The White Buffalo (1977, J. Lee Thompson)

When I was little, I used to have a recurring nightmare of something vaguely animalish chasing me down the hallway. (Even though the nightmares ceased by the time I felt like I was old enough to defend myself from some kind of predator -- 28, I think it was -- I'm still uncomfortable in long, silent hallways.) Probably not a unique dream by any standard, but certainly the details of it, expressed by my subconscious, were particular to me. But, surprisingly, it wasn't until I saw this again, the first time in almost 30 years, that I finally discovered the source of those details.

I know I saw this in a theater, probably with my dad, but I don't have any memory of it other than being fascinated by the idea of this giant buffalo and the hand-painted, melodramatic poster that was typical of Dino De Laurentiis productions of the time. I wasn't sure why I found it fascinating, and was prepared to have another childhood memory revealed to be something worthy of repression. Yet somehow, it still works. The white buffalo (hunted by Charles Bronson's Wild Bill Hickok and Will Sampson's Crazy Horse) is both ridiculous and terrifying -- it's a giant puppet, and it seems to float, stationary, kicking its legs in an absurdly exaggerated mime of galloping but without ever going anywhere, and then suddenly BOOM! it's there, stomping people into the ground or goring them with its horns. There's a great shot, repeated several times, of a long, snow-covered expanse that ends in darkness, until the buffalo emerges, a small white shape with legs kicking furiously, white and mean, that gave me a chill of recognition. Ah here it is, I thought -- the source of so much youthful distress, the kind of thing that, if seen when young and impressionable, can apparently do all sorts of wonderful damage.

(To wit: I think there's also a link here to my fascination with (if you'll forgive my dorkier-than-thou-ness) kaiju eiga, that species of monster movie that, for my money, is more onieric than the work of Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali combined. The White Buffalo and the surrounding miniature work is shoddy as realism but evocative as dream, not unlike the adventures of Mothra or the war between the Gargantuas. Even the buffalo's roar sounds like Godzilla, fer cryin' out loud.)

Too bad the rest of the movie is a slog, with Bronson's aging but still badass Hickok on his way to killing the white buffalo that haunts his dreams but constantly waylaid by old friends, old flames, and mediocre gunfights. Admittedly, the first two help set the stage for Hickok's last hurrah, confronting his history of violence and racism, painting a portrait of a man who realizes too late that he never had a dream to follow -- all of which is thematically interesting, but good god it's fucking boring. (There was a reason I had absolutely no memory of the rest of the movie.) And I'm not sure what the film is trying to say about the plight of Native Americans -- Hickok realizes he did wrong, but the film's treatment of Crazy Horse and his tribe is stereotypical and patronizing. (I felt really bad for Sampson here, doing his best to bring some humanity to a role that's not much more nuanced than one in an oater from the forties.) And at the end, during the credits, pictures of both men are placed side by side, giving each equal weight as symbols of the disappearing West, which I suppose is the filmmaker's prerogative, but it's kinda like putting Martin Luther King Jr. and the Monkees together to mourn the passing of the sixties.