10 Wackiest Western Movies Ever Made (& Where You Can Stream Them)

10 Wackiest Western Movies Ever Made (& Where You Can Stream Them)

Some of the most subversive westerns have a healthy dose of zany humor. These wacky westerns are available to stream online.

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The western has been a staple of Hollywood cinema since the beginning of narrative filmmaking. After John Ford and Howard Hawks established the genre with traditional hits like Stagecoach and Rio Bravo, other directors used their groundbreaking work as a springboard to create new subgenres and explore new stories and tones within the familiar western framework.

One of the ways that filmmakers have subverted their audiences’ expectations of westerns over the years is by injecting a healthy dose of zany humor into the violent storytelling.

10 Wild Wild West – Stream On HBO Max

There aren’t a lot of westerns that feature a giant robotic spider. Barry Sonnenfeld’s steampunk western comedy Wild Wild West was the first box office bomb of Will Smith’s movie star career, but it’s since been venerated as a cult classic.

Smith stars as Jim T. West alongside Kevin Kline in dual roles as a U.S. Marshal and Ulysses S. Grant. Based on the ‘60s TV series of the same name, Wild Wild West’s combination of the western and spy genres gives it a totally unique tone (one that, unfortunately, didn’t click with ‘90s moviegoers).

9 Shanghai Noon – Rent On Vudu

Tom Dey’s directorial debut Shanghai Noon combines the western genre with the martial arts genre (and also plenty of comedy). What really makes the movie work is the spectacular chemistry shared by Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in the lead roles.

The movie has sort of a “buddy cop” premise, with two mismatched heroes – a Chinese imperial guard (Chan) and a gunslinging outlaw (Wilson) – teaming up to thwart a villain.

8 A Million Ways To Die In The West – Stream On Spectrum

After providing the voice of the titular CG teddy bear in Ted, Seth MacFarlane appeared in live-action form in his next directorial feature. A Million Ways to Die in the West is a western parody starring MacFarlane as a sheep farmer who unwittingly provokes the ire of a local gunfighter, played by Liam Neeson.

The running joke throughout the movie is that life in the Old West is so rough and difficult that it’s barely worth living. People on the frontier didn’t need to get into gunfights to put their lives at risk; a mere trip to the bathroom could be a brutal death sentence.

7 Paint Your Wagon – Stream On Pluto TV

Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin were renowned for playing hard-as-nails tough guys in westerns like A Fistful of Dollars and The Professionals when they took the lead roles in Joshua Logan’s goofy, whimsical, lighthearted western musical Paint Your Wagon.

Set in a California mining camp during the Gold Rush, Paint Your Wagon was adapted from the Lerner and Loewe stage musical of the same name by Paddy Chayefsky, one of the greatest screenwriters of all time.

6 Back To The Future Part III – Stream On AMC Plus

Following on from the bombshell cliffhanger ending of the second movie, Back to the Future Part III charts Marty McFly’s attempts to travel back in time to 1885, where Doc Brown is stranded in the Old West.

From gun duels to saloon brawls, Robert Zemeckis and his team included every beloved trope of the western genre in the time-traveling threequel. There’s a climactic train robbery with a twist: stealing a train is the only way Doc and Marty can get the DeLorean up to 88mph in a pre-automobile world.

5 City Slickers – Stream On HBO Max

Billy Crystal stars in the western comedy City Slickers as a Manhattan corporate highflier who travels out to the Southwest to take part in a cattle drive ahead of his 40th birthday. Jack Palance gives an impeccable Oscar-winning supporting turn as the trail boss, Curly.

Westerns are often unrelatable because the lives of gunslingers on the frontier are so far removed from the lives people lead today. City Slickers provides the perfect intersection between familiar western motifs and relatable modern-day everymen.

4 My Name Is Nobody – Stream On Prime Video

Based on a concept cooked up by spaghetti western royalty Sergio Leone, My Name is Nobody stars Terence Hill as a kid named “Nobody” and Henry Fonda as an aging gunslinger that he idolizes. Nobody tries to get the gunslinger to return to action to take on “The Wild Bunch.”

Going back to Leone’s earliest classics, the spaghetti western has always been marked by its satirical bite and dark sense of humor, but My Name is Nobody is one of the most overtly comedic entries in the gritty subgenre.

3 ¡Three Amigos! – Rent On iTunes

Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short were all perfectly matched as the lead trio of silent film stars in John Landis’ ¡Three Amigos!. When they head across the border into a Mexican village ravaged by gang warfare, they’re mistaken for the western heroes they play on the big screen and they’re expected to liberate the villagers from bandits.

This movie is filled with laugh-out-loud moments, like the guys idly performing a rendition of “My Little Buttercup” in a dangerous saloon and Chase obliviously pouring out his drinking water in the blistering desert in front of his dehydrated companions.

2 Cat Ballou – Stream On Plex

In adapting Roy Chanslor’s dramatic source material, Elliot Silverstein reframed the story of Cat Ballou as a comedy. Jane Fonda stars in the title character, a schoolteacher who hires a gunslinger to protect her father’s ranch from a notorious outlaw.

Lee Marvin earned a much-deserved Academy Award for his dual roles as both the outlaw, Tim Strawn, and the gunslinger hired to kill him, Kid Shelleen.

1 Blazing Saddles – Stream On Showtime

Easily among the wackiest westerns ever made, and arguably the sharpest satirical deconstruction of the genre is Mel Brooks’ comedy masterpiece Blazing Saddles. Cleavon Little stars as Sheriff Bart, who is hired in an attempt to destabilize the town of Red Rock so an industrialist can tear through it with a railroad.

Brooks’ movie incisively breaks down the whitewashed myths of western movies and exposes the historical ugliness ignored by the genre’s classics. Then, in the movie’s iconic finale, Brooks bulldozes the fourth wall and breaks down the artifice of cinema itself.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/unusual-creative-western-movies-where-stream-them/

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