Sketchin’ 96

There are many films I’ve seen and covered here.  Of them, I consider the subject of this piece, the 1977 Charles Bronson film The White Buffalo, one of the strangest, most bizarre films I’ve ever seen.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing!

You can be forgiven if you’ve neither heard of or seen it.  I don’t believe it was terribly successful upon its release.

The movie’s plot is an odd variation of Moby Dick and Jaws (which was released two years earlier) but transplanted to the Wild West.  Bronson plays Wild Bill Hickok, a man who returns to an area where he is very much not wanted because of recurring nightmares he’s having involving a white buffalo.  He is forced to use an alias because there are many there who want him dead.  Hickok eventually teams up with Crazy Horse, who is also using an alias.  He will only regain his “true” name when he gets revenge upon that very same white buffalo which killed his wife and child.

The special effects of the film, especially the final stand against the beast, are often ridiculed because they look so unreal, but having seen the film following its BluRay release, I suspect the effects were very much intended to be that way.  They create a sense of these characters caught in a surreal dreamscape and, in that respect, they work.

Well, at least for me.