<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe actor, here credited as Walter Jack Palance, exudes menace from the moment he first appears, slowly riding his horse into town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His first confrontation with Shane (Alan Ladd) is wordless, both protagonists eyeing each other up for what will be the inevitable confrontation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before that happens though we get to see Wilson pacing back and forth like a panther on the raised sidewalk outside the saloon, goading dirt farmer Stonewall Torrey (Elisha Cooke Jr.) into going for his gun then beating him to the draw (is there ever a film in which Cooke actually makes it through to the final reel in one piece?).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an aside, the film breaks with Hollywood Western tradition by showing both killer and victim in the same frame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Normally the convention is to cut back and forth between the protagonists before showing the killer firing his gun, then cutting to the victim as they react to being shot. It has been maintained that this cinematic taboo was first broken in the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti movie, \u201cA Fistful of Dollars\u201d. We suggest otherwise. Either way, poor old Stonewall ends up flat on his back in the mud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shane eventually turns up to rid the settlers of Wilson, confronting him in the saloon where all the bad guys live together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Echoing the previous conversation between the doomed Stonewall and Wilson in which the gunfighter is referred to as a \u201clowdown Yankee liar\u201d, Shane pulls the same stunt in an effort to unnerve Wilson with the following exchange:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Shane] \u201cI\u2019ve heard about you\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Wilson] \u201cWhat have you heard, Shane?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Shane] \u201cI\u2019ve heard that you\u2019re a low-down Yankee liar\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Wilson]\u201cProve it\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shane might be short but he\u2019s still the fastest of the two, blowing Wilson away with one shot and sending the killer backward into a bunch of beer barrels, creating at the same time probably one of the most satisfying deaths in Western movie history.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite not sharing that much screen time in \u201cShane\u201d, Palance\u2019s performance earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor which was quite an achievement seeing as it was only his fourth big screen appearance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hollywood did what it does best and immediately cast Palance in yet another Western, \u201cArrowhead\u201d, starring Charlton Heston and released the same year as \u201cShane\u201d. Palance played an Apache who is so devoid of humanity, Chuck is forced to break his back in their climactic hand-to-hand fight at the end.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank you for reading our article on killer cowboys. I\u2019m sure you\u2019d agree there are so many more examples we could have listed which is why we\u2019ll definitely be revisiting this subject at a later date.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Psycho Cowboys Part I We\u2019re all familiar with the usual suspects when it comes to back-shooting murderin\u2019 dry-gulch killers such as Lee Marvin and Bruce Dern as featured in the Westerns of John Wayne. I thought maybe we\u2019d wander off … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6666"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostlywesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}