Hot off the heels of George P. Cosmatos’s crowd-pleasing revisionist western Tombstone (1993), TriStar Pictures sought to have its own go at the repopularized genre. This led the studio to produce Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead (1995), a star-studded and over-the-top spectacle. Not an adaptation of Louis L’Amour’s novel of the same name, Raimi’s stylish western takes inspiration from Saturday morning cartoons and comic books instead. For all intents and purposes, it is a cowboy movie for the MTV generation.
Following the massive success of The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987), Raimi headed to Hollywood. There, he made two back-to-back films for Universal: the outlandish R-rated superhero effects bonanza Darkman (1990) and the decidedly goofy Evil Dead sequel Army of Darkness (1992). These films led The Quick and the Dead’s star-and-producer Sharon Stone to tap Raimi to direct the film, bringing him into the fold at Sony, where he later directed the 2000s Spider-Man trilogy. But Raimi acted as something more than a hired hand, exemplifying a clear visual knowledge of the western genre and a willingness to break its conventions with his own sense of style. What is most apparent in Raimi’s take on the western is how inspired he is by Sergio Leone, particularly when it comes to the use of extreme close-ups. He even pushes them farther by including close-ups of weaponry and the carnage they wreak. The Quick and the Dead is as reverential as it is upsetting to the traditions of the western. It feels tailor-made for the renegade ethos of the ‘90s, a sort of trojan horse that introduces music video quick cuts and horror movie gore into a genre where nobody would expect to find either.
Thirty years later, The Quick and the Dead feels like Raimi’s forgotten, or at least oft-overlooked, attempt at challenging genre conventions. It’s simultaneously a bona fide western and not concerned with being one, as if any reverence is accidental. It is perfect proof of Raimi’s unmatched ability to reinvent action, with its duel sequences taking a tried-and-true genre staple and injecting it with an energy and style that feels as inspired by Hong Kong action movies as it is by Batman (1989) and neo-noir films. If Sergio Leone and his contemporaries had the Spaghetti Western, Raimi offers us the Mountain Dew Western: a hyper-violent display of stylistic excesses and anachronisms that make the Old West feel new again.
The Quick and the Dead screens this morning, February 1, and Sunday, February 2, at Nitehawk Prospect Park on 35mm
