Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Matt Otter Is it really lost on everyone that the makers of this film were purposely trying to make the buffalo look "unreal" if you will? The Buffalo was a mystery, a boogeyman, a force of nature.I can't believe people knock this film for it's lack of realism, are you seriously telling me you think it would have been more effective to paint a real buffalo white and get some wranglers to try and coach it into the actions the writers needed? Give me a break.The effects were not cheap, they did exactly what they were intended, this whole movie had an eerie feel to it, and the buffalo was the source of it, so of course it's not going to look "real" or act realistic.I can understand however, that at the time people were tired of the "shoot um up" Westerns and no doubt that hurt this film, but I saw it as a kid and loved it, I was apprehensive about watching it as an adult since so many childhood films don't quite hold up when seeing them through adult eyes, but I was happy to say this film was as good as I remembered.

LeonLouisRicci Eerie, offbeat, weird Western full of gun-play and word-play a plenty. A seldom seen or talked about 70's Western that is one of the decade's best. A sharp-tongued, sassy, colorful and quirky script with home-spun witticism and almost every line is earthy poetry. After a prostitute is killed..."this scarlet sister walks the streets in Heaven". An old-timer is told..."you been known to puddle your pants at the sound of a Cherokee war whoop", and the fun never stops.It is filled with those kind of salty sayings and back-boned with a mythological movie that is peppered with people that all have nicknames like Poker Annie and Whistling Smith. It's a dreamlike atmosphere and everything has a synonym. A telescope is a peeper, a buffalo is a spike, and there is a thing called "true truths".The nightmare that haunts Wild Bill Hickok is that of a monstrous white buffalo and when he finally meets his nemesis the film does seem anti-climactic. But this is such a strange setting of echoing mountains and boom-town bizarreness where buffalo bones are stacked to the rooftops in a pile that stretches forever, that the whole tall tale seems like something out of classic literature and not Pulp Westerns.A surreal sleeper.

Spikeopath The White Buffalo is directed by J. Lee Thompson and adapted to screenplay by Richard Sale from his own novel of the same name. It stars Charles Bronson, Will Sampson, Jack Warden, Clint Walker, Slim Pickens and Kim Novak. Music is scored by John Barry and cinematography by Paul Lohmann. Plot finds Wild Bill Hickok (Bronson) and Crazy Horse (Sampson) teaming up to fight a giant white buffalo during the bleak winter of 1874. Hickok is plagued by nightmares of the beast, Crazy Horse is out purely for revenge after the rampaging creature laid waste to his village and killed his newly born son.It flopped at the box office, which in all honesty is not hard to understand, for The White Buffalo had too many things to fight against to put up a good showing. It's very much an odd movie, a strange blending of genres, it often looks cheap and it had the unenviable task of trying to stay in the giant beast slipstream created by Jaws two years previously. After Spielberg unleashed his Carcharodon Carcharias on the cinema loving world, a number of film makers tried the same idea but with different creatures, Grizzly and the star studded Tentacles were just two around the same period, even King Kong got a re-imaging in 76, while The White Buffalo was also up against the Richard Harris led Orca: Killer Whale (also featuring Will Sampson) this same year. Was the 1970s film lover in need of a hybrid creature feature Western with shades of Moby Dick stitched into the narrative? One with an oddly cast Bronson playing a legendary man of the West with sun glasses and penis rot? No was the answer, but a cult fan base grew over the years and it's definitely worth more than a second glance these days.Film pretty much thrives on mystical symbolism, shades of the supernatural hang over proceedings, while the Native American culture is given adherence as well. The idea of teaming up two legends of the West, enemies at that, also gives the picture a high novelty factor. As the two men, and Warden's gruff Charlie Zane who is along for the ride, go off in search of the beast, they must overcome hostilities of the human kind as well as the harsh winter that nature has provided for the back drop. Time is afforded development of story and principle characters, this is not merely an excuse to be a carnage based creature feature, it has ideas formed around man against nature, men against their fate, often it is philosophical, even literate. Of course this has proved to be seen as pretentious by some, and once the big white animatronic thunders into view with its awesome sound effects, it's easy to be steered away from the more brainy aspects of the piece!John Barry lays a magnificent foreboding score over the top of it, a score that deserves a better film in truth, but it imbues the picture with a sense of dread, helping us to stay with Wild Bill and Crazy Horse to see if they can cut down the demon while casting off their own? The studio filmed sequences are unfortunate, but necessary considering the budget restrictions, yet the sets do have a garish quality about them, further aiding the weirdness on offer. Cast performances are perfectly in keeping with the material, Bronson as cool as ever, though it should be noted that Novak, Walker, Pickens and Stuart Whitman really are light support players here. Much has been made of the creature design, unfavourably so, but it's one of the better animatronic creations of the 70s. Put it alongside those used in the Kevin Connor pictures around this period and you can see its benefits. Though facial close ups should have been kept to a minimum!It's obviously not high art and it has ideas above its station, while some of Michael F. Anderson's editing is so dizzying your head might explode. But this is no ordinary picture, surreal and hypnotic, intelligent yet off beat, it's better than you might think and worth viewing more than once with expectations levels correctly channelled. 7/10

jeffdiggy To me this movie is one of those romp types of films where you can almost feel that you are gleaning an actual glimmer of what the times it was set in were actually like. Beyond hearing phrases like "marble hat" and "wooden suit"...which immediately reminded me of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"...where Bogart's character warned he would "let it out of you in little round holes" (reminiscent of the gunfighter saying "you'll be pushin' up daisies"!)...I really liked the ambiance of this movie...the barren gloominess of the snow and the sereneness of it all...with a backdrop of unpredictable terror provided by the/a treacherous behemoth (that ALWAYS must be dealt with) personified by the unpredictable buffalo...that was actually like a fleeting, supporting character in the grand scheme of the story. But the MAIN thing I liked (in addition to appearances by favorites like Stuart Whitman, Jack Warden, John Carradine and Will Sampson) is how it reminded me of the HARD men of the past! How they MUST have been SO rugged and resourceful. I like...no I LOVE...to escape this...OUR time of the meterosexual and the politically correct, SOFT men and people of today! Watching this movie (and choice, timeless ones from the 70s and earlier...as the 80s brought an irreversible tinge of hazy pseudo to EVERYTHING!) took me back to when men were MEN!! I am, quite frankly, disgusted by what we have become in this society. Thank God I can see a movie like this and not only feel a bit of nostalgia from when I was growing up as a starry-eyed, young kid (yes, I saw this movie a LONG time ago and always liked it)...but I can get a decided feel (especially watching old westerns) of/for what REAL men were like in our country's past...HARD men like Wild Bill Hickok and Crazy Horse...men of the frontier! The ghost-like screenplay/music (especially in the ending credits) mixed with these legendary subjects will always be alluring for grudgingly- sentimental and romantic fellows like me.