The Bushwhackers

11/6/2013

Pacifist Pontification. Ah, The Bushwhackers, also known as The Rebel, a Western packed to the rafters with ever watchable actors, but unfurled like an amateur homage to Oaters a decade or so before. Co-written and directed by Rod Amateau, and starring John Ireland, Dorothy Malone, Lawrence Tierney, Lon Chaney Junior, Myrna Dell, Wayne Morris and Jack Elam, film finds Ireland as Civil War veteran Jefferson Waring, who has vowed to never pick up a gun in anger again. However, upon wandering into the town of Independence, Missouri, he finds a town awash with sinister rumblings as Lon Chaney's Don Vito Corleone figure - backed by Dell's nefarious daughter - is plotting to own all the local land because the Railroad is coming and there's going to be a high premium placed on said land.