I'm pretty excited that there are two weird Westerns at the festival this year: The Burrowers and The Good, The Bad and the Weird. It's neat to see just how flexible the genre is, encompassing both recent Asian Westerns like Sukiyaki Western Django, currently number one in the US box office, or Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger as well as creepier business like The Burrowers or Ravenous.

And while comparisons to Tremors seem obvious, The Burrowers has actually been putting me in mind of weird Western comics, in particular Midnight Madness screenwriter Joe R. Lansdale's (Bubba Ho-Tep) 1995 miniseries, Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such.

Lansdale's old west is dirty, nasty and filled with profanity. And in that story, everybody's favorite scarred bounty hunter, Jonah Hex, tries to survive a giant worm that kills people (and horses and whatever else they get to) by biting off their heads and sucking out their viscera.(And Oscar Wilde gets in a fist fight, too).

I'm not saying that The Burrowers will be just the same. I'm just saying, how about enjoying some hot weird western action to get you in the mood?

specimens!

Giant critters underground!

Lovecraftian births and despair--in the Old West!