THE CULPEPPER CATTLE COMPANY: definitive Nam western

My Mom HATED this movie in 1974 during a "Summer Youth Cinema" series sponsored by my elementary school ... For $2 we could go see whatever we wanted in the series on Saturdays during the Summer break, and since this was rated "PG," and a Western, we opted in. I was 6 years old. 90 minutes later she was fuming over all the gruesome bloodletting, but after viewing the DVD last night, I suspect she was none too pleased with the lack of any moral center, abundant profanity, absence of "heroes," and the generally gritty and unpleasant tone of the thing.

Needless to say I now love it! Its a wonderful time capsule of a time in America when our own ideals and previous successes were being tested in Vietnam, and pop culture, especially established genres, were reflective of this time. Together with John Wayne's THE COWBOYS, we see a previous location of American Honor and Success, The "Western," turned on its ear to show instead growing doubts about our own worth and integrity, and serious fears about the corruption of our youth. In CULPEPPER, we are shown an idealistic young man yearning to find a place in a traditionally (in terms of cinema at least) honorable profession of cowboying. When finally accepted into this world, he finds it completely at odds with his previous vision, and is confronted with ugly truth after ugly truth, and has to grow up fast. I'd suggest this is an allegory for the US Military experience of the Vietnam era, where John Wayne can recruit you, but Sam Peckinpah is your Sergeant. Big difference. Gone are the heroic ideals of the classic Western, the polished spurs and men of integrity, replaced with unwashed scoundrels who'd sooner fight amongst themselves than show charity or mercy to people in need.

The final shootout, while abrupt, is a home run in terms of the Cynical Seventies, where our scruffy anti-heroes FINALLY decide to make a stand for a worthy cause, only to be cut down in a hail of bullets and left unceremoniously to rot in the sun by the very people they were fighting for. Is this an allegory for the indifference of the South Vietnamese towards US aid? Or perhaps it symbolizes the apathy of the US war machine towards young men fighting for a cause that is half-fueled by wishful thinking and imagination? Either way, it is a shocking and poignant end to a gritty, funny, and very realistic film, and regardless of your own conclusions about relevance, it remains a great, if underrated, Nam Era Western.