This is the slowest charge in the history of military charges. I know the immigrants are pushing a large log cabin tank on wheels, but pick up the pace. It would be more energy efficient to just run and hold the logs as a shield, or attack using the cover of the Stock Growers Association’s own tobacco smoke. In military lingo, this is referred to as a Lucky Strike.

Still charging. The only slower charge I can think of was in the turtle, snail, sloth, public wi-fi war of 1812. Have you ever seen a sloth load a musket? It takes forever! Especially if it’s trying to check online train timetables at the same time.

The Stock Growers Association opens fire, closes water and leaves wind ajar. The immigrant army trudges forward millimetre by millimetre at the speed of daffodils, as bullets ricochet off the wood. Once more, so much time in this movie is wasted in transit. There’s so much travelling, you need a good podcast to listen to while waiting for the characters reach their destination.

They’re still charging! WTF?! Hmm, I might download that.

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It’s also a beautiful morning in Johnson County. Good battling weather, according to Jim’s weather app. It’s a feature of modern smartphone forecast programs I miss. Why doesn’t Pocket Weather tell you how appropriate the weather is for waging war? Lousy peace loving modern corporations.

I should clarify that in the 1890s a weather app meant a weather apprentice – a small boy who you’d pay in brandy to stare at the sun every morning. It was a dangerous job, but most were able to use the brandy bottles to fashion themselves corrective eyewear to counter the sun damage.

The two sides are ready to fight. Jim rides behind the immigrant forces’ lines ordering them to surge forward. Slowly, they push makeshift wooden tanks toward the Stock Growers Association. As an aside; the enemy is a stock association? This film really is the Phantom Menace. Anyway, the tanks are pretty impressive. They’re like log cabins on wheels. How did they knock them up in one night? Must have had a working bee. Oh, so that’s why it was important to establish that Jim doesn’t suffer hay fever – a giant bee must have helped them construct log tanks. It all makes sense, unlike the Phantom Menace and why my leopard went missing.

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And to understand that Giant Bee part, read Heaven’s Gate Minute by Minute: 18 of 229

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The distant dirges of battle weary immigrants float through the Stock Growers Association’s makeshift fortification, much like the cigar smoke from that guy and that guy and from the cigarette of that guy, or the match smoke of this guy. Seriously, who sponsored this scene? British American Tobacco? There’s more smoking advertising in this sequence than a ’70s Grand Prix.

Is anything going to happen, or are we to be treated to a series of ‘smoke looks good on film’ moments? There’s not one person without a cigar or cigarette hanging from their mouth. It’s like a precursor to Mad Men, or hipsters in a northern suburbs beer garden; though the mercenaries’ beards are cleaner.

A trooper who is asleep even has a smoke resting on his lip. It’s like the cigarette is sleeping too. Both must be exhausted. The cigarette especially looks burned out.

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Jim arrives at the makeshift immigrant pillow fort to wander through and not say much. I understand the Western trope of the quiet hero who says what only needs sayin’, but he’s so distant, measured and standoffish. I think some time ago he graduated from silent, strong leading man, to out-and-out jerk. In the previous minute he muttered to Ella, “You alright, Ella?”

At the time she was standing over the bloody corpse of her lover. What response did he expect?

“Yeah peachy, Jim. I am, like, so fine right now. You wanna grab a soda, invent basketball and shoot some hoops?”

“Got a ball?”

“Hmm, no. Oh! But my dead lover – you know, the guy at my feed covered in bullet holes? He may have on in his cabin.”

“I like cabins.”

“Oh, Jim… the things you come out with! Ha! Ha ha ha! Delightful!”

Nate grabs Ella’s ankle, moans and gasps, “Get me a coke…”

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An emotional scene with superb performances as Ella farewells Nate, who is acting the shit out of playing a dead bloke.

Cut to night time and the townsfolk erect a fort out of logs and wagons. It looks like quite a lot of fun! But it would be so much better and more appropriate if they were building a pillow fort instead. Rifles mounted on the backs of arm chairs, hot water bottles for warmth, with sheets and sleeping bags stretched to form the roof. Inside they can watch movies or tell ghost stories – like the one about Old Man Barton. He was a farmer who kept a ceiling fan as a wife. One day, Barton was stroking his turnips with a croquet mallet, when he heard a strange noise coming from the barn.

Cautiously, he edged inside the barn to discover a pile of old magazines had turned a gun on itself , splattering glossy pages all over the walls. Five years later, Old Man Barton canceled his subscription to Women’s Weekly.

*Shiver* My hair would stand on end when that one was told around the campfire. Oh to be young again.

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What needs to be commended is Christopher Walken’s brilliance at playing a corpse. The rumour is that Michael Cimino killed Christopher to capture a realist performance. A medic would revive Walken between takes, before thrusting him back into cardiac arrest when the cameras rolled.

This is why Walken had severe reservations about playing a ghost in Sleepy Hollow. He still has nightmares about Cimino’s potassium injections and is suspicious of any director who wishes him to play a dead character. When Tim Burton offered him the role, Walken screamed, turned and ran straight into a tree. It was at this moment that Burton knew he was perfect to play the Headless Horseman.

Another sticking point was that Walken doesn’t like Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Walken has always felt Irving’s frequent use of the word ‘pedagogue’ was confusing and contributed heavily to him becoming addicted to Coca Cola. Fortunately for Tim Burton, the Coke addiction rotted Walken’s teeth and saved the production of Sleepy Hollow from spending money on decaying teeth prosthetics.

Coke?

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Jim is on the move. He saddles up and rides out onto the main street. He circles on his horse… and circles again… and again. It’s nice to see Michael Cimino inject some dressage into his film. It’s severely lacking in modern cinema. Think about it. When was the last time you saw some decent, honest dressage in a movie?

I know what you’re going to say – “Herbie Rides a Horse and Performs Dressage.” True, but that was a made for television movie, so it doesn’t count. And nor does Herbie anymore after hitting his head during a take and losing the ability to calculate basic arithmetic.

It was a very funny telemovie, I must admit. There’s this one scene where Herbie has to put down his own horse, then cut it up into horsemeat because Don Knotts is destitute. He’s crying and Don Knotts is hitting a kid… Well, it’s not as funny when you retell it. Still, if you’re into wanky upper class ‘sports’ then it’s worth finding a limited edition laser disc copy for a look.

A reprieve from the battle. Ella rides to Nate’s cabin and finds him, well, eh… no longer in the land of the living. Well, his body is, but the spirit has departed… actually, I’m an atheist, there is no spirit, so… he’s fricken dead alright people! Completely dead! Carked it! And no amount of politeness around the fact is going to bring him back!

Well, it might. Good manners brought my aunt Rita back from the dead. The mortician asked me, “Would you care for the deluxe funeral package?”
I said, “No, thank you,” and she sprung back to life. Had I said, “No effing way,” the tart would still be dead. Seriously though, she left us with a mountain of debt and left her prized chimney collection to the other side of the family. If she wants a deluxe funeral, she can bloody pay for it.

RIP Nate. You’re next Rita.

It’s subtly woven into the action, but I believe this minute to be an exposé of poor wagon driver safety in the nineteen hundreds. People fly out of them at the smallest bump in the road. Why isn’t anyone wearing a wagon seatbelt?

The answer, unfortunately, is due to a material shortage in Johnson County in the 1890s. There was only one seatbelt in the entire state and it had to be shared by every driver at once. The belt was enormous as it had to stretch and weave across many miles and many wagons. It made driving incredibly difficult and resulted in the strangulation of numerous drivers. Because it was too complicated to unstrap, the belt remained tied to you even if you weren’t operating your wagon and most citizens walked with a wagon attached to them at all times. As you can imagine, this made climbing stairs, playing bocce and trampolining an exhausting, laborious affair.

The Johnson County seatbelt was 990 miles long and its length probably contributed to the material shortage that made it necessary for the sharing of a giant 990 mile seatbelt.

SPOILER ALERT – my milk is out of date. Also, BANG! Billy is shot in the throat. Such relief. I thought nothing would shut that idiot up. No more mindless, quizzical quips from the class orator. Now, all the comic relief is going to have to come from Toby the 2ft tall, loveable CGI dragon.

The vintage aesthetic works very well for this scene. It’s very flattering on Toby. Sorry, I want to continue talking about the dusty, gritty look of this sequence but I’m just so happy the Billy character is dead. It’s so cathartic. I found myself fisting the air as he fell to the ground. But now I’m being sued by Nitrogen, oxygen and argon molecules.

Stop what you’re doing and enjoy the relief! Let’s all go out and buy a whole bunch of milk and pour it over ourselves. It’ll be so freeing. We need to live this moment together. Come on! Now! Go! Down to the milkbar. We’ll be milky, wet and free. Please, don’t use soy though – that’d just be weird.