The Outlaw Josey Wales | 1976 | UK Quad

The Outlaw Josey Wales is a 1976 revisionist Western film directed by Clint Eastwood and produced by Robert Daley. The screenplay was written by Phil Kaufman and Sonia Chernus based on author Forrest Carter’s 1973 novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales. The novel was later republished and retitled to Gone to Texas, as shown in the film’s opening credits. The Outlaw Josey Wales is set during and after the American Civil War and stars Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney and John Vernon.

The storyline follows Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer whose family is murdered by Union militants during the Civil War. Driven to revenge, Josey Wales joins a Confederate guerrilla band and makes a name for himself as a feared gunfighter. After the war, all the fighters in Josey Wales’ group except for him surrendered to Union officers, but they end up being massacred. Wales becomes an outlaw and is pursued by bounty hunters and Union soldiers as he tries to make a new life for himself.

Principal photography began on 6th October 1975 in Lake Powell, a man-made reservoir on the Colorado River, straddling the border between Utah and Arizona, United States. Filming was not without controversy, with a rift between Clint Eastwood and Phil Kaufman developing as Kaufman insisted on filming with a meticulous attention to detail, which caused disagreements with Eastwood, not to mention the attraction the two shared towards Locke and apparent jealousy on Kaufman’s part in regard to their emerging relationship. Kaufman was also less happy with the novel’s political stance; he felt that it had been “written by a crude fascist” and that “the man’s hatred of government was insane”. He felt that this particular element of the script needed to be severely toned down, adding later, “Clint didn’t, and it was his film”. Kaufman was later fired by Eastwood, who took over the film’s direction himself.

When The Outlaw Josey Wales was released it widely acclaimed by critics, with many seeing Clint Eastwood’s role as an iconic one, relating it with much of America’s ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War. On Rotten Tomatoes it currently holds a rating of 90% with the general consensus being, “Recreating the essence of his iconic Man With No Name in a post-Civil War Western, director Clint Eastwood delivered the first of his great revisionist works of the genre.”. Roger Ebert compared the nature and vulnerability of Eastwood’s portrayal of Josey Wales with his “Man with No Name” character in the Dollars Trilogy and praised the atmosphere of the film. On The Merv Griffin Show, Orson Welles lauded the film, calling Eastwood “one of America’s finest directors”.

Commercially, The Outlaw Josey Wales was a huge success at the box office. It was made with an estimated production budget of $3.7 million it went on to take $31.8 million at the US box office. In 1986 a sequel was released called The Return of Josey Wales with Michael Parks playing Josey Wales.

Share this...

We don't have adverts, random pop-ups or nagging messages to subscribe to our newsletter anywhere on Poster Collector and we intend to keep it that way. All we ask is you share the with a follow/like on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest.

If you liked the website, found it useful and would like to help with its continued ad-free development, you can make a donation via PayPal. Small or large, it doesn’t matter, every little helps!

We thank you for your continued support.