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DVD REVIEW ARCHIVE
THE WHITE BUFFALO (1977)
Sanctuary Records / CMV DVD (region 2)
d. J. Lee Thompson; pr. Dino De Laurentiis, Pancho Kohner; scr. Richard Sale; novel. Richard Sale; ph. Paul Lohmann; m. John Barry; ed. Michael F. Anderson; cast. Charles Bronson, Will Sampson, Jack Warden, Clint Walker, Slim Pickens, Stuart Whitman, Kim Novak, Ed Lauter, John Carradine

J. Lee Thompson was a British director who came to America after he received some hostility from ritish critics. It is said that his career declined in his move to becoming such an international figure, but in the late 1970s and through the 1980s he formed an actor-director partnership with actor Charles Bronson for a series of reactionary, violent and even nihilistic films, often murky thrillers. Their strangest venture together was the truly offbeat Western The White Buffalo. This bizarre Freudian western was supposedly a psychological journey, about legendary gunslinger Wild Bill Hickock’s death obsession. The white buffalo of the title was also a Moby Dick allegory and the film a peculiar hunt for this symbol of death. However, it so confounded the studio that they had no idea what to do with it. It was too unconventional for general release and most in the studio also felt that it was just downright awful as a movie, not a good combination for prospective box-office. The studio thus kept it under wraps for some time, and afraid of the critical reception it would receive, released it quietly and without prior press screenings. Although still reviewed, it was more or less “just for the record”. It flopped badly, bringing Bronson’s run of 1970s hits to an end.

Before the creative partnership between director J. Lee Thompson and actor Charles Bronson segued in the 1980s into a series of bleak, heavily misanthropic thrillers, they made a number of unusual, adventurous vehicles.

Sadly, these early films, whilst departures for Bronson, were not welcomed by the majority of his fans and were in turn excoriated by critics. Indeed, when the studio saw the version of The White Buffalo delivered to them they were uncertain of what to do with it and so concerned over its probable critical reception that it was not given the usual press pre-screening. Reviewers had to catch up with the dumped film on their own, correspondingly aware of the odour of embarrassment that hung over such a release process. The vitriol that accompanied The White Buffalo was particularly savage – claims of pretentiousness, ridiculousness and pointless weirdness infiltrated most responses until the film was dismissed outright and forgotten. The years since its release have not been kinder to it, nor prompted any suggestion of re-evaluation. Effectively considered Bronson’s first flop, the film is mentioned as the one movie that ended Bronson’s superstardom of the 1970s, the decade that saw him enshrined as a major international drawcard. Thus, as the film that turned the tide of one of the screen’s great superstars, its curiosity value perhaps still unfairly outweighs its unheralded accomplishments.

The White Buffalo takes place in the winter of 1874. Wild Bill Hickok (Charles Bronson) is plagued by nightmares about a rampaging white buffalo. A tormented man, he returns to the town of Cheyenne, where he soon meets an old acquaintance (Kim Novak).

Meanwhile, the Sioux village of Chief Crazy Horse (Will Samson) is attacked seemingly by the same creature that inhabits Bronson’s dreaming. Samson’s baby dies in the attack and Samson is told by an Indian mystic that the baby’s soul will not rest until the white buffalo is killed. Samson thus sets out to destroy the creature. Bronson soon realizes that he has many former enemies (including a troop of Army soldiers led by Ed Lauter) to deal with. He travels by coach back to the gold mining boom town in the Black Hills (Deadwood?), there finding an old friend (Jack Warden). Soon, Warden and Bronson set off into the snowy wasteland to trap and kill the white buffalo, whose hide would be a valuable collector’s item, the supposedly extinct freak of nature being a prized hunting trophy. On the trek, the two see a Sioux Indian (Samson) in the distance but are unaware of who he is. Thereafter, Bronson and Warden are surrounded by a group of Crow Indians who have ventured into Sioux territory. Samson, from a distance, helps them. A respect between the two warriors develops and eventually they come together, finding that they have a dual obsession with the titular abomination.

Few Westerns have been as deliberately nightmarish and even fantastical as is this most ambitious, if symbolically overloaded, movie. With allusions to the monster-of-nature film Jaws and to the literary classic Moby Dick, director Thomson clearly intends his film as a mythic piece.

In particular, the film is so filled with deathly portent and dense symbolism that it seems intent to engage in an assessment of the role of the fear of death in the creation of legend and myth. Thus, Bronson’s terror of the white buffalo represents his fear of impending death, specifically that such may be the fate that could befall him at any time. The creature itself is perhaps even loosed into the world as a projection of Bronson’s own psychological torment, although this point remains tantalizingly ambiguous: in a film where nothing is seen as random, the emergence of the creature suggests a force of nature born of man’s fear of being fated to certain death. Thus, the buffalo is arguably a monstrous synthesis of Fate (the entity) and death (the design) – its attack on the Sioux village confirms a higher purpose as it brings together two legendary warriors and in essence challenges them to defeat its mighty power. Bronson and Samson represent humanity’s hope here – enemies united to reclaim the mastery of their own fate by in essence killing death. By doing so, the filmmakers feel that these characters will deserve their elevation to mythical importance.

When Bronson recognizes the landscape as that from his dreams, he tellingly refers to it as “Armageddon”. With this comment, the film’s overwhelming portent becomes Biblical in implication, though this is arguably risible by this point due to an uneven, sometimes silly script.

Nevertheless, in the film’s terms, the battle between man and beast is an allegorical apocalypse – a pre-destined confrontation in effect to allow humanity the chance to assert its right to dignity, self-determination, fearlessness and even thus perhaps to life itself. To thus knowingly master fate is to live in legend and myth, although its bleak ending renders such a triumph decidedly ambiguous for Bronson at least. What is left beyond the fear of a fated death but the awareness of one’s place in an immortal realm? Thomson thus seems to want to explore how it is that men attain such self-aggrandizement. However, their self-importance ultimately affects both Samson and Bronson (who captures the quality of self-doubt in obsession) in this relentlessly nightmarish vision of the search for immortality. Although this is a fascinating intention and makes for some unusual and provocative viewing, the film itself is finally too overloaded in its symbolism (to the point of murky incomprehensibility) to meet its over-riding ambitions. It emerges in the end as a frustratingly flawed attempt to visualize a dramaturgy based on the pathological fear of death.

The 4:3 fullscreen transfer is a disappointment, taken from a slightly worn and occasionally speckled source print. It has a gauzy, video-type grainy look to much of it, and poor black levels although does convey at least the intent of the original design.

The film itself is a grotesque studio-bound fantasy-western. It is deliberately artificial, though nicely contrasts the orangey glow of the initial scenes to the snow-bound wasteland of the second half. Images of death are quite powerful, particularly the massive piles of white buffalo bones that line the train tracks as Bronson journeys into Cheyenne – and ever further perhaps into the valley of the shadow of death itself, though still fearing evil. Buffalo point of view shots are well used as are wide-angle lenses for added distortion. Landscapes are inhospitable, and in one scene, rocky cliffs seem alive, neatly recalling the malevolent western landscape director Thomson created in the latter stages of MacKenna’s Gold. All settings seem otherworldly and even dislocated and the boom town is especially grubby, its interiors being murky, crowded and smoky, full of human refuse. The journey into an ever-deepening, pervasive and deathly cold is well conveyed although the title beast is somewhat less imposing than is needed to carry the film’s sense of horror. There is a nice use of firelight warmth and finally a red light to accompany the bleeding creature.

The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono and is rather flat. A moody John Barry score adds a horror-movie quality to the proceedings, and the beast’s bellowing roar is suitably unnerving.

The score and sound design carries a sense of ominous solemnity but little is made of the film’s opening use of a voice-over narration by a minor character – though it has a quality of story-telling and reminiscence that suggests the film’s stress on myth-making. Dialogue is often awkward although there is some deliberate humour. Sadly, much of Samson’s vocal delivery is terribly mannered in that stilted, mock-epic English so often equated with American Indians that it has become a sad cliché. This mannered speech undercuts the “importance” of what is actually said, although the brief speech about progress vs. greed (as perhaps needed evidence of the presumed fall of mankind) is convincing. The wind mixes well with the score as these characters get deeper into the snowy mire. Although minor ambient details (footsteps, gunshots) are well utilized, the score propels the film to its final conflict between man and beast. The off-screen use of the beast’s growl is notable for it neatly suggests the skulking malevolence behind this force of nature, as if the creature does act truly by purpose – intending to bring Bronson and Samson together and kill them as if doing so would destroy humanity itself.

FURTHER READING
Producer Dino De Laurentiis continues an Obsession with Moby Dick in Revenge of Nature horror film (read more)