Walter Hill

There are those who might try to make the case that director Walter Hill’s classic 1980 “Western”, The Long Riders isn’t the right kind of film for Studd, being a big budget Hollywood picture and all, but we of course no better. After all a film that stars not one, not two but three Carradine’s is automatically going to be a Studd classic.




David, Keith and Robert play the Youngers to James and Stacy Keach’s Frank and Jessie James, plus Randy and Dennis Quaid as the Miller brothers, and director Christopher Guest and his brother Nicholas as Charlie and Bob Ford all play their parts to perfection under Hills direction.

Heavy on action with every member of the cast getting their moment, the Long Riders harkens back to the westerns of the late 60’s with large doses of violence cut in-between lighter, tender scenes. James Keach stands out as Jessie James, playing the outlaw as hard, ruthless one moment and sad and introspective the next, and David Carradine’s Cole Younger could have carried an entire film on his own.

Just a great little film.

While I am thinking of it, I also highly recommend Hill’s other films from that era.

Of course we all know about The Warriors…




The classic B-Movie about a mythical New York filled with dangerous, fetishes gangs, all trying to kill our heroes as they complete their odyssey home.


I am also a huge fan of Hill’s 1981 film, Southern Comfort




Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine are two members of a National Guard unit lost in the Louisiana swamps who get on the bad side of a particularly vengeful group of Cajun swamp rats. 

A great film about machismo gone wrong with fatal results.

Another Studd classic.