Der weiße Büffel

This rare but intriguing western deals with Will Bill Hickok ( Charles Bronson)who suffers several nightmares about an enormous white buffalo. Will Hickok join forces with Indian chief, Crazy Horse, previous to Little Big Horn battle, (here also named Worm and well played by Will Sampson) and a rifleman named Zane (Jack Warden) to track down a breathtaking white buffalo in the Black Hills . Hickok holds a dodgy obsession with the mythical animal until a spectacular final duel.

This strange picture packs nois action , thrills , chills, tension , violence and semi-surreal outdoors. The highlights of the movie are the impressive mountain of bones and the buffalo attacks with the victims running afoul that deliver excitement enough. Packs something of 'Moby Dick' theme with the obstinate fight of a man to chase his prey . Other reviewers say that the white buffalo represents the fear to mortality . Features good performances from starring trio , Bronson, Sampson and Warden. Ample plethora of veteran secondaries , such as Slim Pickens as a stagecoach conductor , Stuart Whitman as a passenger , Clint Walker as a gunfighter, Douglas Fowley as a train conductor and also narrator , besides John Carradine . Other supporting cast in minor roles are the following ones : Ed Lauter, Martin Kove and of course Kim Novak in a special appearance. Although much is filmed in studio, the freezing frontiers , filthy towns and snowy locations are shot in Bronson Canyon Los Angeles, Chana New Mexico and Canon City, Colorado. Appropriate and atmospheric musical score by the classic composer John Barry.

The picture is produced in average budget by Dino De Laurentis who made a trilogy with giant beasts (King Kong, Orca, White buffalo) and creature design by Carlo Rambaldi (E. T.). The film was professionally directed by J. Lee Thomson who directed good Western ( McKenna gold) and all kinds of genres such as Sci-Fi (Conquest and Battle of planet of apes), terror (reincarnation of Peter Proud, Eye of the devil), adventures (King of the sun, Taras Bulba) and Warlike ( Guns of Navarone, Von Braun). J. Lee Thomson working from the 50s in England, finished his career making Chuck Norris (Firewalker) and Charles Bronson vehicles (Evil that men do, Messenger of death, Death Wish 4 : Crackdown, Caboblanco, St Ives). Watchable results for this outlandish Western.

I was amazed that this film was on the bottom 20 IMDB list of westerns! Like Darrell1969, I too love this movie. Maybe Bronson was not the best choice for Wild Bill, (although he is a fine western star,) but the sets, dialogue, and the entire western/horror mood of this film are just great. If the buffalo is not 100% lifelike, well, just show me some CGI special effects that don't look fake! I would rather see the jerky robotic White Buffalo than some cartoon creature that looks like it hopped out of a Super Mario game! The frontier dialogue was the best and most realistic since 'True Grit', and the whole movie maintained a sense of wild west myth and strangeness. If you like westerns with a touch of dark, gothic mood, by all means watch The White Buffalo.

...with shades of Moby Dick thrown in. Wild Bill Hickok has nightmares about a giant white buffalo (a foreshadowing of his own death?) which he feels can only be eliminated by hunting down a giant white buffalo that is striking terror in the Black Hills. Will Sampson plays Crazy Horse, also seeking the same creature after it rampaged through his village and killed his child.

It's all pure fiction, of course, and Charles Bronson's casting as Hickok is laughable, historically speaking, but, I suppose, no more so than that of half a dozen other actors over the years being cast as Hickcok. One historically accurate aspect of the film is that, rather than wearing a holster, Bronson wears a scarlet sash around his waist in which he tucks his guns, as did the real Hickok at times.

The performances are quite good, and there is a colorful supporting cast of familiar faces including Jack Warden in a sizable role as a one eyed Indian-hating frontiersman who goes on the buffalo hunt with Bronson as well as smaller guest star appearances by Kim Novak, Clint Walker, John Carradine, Stuart Whitman and Cara Williams. J. Lee Thompson (Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, Mackenna's Gold) was the director.

The white buffalo is presented as an almost legendary larger than life destructive force, not unlike a lumbering four legged version of Melville's great white whale, one that causes rocks to tumble down the sides of mountains when it lets out a giant bellow and can charge though walls of ice and snow. At one point, in fact, in a direct parallel to Herman Melville's tale, Crazy Horse will leap on the animal's back to repeatedly stab it with a spear.

The problem for the film, though, are in those pivotal scenes involving the buffalo in which, unfortunately, the creature looks exactly like what it undoubtedly was, some kind of animatronic construction, lacking any sense of reality. It's far more effective when he frighteningly bellows in the mountains than when we actually see him. No amount of fast editing can hide the artificiality of those scenes with the buffalo. The poster advertising the film said "You Won't Believe Your Eyes." That's true, but, unfortunately, not in a good way.

Although I can't find any information on what the budget for White Buffalo was, I suspect that the Dino de Laurentiis Corporation provided a reasonable amount of money considering they were 1977 dollars. I mention this because the most typical comments state that the laughable buff effects were due to low budget constraints.

But consider this. 2001: A Space Odyssey's effects were set to screen nine years before 1977 and Star Wars was released the same year as White Buffalo.

So special effects, although not CGI, were certainly advanced enough to satisfy those who have commented negatively here. So ... why were more advanced effects not used?

My theory is that the makers wanted to create a surreal, dreamlike feeling, much like it might have been to listen to an Indian storyteller around a village campfire a hundred and fifty years ago. In those times, human imagination could not have constructed the special effects images that we take for granted in our present-day monsters. Modern effects would detract from the misty, myth-like ambiance of this movie ... the myth of James Butler Hickok, the myth of Crazy Horse, the myth of the white buffalo.

When combined with John Barry's haunting score, this movie really has an effect on me. I give it an 8 out of 10 and hope to see it on a 1.85:1 widescreen DVD soon. I also hope the sound will be remastered better than the bloody mono track many of these cheap disk production companies are passing off on us!

In fact, "The White Buffalo" may on the surface appear to be just another Dino De Laurentiis production of the time like "King Kong" or "Orca", but it's rather intriguing and very moody. It's really an offbeat character study in which the character in question, none other than Wild Bill Hickock (Charles Bronson) has to face an internal demon of his by also doing battle with a real one, supposedly the last of the great white buffaloes that have mostly been wiped out.

On his way to meet his destiny, Wild Bill - now travelling under the alias James Otis - meets a variety of colourful characters, including his old friend Charlie Zane (a hearty Jack Warden) and Poker Jenny (Kim Novak, looking as beautiful as ever). Some of his encounters get intense, with the requisite amount of gunfire and bloodshed, but things really pick up once Bill and Charlie make the acquaintance of the Indian named Crazy Horse (Will Sampson), who is on his own quest to slay the beast.

The special effects may draw criticisms from some viewers, but this viewer never had any problem with them, and certainly appreciated seeing old style animatronics. The wintry atmosphere of "The White Buffalo" is incredible, accompanied by genuinely spooky music by John Barry, and the film has a wonderful spiritual quality not to be found in other collaborations between Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson. It's an unconventional choice of material for them, and today it rates as an under-rated entry on their resumes.

Much of the cast are relegated to cameo roles, but make the most out of their brief screen time: Clint Walker, Stuart Whitman, Slim Pickens, John Carradine, Cara Williams, Douglas Fowley, Ed Lauter, and Martin Kove, among others.

With this assemblage of talent and a decent script (by Richard Sale, based on his novel), this makes for fairly compelling viewing.

Seven out of 10.