One day while sitting at the grave of his wife, Bloody Bill Anderson, played by John Russell (Lom in The Day the Amnesty Came Through and Witness to a Lynching and Deputy Marshal Bart in Which Way to the O.K. Corral?) and barely recognizable with a beard and mustache, appears with his guerrillas. Josey joins them on their murder spree until the war ends, with scenes of skirmishes between North and South shown in a blue tint. All this happens before the end of the opening credits.
The movie reverts to full color when the men are offered pardons by the Union—an amnesty, one man calls it—and all but Josey accept. He watches the ceremony from afar and the audience learns that Terrill, a Red Leg who opposes Wales, is dispatched to hunt him down and bring him to justice. Terrill is played by Bill McKinney (Lobo in the Pilot, Return to Devil’s Hole, The Man Who Murdered Himself, and The Biggest Game in the West), who appeared in several Eastwood films. This section of The Outlaw Josey Wales sets up the remainder of the movie, which lasts 135 minutes in all.
Chased by soldiers and bounty hunters who want the $5,000 reward out on him, Josey at first rides with a young bushwhacker who decided at the last minute that he didn’t want the pardon offered by the Union. Josey encounters many people on his journey south to Indian Territory, where he thinks he will be safe. Among them are a quack doctor selling an elixir, who is much slimier than Dr. Snively in The Day the Amnesty Came Through; an old Cherokee who was forced to travel the Trail of Tears—he makes a great political speech about the history between whites and Indians; a heavy-handed trading post owner and a young Navajo woman who works for him and doesn’t speak English; various bounty hunters and soldiers; and finally two pioneer women, one elderly and the other rather young, who were attacked by Comancheros as they travelled by wagon to a better life.
The former Southern bushwhacker is a veritable Pied Piper as he just tries to stay alive! Throughout these scenes, The Outlaw Josey Wales does an excellent job of showing how tough the living conditions of the period truly must have been.
Josey lives in a violent time and he is a violent man who knows only one way out when he’s pinned down, which happens on a fairly regular basis. After meeting the two white women, The Outlaw Josey Wales shifts and becomes slightly more homespun, as viewers see all the people whom Josey has collected to him settle down on a homestead by a stream outside of Santo Rio, Texas. They are threatened by Comanches but Josey resolves that situation. However, serenity doesn’t come easily to Josey and there is a climactic shootout before this 1976 movie reaches a satisfactory conclusion.
There are some interesting bonus features on the DVD of The Outlaw Josey Wales. The first comprises several screens of text describing the evolution of the movie: its origin from the book to its production by Clint Eastwood. The second bonus feature, titled “Eastwood in Action,” is seven minutes of explanation of how Eastwood made the movie; the narration is pretty corny but since it’s short it doesn’t matter.
The last bonus feature is the most interesting; titled “Hell Hath No Fury,” it’s a half hour “making of” featurette that shows the cast and crew behind the scenes as they filmed the movie. It also includes interviews with the stars of the movie, including Bill McKinney, and it was very interesting to see him as a much older man as this bonus feature was made in 1999. Immediately following the credits for this bonus feature are scenes of Josey Wales spitting tobacco, which he does throughout the movie, and Eastwood explaining the meaning behind the actions; it’s quite funny and worth waiting for. And definitely completely different than Kyle Murtry chewing tobacco!
A couple other notes: Part of The Outlaw Josey Wales was filmed in Kanab, Utah, which apparently filled in for Texas, just as Moab, Utah, filled in for Wyoming in ASJ. The soundtrack really enhanced the period atmosphere and links to two of the songs showcased in the movie, the Rose of Alabama and The Sweet By and By, are provided below.
Listen to The Rose of Alabama:
http://www.civilwarheritagetrails.org/American_Civil_War/Rose_of_Alabama.html
Listen to In the Sweet By and By, recorded in 1908:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgBQuUrcKUA
Article about the Kansas Red Legs:
http://www.legendsofkansas.com/redlegs.html
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