50 Greatest Westerns

Author Barry Stone has served his apprenticeship as a western movie geek and aficionado. The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, Red River — for 50 years the western has been the only genre in a life that ‘just ain’t big enough for two.’ He has written on the history of cinema for the illustrated reference book Historica, is a regular attendee to western premieres for FOX Studios Australia, and was recently a guest of the Museum of Western Film History in Independence, California.

Intrigued by the idea of frontier wilderness, of law and order versus lawlessness, and a firm belief that ‘the better the bad guy, the better the film,’ he goes beyond the American Southwest to pay homage to the Italian and even Australian western — and, after much deliberation, he ranks them in order.