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Wyler Catches Fire: Hell’s Heroes — 20 Comments

  1. I love this film! It has haunted me since I first saw it ten years ago: the awfulness, and yet the majesty of the desert were what attracted me at first. I love how the fluidity of a silent western (probably with some dubbing in the bank robbery scene) and the absolute starkness of an early sound film combine here so well. This makes the contemporaneous Virginian look like little better than a filmed play. Also, the dialogue, with a few completely genuine curse words (something that only the earliest sound films even have) makes this all the more stark.

  2. I greatly enjoyed your post, Jim — I'd never even heard of this film before, but I'd like to check it out (even though I'm generally not a big western lover). I also appreciated your "then and now" pictures!