10 Weird Westerns You Probably Haven’t Seen (But Should)

Weird Westerns take the trappings, characterizations, and motifs of the genre into entirely wild and uncharted territory. These films usually combine tales of the Old West with horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, taking viewers on grotesque, bizarre journeys.

Weird Westerns rarely make it into the mainstream, with a few notable exceptions: the steampunk disaster Wild, Wild West and the equally disastrous Jonah Hex. Most weird Western titles occupy a coveted niche among cult movie buffs. To this day, filmmakers continue to reinvent the wheel when it comes to reimagining the world of cowboys, drifters, and those who cross their paths.

10 El Topo (1970)

Experimental, avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky wrote, scored, directed, and starred in the ultimate weird Western film: El Topo. Filmed in Mexico, the narrative focuses on the titular character, a stylish drifter wandering through the desert on horseback with his son.

El Topo is no typical movie, even by weird Western standards. Its nonsensical, trippy plot delves into heady ideas about religion, philosophy, and enlightenment.

9 Ghost Town (1988)

The tagline for Ghost Town is a great primer on what to expect from this movie: “The good. The bad. The Satanic.” In the film, a small-town Arizona sheriff ventures into an Old West ghost town in search of a missing woman, where he comes to discover the abandoned settlement is actually occupied by ghosts and other supernatural entities.

While it suffers from a predictable storyline, Ghost Town contains some pretty engaging dialogue and visually-stunning sequences. It was never released on DVD, but Scream Factory finally put it out on Blu-ray in 2015.

8 Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Director Sam Peckinpah claims that Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is the only one of his films released as he envisioned it, lacking edits or cuts from studios or producers. This violent neo-Western stars Warren Oates as Bennie, a bartender who wants to collect the large bounty on a wanted man.

Along with his girlfriend, Elita, Bennie leaves Mexico City in search of Alfredo Garcia. They cross paths with deadly criminals and other bounty hunters, where Bennie is forced to contend with the dire consequences brought on by his own obsessive desire to finish the mission.

7 Ravenous (1999)

Antonia Bird’s Ravenous is set high up in California’s Sierra Nevadas in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war. This gritty horror venture stars Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, and David Arquette.

Pearce plays Colonel John Boyd, who discovers a rogue fellow soldier has been resorting to murder and cannibalism to survive. As Boyd investigates, the film descends into madness, dark humor, and some very uncomfortable dining sequences.

6 The Valley Of Gwangi (1969)

This classic B-movie combines the creature feature effects of Ray Harryhausen with Old West vibes. In The Valley Of Gwangi, members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show stumble upon the Forbidden Valley in Mexico, where they discover living dinosaurs.

The stuntmen decide to capture one of the dinosaurs, a vicious Allosaurus, in order to make it part of their performance. It’s easy to imagine what happens once the predatory dinosaur finds itself among humanity.

5 Dead Man (1995)

Jim Jarmusch’s monochrome Dead Man, scored by Neil Young, is an epic hero’s journey told from the perspective of a mortally-wounded white man traversing the American frontier. Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, who is guided to his final resting place in the Pacific Ocean by a Native American man named Nobody (Gary Farmer).

Jarmusch himself coins Dead Man a psychedelic Western, as it delves into surreal and dream-like territory. The film also subverts many of the tropes developed by earlier Westerns in order to highlight white America’s spiritual depravity.

4 Dead Birds (2004)

Set during the Civil War, Dead Birds is an under-the-radar Western horror starring a seriously talented cast, which includes Henry Thomas, Nicki Aycox, Isaiah Washington, Patrick Fugit, and Michael Shannon. It centers around a group of Confederate Army deserters who became bank robbers to survive.

While holed up in an abandoned plantation after completing a heist, the gang is haunted by strange occurrences that eventually turn deadly. It may suffer from bad CGI and poor pacing, but Dead Birds contains Lovecraftian atmospherics and stellar performances from its cast.

3 Bacurau (2019)

The Brazilian film Bacurau seems to defy genre classifications, but this tale of a small town that is literally being erased off the map is full of weird Western elements. After the titular town’s matriarch dies, villagers experience one bizarre event after another that leads them to believe outside forces are attempting to destroy all trades of the town.

The classic story of developers and prospectors taking over the frontier gets a much-needed update in this film. The citizens of Bacurau fight back against the drones flying overhead, the gun-toting colonizers trying to harm them, and the socio-political forces pitched against their survival.

2 Dust Devil (1993)

South African director Richard Stanley’s second feature film, Dust Devil, is a terrifying Western opera set in the deserts of Namibia. On the run from her abusive husband, Chelsea Field’s character Wendy Robinson crosses paths with a mysterious hitchhiker (Robert John Burke).

This hitchhiker turns out to be the titular Dust Devil, a supernatural creature with shape-shifting abilities. It also turns out the local authorities believe he’s responsible for the ritualistic murder of a woman.

1 Billy The Kid Versus Dracula (1966)

Originally released as part of a double feature, along with Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Billy the Kid Meets Dracula is a slapstick romp starring John Carradine as Dracula and Chuck Courtney as Billy the Kid. This horror-Western crossover sees Dracula traveling to the Old West in order to make Billy the Kid’s fiancée his new vampire bride.

Carradine famously told an interviewer Billy the Kid Meets Dracula is the only film he regrets making. This zany feature is the work of William Beaudine, who helmed hundreds of feature films, beginning in the 1920s.

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