{{short description|Western subgenre}} {{Use American English|date=August 2021}} {{Use mdy dates|date=August 2021}} {{Westerns sidebar |Subgenres}} '''Acid Western''' is a subgenre of the Western film that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that combines the metaphorical ambitions of critically acclaimed Westerns, such as ''Shane'' and ''The Searchers'', with the excesses of the spaghetti Westerns and the outlook of the counterculture of the 1960s, as well as the increase in illicit drug taking of, for example, cannabis and LSD. Acid Westerns subvert many of the conventions of earlier Westerns to "conjure up a crazed version of autodestructive white America at its most solipsistic, hankering after its own lost origins".<ref name="Chicago Reader"/>
==Etymology== Film critic Pauline Kael coined the term "acid Western" in a review of Alejandro Jodorowsky's film ''El Topo'', published in the November 1971 issue of ''The New Yorker''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://notcoming.com/features/acidwesterns/ |title=Acid Westerns |date=April 1, 2013 |website=NotComing.com |publisher=Not Coming |access-date=February 27, 2019}}</ref>
Jonathan Rosenbaum expanded upon the idea in his June 1996 review of Jim Jarmusch's film ''Dead Man'', a subsequent interview with Jarmusch for ''Cineaste'',<ref name="A Gun Up">{{cite web|last1=Rosenbaum|first1=Jonathan|title=A gun up your ass: an interview with Jim Jarmusch|url=http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1996/04/a-gun-up-your-ass-an-interview-with-jim-jarmusch-tk/|website=www.jonathanrosenbaum.net|publisher=Cineaste, July 1996|access-date=12 May 2016|archive-date=4 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200804171538/http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1996/04/a-gun-up-your-ass-an-interview-with-jim-jarmusch-tk/|url-status=dead}}</ref> and later in the book ''Dead Man,'' from BFI Modern Classics. In the book, Rosenbaum illuminates several aspects of this re-revisionist Western: from Neil Young's haunting score, to the role of tobacco, to Johnny Depp's performance, to the film's place in the acid Western genre. In the chapter "On the Acid Western", Rosenbaum addresses not only the hallucinogenic quality of the film's pace and its representation of reality, but also argues that the film inherits an artistic and political sensibility derived from the 1960s counterculture which has sought to critique and replace capitalism with alternative models of exchange.<ref name="Rosenbaum, Jonathan 2000">Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2000). ''Dead Man''. London: Cromwell Press. {{ISBN|0-85170-806-4}}</ref>
In the traditional Western, the journey west is seen as a road to liberation and improvement, but in the acid Western, it is the reverse, a journey towards death.
==History== Rosenbaum used the term "acid Western" to describe a "cherished counterculture dream" from the 1960s and 1970s "associated with people like Monte Hellman, Dennis Hopper, Jim McBride, and Rudy Wurlitzer, as well as movies like ''Greaser's Palace''. Alex Cox tapped into something similar in the 1980s with ''Walker''."<ref name="A Gun Up"/>
Monte Hellman's cult film ''The Shooting'' (1966) could be considered the first acid Western.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Maltin |first=Leonard |title=Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia |publisher=Plume/Penguine |year=1994 |isbn=0-452-27058-8}}</ref><ref name="Chicago Reader2">{{cite web |last=Rosenbaum |first=Jonathan |date=1996-06-26 |title=''Acid Western: Dead Man'' |url=http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0696/06286.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929104355/http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0696/06286.html |archive-date=September 29, 2007 |access-date=June 3, 2007 |publisher=Chicago Reader}}</ref> The film stars Will Hutchins, Warren Oates, and Jack Nicholson and was anonymously financed by Roger Corman. ''The Shooting'' subverts the usual priorities of the Western to capture a sense of dread and uncertainty that characterized the counterculture of the late 1960s.
Hellman followed up with ''Ride in the Whirlwind'' (1966). Screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer is considered "the individual most responsible for exploring this genre, having practically invented it himself in the late '60s and then helped to nurture it in the scripts of others", such as McBride's ''Glen and Randa'', Hellman's ''Two-Lane Blacktop'', Cox's ''Walker'', and Sam Peckinpah's ''Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid''.<ref name="Rosenbaum, Jonathan 2000"/> Wurlitzer worked on the script of ''Gone Beaver,'' which Rosenbaum describes as "a visionary script" for Jim McBride. It was an ambitious big-budget Western about early American trappers and Indians, for which a virtually invented language of "trapper talk" was devised. The film was aborted one day before production.<ref>Biskind, Peter (1998). ''Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood''. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. {{ISBN|0-684-85708-1}}</ref> Wurlitzer's unproduced 1970s screenplay ''Zebulon'' inspired Jarmusch's ''Dead Man''. Wurlitzer later transformed his script into the novel ''The Drop Edge of Yonder''.
Rosenbaum calls ''Dead Man'' a "much-delayed fulfillment" of the acid Western, "formulating a chilling, savage frontier poetry to justify its hallucinated agenda."<ref name="Chicago Reader">{{cite web |last=Rosenbaum |first=Jonathan |date=June 27, 1996 |title=''Acid Western'' |url=http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/acid-western/Content?oid=890861 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110609021202/http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/acid-western/Content?oid=890861 |archive-date=June 9, 2011 |publisher=Chicago Reader}}</ref> More recently, Jan Kounen's ''Blueberry'' from 2004 was cited as an example of the genre.<ref>{{Cite web|url = https://www.thevelvetvox.com/2016/11/24/acid-western-zoekt-visioen/|title = De acid western zoekt het visioen|date = November 24, 2016|access-date = January 31, 2019|archive-date = March 28, 2022|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220328110320/https://www.thevelvetvox.com/2016/11/24/acid-western-zoekt-visioen/|url-status = dead}}</ref>
==Example filmography== {{div col|colwidth=30em}} *''Lemonade Joe'' (1964) *''The Shooting'' (1966) *''Ride in the Whirlwind'' (1966){{Sfn|Matheson|2017|pp=232, 242}} *''Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!'' (1967) *''El Topo'' (1970){{Sfn|Matheson|2017|p=268}} *''Zachariah'' (1971){{Sfn|Matheson|2017|pp=232, 242}} *''Captain Apache'' (1971) *''Greaser's Palace'' (1972){{Sfn|Matheson|2017|pp=232, 241}} *''Bad Company'' (1972) *''Walker'' (1987){{Sfn|Matheson|2017|pp=231, 242}} *''Dead Man'' (1995){{Sfn|Matheson|2017|pp=241, 268}} *''Wild Bill'' (1995)<ref>{{cite book |last=Armour |first=Philip |title=100 Greatest Western Movies of All Time: Including Five You've Never Heard Of |publisher= Rowman & Littlefield |year=2011 |page=21 |isbn=978-0762769377}}</ref> *''Blueberry'' (2005) {{div col end}}
==See also== * List of Western subgenres
==References== {{reflist}}
=== Sources === * {{Cite book |last=Matheson |first=Sue |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Fistful_of_Icons/AIQrDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 |title=A Fistful of Icons: Essays on Frontier Fixtures of the American Western |date=2017 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-9804-8 |language=en}}
{{Western (genre)}} {{Film genres|state=collapsed}}
Category:Acid Westerns Category:Western (genre) films by genre Category:Western (genre) subgenres