Aren’t we well blessed with traditional cosy Picture Houses in our region, rather than those Mall located Multi-Complexes that are totally bereft of character and which have mushroomed in recent years.

Do you remember the thrill of being a child at the cinema? I’ve never forgotten the shivers of delight inherent in my early movie-watching experience. The escape into darkness and the screen that overwhelmed me with people larger than life … and later the growing realisation that movies are less a substitute for life than a frame for a more intense and moving picture of it.

Like all young boys it was Westerns I truly loved. My hero was Randolph Scott … he of Badman’s Territory … Santa Fe … Ride Lonesome … and many more of a similar ilk. The formula was consistent: he rides into town … the townsfolk don’t accept him (apart from the attractive widow who runs a kind of bed and breakfast establishment with gingham tablecloths and homemade apple pie, or alternatively, it was the saloon floozy) … There’s conflict between the townsfolk and villains … he fights and defeats the villains … the town is once again a safe place to live and he’s accepted … he then rides off!

I watched a Western on TV the other evening … got to thinking about all the cowboy movies and television series I’ve seen ‘down the days’.

The narratives have hardly changed!

All six-shooters still carry at least two-dozen cartridges. Something like a million folk are shot neatly off their horses by Native Americans with bows and arrows while moving out West to discover Beverly Hills and surf the Pacific swells. Every guy over fourteen years of age can fire a bullet four times further than any gun manufacturer ever claimed was possible, and with an accuracy that would shame a Bisley champion.

Everybody shot dies instantly, except heroes, who are hit in the fleshy part of the arm or shoulder and nursed back to health in five minutes by the application of a hot-water bandage by a comely bar girl … Character actors always wear period clothes … Whereas the hero’s outfits are by Pierre Cardin and cut to suit … Villains always cheat at cards and are the only folk sensible enough to shoot an enemy when he isn’t expecting it … Saloon filles de joie rarely pursue their true occupation, presumably because they’re too busy rushing around with all those hot-water bandages!

All in all, the West was a splendid, brawny and rampaging era, pity that rarely does anyone write a movie or TV series with some pretence to accuracy.

Since the 1950s, and classic movies like High Noon and TV series such as Gun Law and Wagon Train, the only thing that’s improved is the editing. The stories are the same old well-thumbed clichés. The heroes are the same handsome slit-eyes guys … the horses have the same incredible knack of galloping in and out of bluffs and canyons and across prairies all day long without falling down dead with exhaustion … and the girls still wear 1870s designer hobble skirts with perfectly coiffured 21st century hairstyles.

In the dialogue department characters come out with the same old philosophies such as: ‘guess a man needs a woman Hank, same as a woman needs a man … way I figger it, that’s how it’s always been and that’s how it’s always gonna be’. The hero brushes away a tear, looks to the sunset, orchestral music commences, the credits roll … then stand by for an ad for Acne ointment.