The 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.

Barry Stone is an established travel writer and author of eight books on subjects from religious hermits to mutinies in the Age of Sail to military history titles for publishers including Hardie Grant, Allen and Unwin, and Harper Collins. He lives in Sydney, Australia.