Movie Review: Khartoum (Blu-ray, Twilight Time)

Reviewed by Mike Heenan

By the mid 1960’s, the days of the epic roadshow were on its way out the doors of cinemas.  Mutli-plex cinemas were on the horizon, and 3 hour epics with intermissions no longer being show in large single screen cinemas for weeks on end.  Charlton Heston was the star of many epic films, such as Ben Hur, Ten Commandments, The Agony and Ecstasy, and Wayne’s World 2.  It is fitting to have him take the title role in Khartoum, an Ultra Panavision epic shot on location throughout Egypt.

Movie Review: Major Dundee (1965, Two-Disc Extended Edition Blu-ray)

There really aren't too many directors that can compare to Sam Peckinpah when it comes to his complexity as a man and all-around filmmaking talent. The director was a true visionary and did something to the Western genre that even took the violence of the Old West to a level that even the Italian Spaghetti Westerns didn't portray. Major Dundee is one of those fine examples (along with The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) that tries to do something a little unique by adding the element of the Civil War to a Western film. It's available now on Blu-ray in collector's edition two-disc set from Twilight Time and it begs for attention if you love all things Peckinpah.

Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston, The Ten Commandments, and Soylent Green) is a man on a mission to track the vicious Apaches who slaughtered dozens of folks in a village. As determined as Dundee may be, he can’t do it with a small gang; he needs an army, so he enlists the talents of a variety of soldiers, cowboys, drunks and misfits to take the journey. With the help of a war prisoner named Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris, A Man Called Horse) the men go forth on what becomes a dangerous undertaking by tracking and hopefully killing the Apaches.  As you’d expect much of the signature Peckinpah violence on display, just not near as gratuitous as The Wild Bunch. With that said, the carnage on screen is still very effective.