmmaking methods, Acid Westerns were incredibly strange and very unpopular for their portrayal of the classic western myths in an unconventional way.

Anti-Western
Essential Film: Unforgiven (1992)
Clint Eastwood created this genre, refuting the western myths upon which many of his early films were based. These films focused on humanity, taking into account the tragedy of a human losing his life.