Butler's Cinema Scene

Richard Harris gives his all for love in "A Man Called Horse"

The Duke, Josey Wales, Sean Connery, a dude called Horse and Henry Fonda at his most bad-assedness…screw neckties, now you can get Dad something he’ll really like for Father’s Day.

That’s because the home entertainment industry has unleashed a slew of classic manly movies for the first time on Blu-ray…and some of them are killer.

Let’s start with the least impressive and work our way up.

CBS Home Video has just come out with Blu-rays of the John Wayne’s “Rio Lobo” and the Richard Harris hit “A Man Called Horse,” both from 1970.

Too bad these are threadbare packages with virtually no extras save for subtitles in several languages

“Lobo,” one of Wayne’s lesser collaborations with Howard Hawks (it was the director’s last film), finds former Union and Confederate troops banding together to uncover a killer. Pedestrian stuff with irritating minor perfs (especially Jennifer O’Neill’s).

More interesting is “Horse,” which 20 years before “Dances with Wolves” dug deep into the white-man-among-the-Sioux premise. Richard Harris is an English lord enslaved by Lakota tribesmen while on an American hunting expedition in the 1840s.

The first half is better than I recalled. The Indian characters speak in their native language without subtitles (it’s a very visual film) and the recreation of tribal life seems quite authentic. Not even some questionable casting (Manu Tupou, a Fiji Islander, played the local chief, while Dame Edith Evans was the crone who became “Horse’s” owner) does too much damage.

Eastwood as Josey Wales

Proving his bravery in combat, Horse becomes a true member of the tribe, enduring the painful Sun Dance in order to win the hand of the chief’s sister (Greek-born Corinna Tsopei, who looks like Central Casting’s idea of an Indian princess).

After the halfway point “Horse” goes downhill, with lots of stock wildlife footage and soap opera-ish plotting.

Thanks to the Blu-ray upgrade, the film looks terrific.

Then we’ve got an extras-packed Blu-ray of Clint Eastwood’s “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” which comes with a lavishly illustrated 34-page booklet.

Many regard this as one of Eastwood’s best films, an epic chase yarn in which a former Missouri bushwacker is chased by the bluebellies down to Texas, collecting an odd assortment of human refugees along the way.

I’ve always found its drama too unsubtle (not to mention geographically challenged…though set in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas it was filmed in California, Utah and Arizona, which accounts for those Midwestern mountain ranges). But I enjoyed the commentary track by Richard Schickel, which nicely sums up the film’s importance among Eastwood’s work. Several mini-docs are included, including “Clint Eastwood’s West” which examines his contributions to the genre.

The Blu-ray packaging for Sergio Leoni’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) is off the charts.

Watching this film it sometimes seems that Leoni was trying to shove into it every idea about Westerns that ever crossed his mind. It’s hugely

Charles Bronson gets the drop on bad man Henry Fonda in "Once Upon a Time in the West."

operatic (which is to say not particularly realistic despite the detailed production design), contrasting grungy closeups with epic long shots.

I confess that at times I find the movie’s tactile sensations — you can practically feel the surfaces of wood, steel and fabrics — far more compelling than the characters (among the players are Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale and especially Henry Fonda as a cold-blooded killer).

But the commentaries provided by Leoni historians Christopher Frayling, Sheldon Hall, and writer/directors John Carpenter, Alex Cox and John Milius are out of this world, elevating this Blu-ray experience into the stratosphere..

Seriously, these guys know the film frame by frame and are able to address not only big thematic issues but minute details of costuming and props.

Michael Caine, Sean Connery in "The Man Who Would be King"

Add five behind-the-scene docs and you’ve got a package every Western lover will go nuts for.

Our final Blu-ray release isn’t a Western, but damned if it isn’t hair-growingly manly. John Huston’s “The Man Who Would Be King”(1975)  is the best of these new Blu-ray releases, a rip-roaring yet astonishingly intelligent adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling story about two former British soldiers who in the 1870s venture into a part of Asia never seen by Europeans and set themselves up as godlike rulers.

It’s witty and visually splendid, and stars Michael Caine and Sean Connery are obviously having a grand old time.

Alas, the extras on this one are negligible. No commentary track and only a brief promotional documentary used to publicize the film way back when. There is a 34-page booklet, but it’s mostly pictures.

Still, “The Man Who Would be King” is an adventure movie of extraordinary confidence and vivid imagination.  Can’t imagine a dad anywhere who wouldn’t be proud to own it.

| Robert W. Butler