Smash TV's Gunslinger mines more than 50 classic and modern westerns and creates a hypnotic hyper-movie that shows off the formal requirements for a great hay-burner.
It's an hour long, and groups all the tropes of westerns across the genre's history: squinting, riding out, slapping leather, lighting a cigarillo, walking into a saloon and so on. It's a piece straight out of Pirate Cinema — watch it now before it's forcibly removed from the Internet by a censorship robot run by a humorless corporate conglomerate!
Gunslinger is the ultimate tribute to the Old West. The third installment in Smash TV's epic VJ trilogy, we present you with a 62 minute behemoth that embodies the spirit and chaos of the Wild West. The Back to the Future III of our trilogy, if you will, Smash TV has bid a fond farewell to the neon excess of the 80s and set the controls of the DeLorean back to 1885. A simpler – and infinitely more dangerous – time.
Painstakingly assembled from more than 50 Western movies, ranging from Sergio Leone's early Spaghetti Westerns all the way up to 90s reimaginings such as Desperado and Wild Wild West, Gunslinger serves as a humble attempt to pay homage to one of the longest running and most influential genres of the silver screen. Whether your loyalty lies with the trusty sheriff, the dastardly villain, the ruthless mercenary, the opportunistic thief, or the unpredictable vigilante, it provides a thrilling look at heroism, betrayal, greed, loss, and justice in a time when law and order was as rare as the gold men killed for.
Taking a magnifying glass to one of the most prolific genres in film history, Gunslinger aims to preserve the ideals and struggles of a unique time and place in history which becomes more and more foreign to our daily lives with each passing year. Deliberately paced to match the look and feel of a Western, it recontextualizes classic tropes of the genre to deliver a unique and fast paced narrative. A mysterious stranger arrives in town, authority is challenged, vengeance is sought, tensions run high at the saloon, a frantic horse chase ensues, and everything goes to hell in an epic gunfight you'll have to see to believe.
Gunslinger [Smash TV/Vimeo]
