Everything a corny western movie needs

This is a list a friend and I wrote back in high school about common tropes from western movies.

The best “corny” westerns are in black and white, or in cheesy color.

TIME

• Westerns never take place during national holidays.  (This explains why you never see a gunfight erupt over the last cup of eggnog.)
• Westerns only happen during the summer.

LIGHTING/WEATHER

• It is always either sunny or dark.  No rain allowed.
• Though there are no streetlights, everyone can still see perfectly well in the dark.
• When anyone does anything in the dark, they never bump into things.

PLACE

• All town names in western movies have “Bluff”, “Flat”, or “Gulch” in them.
• Western towns have one wide street called “Main”.
• The town’s buildings are always made of wood, and are situated on a dusty, treeless stretch of plain.
• There’s always a saloon, a bank, a hotel, and a gold mine in these towns.
• There’s never a church unless the town has a significant Mexican population.
• At times of peace and quiet, there’s always far fewer people walking the street than there should be.
• Even though ranches and the town are far apart, it never takes more than 5 seconds for anyone to get anywhere. 

THE HERO

• The hero always has a cool name, ruggedly handsome, never has a mustache, and is mild-mannered, peace-loving, and kind to children and animals.
• The hero never swears.His gunbelt must have studs on it, and his badge is always shiny and everyone can see it.
• The hero is always a good card player, and ALWAYS has the fastest draw.  He can also take out 50 bad guys with a six-shooter, a knife, and a paper plate.  (Did we mention that he only needs to load his gun once during the entire conflict?)
• The hero has to have fistfights in which he rolls around in the dust, but when he gets back up, his clothes still look fresh and pristine.
• No matter what happens - fisticuffs, gunfights, daring rescues, etc. - the hero NEVER loses his hat.
• The hero is an excellent rider and he never falls off his horse accidentally.
• But even if he did, pain does not affect the hero’s performance.
• The hero can always convince stubborn people to help.  Why? Because the hero knows what’s going on, and he’s never misinformed.  He only has to think for 5 seconds to come up with a plan.  On occasion, the hero may be forced to come up with an alternate plan.  This will require a little more thought.  7 seconds, to be exact.
• If the hero pretends to be a bad guy, he is always found out at the most inconvenient time.
• The hero will always return to protect the town and defend his honor, even when running away is the best option.
• At some point, the hero will lose the pretty girl, but he will eventually get her back.
• All attempts on the hero’s life fail.  The bullets always fly around the hero.
• The hero doesn’t get in trouble for shooting people.
• The hero never, and I mean NEVER, loses. 

THE SIDEKICK(S)

• The sidekick does the menial work.
• The hero’s sidekick is in charge of comic relief.  (Perhaps comic relief is considered “menial”.)
• The sidekick must be saved by the hero.  He’s not allowed to save himself.  This is why any daring attempts at escape made by the sidekick will always fail. 
• Good guys never accidently shoot each other.
• If any good guys get put in jail, they won’t stay there for long.
• The good guys always ride off into the sunset at the end.

THE VILLAIN

• The villain is old or ugly, and sometimes both.  He must have a mustache, usually a small, black one that is waxed and curls up at the ends.
• The villain is always greedy and very mean.  We can tell because he always bangs the saloon’s swingy doors open when he’s on the warpath.
• The villain has deadly accuracy with a pistol, unless he happens to be shooting at the hero.
• The villian may be an “upstanding” citizen of the community who is secretly in charge of all the bad guys.
• The villain tries to turn the townspeople against the hero.
• When (as must always happen) the villain has the drop on the hero, he will reveal his entire evil scheme, after which the hero escapes and thwarts it.
• The villain always makes a run for it.  Usually with the loot.
• The villain must say “You’ll never take me alive!” at least once.
• Villains must always take hostage(s) when attempting a getaway.  (The pretty girl is considered the hostage of choice.)

MINIONS

• There must be evil henchmen, and they must must look evil.  (No pretty boys allowed, evidently.)
• The bad guys double-cross everyone and everything that can be double-crossed.
• The bad guys always lose.

THE PRETTY GIRL

• There’s always a pretty girl in the movie.
• The pretty girl always tries and fails to dissuade the hero from fighting.  (Women know best, but nobody listens.)
• The pretty girl never stays where it’s safe.
• Women may get picked on, kidnapped, taken hostage, but never shot.
• There must be a daring, attempt made to rescue the pretty girl.
• The pretty girl will ALWAYS be rescued, no matter how difficult rescuing her may appear to be.  (From this it may be possible to infer that rescuing the pretty girl is the easiest thing the hero will ever do in the entire movie, because he is bound to succeed.  )

THE SHERIFF

• The town’s sheriff can never handle any trouble; he always calls in the marshall (unless the sheriff and the hero are one and the same).
• The sheriff is always fair and just unless he happens to be the secret villain.
• Deputies have to be younger than the marshall or the sheriff. 

MOBS & EXTRAS

• The mob of townspeople always try a hangin’, but it never works.
• There is always one voice of reason in an angry mob to oppose the villain when everyone seems to have turned against the hero.  
• If you look carefully, you’ll usually find cattle rustlers, bank robbers, and a passel of hired guns in every western movie.
  There’s always a posse in there somewhere, attempting to “cut ‘em off at the pass”.  (And somehow there’s always a pass at which to cut people off.)
• Children can only be in westerns if they are related to the main characters.
• Western bankers (who are characteristically short, plump, balding men with glasses wearing that green eyeshade thing) are always getting robbed.

INDIANS

• In westerns, all Indians, wear buckskins, ride spotted horses, have braided hair, wear a headband with an annoying eagle feather sticking straight up from it, speak broken English, and shoot bows and arrows with deadly accuracy, yet never manage to kill main characters.
• When hundreds of hostile Indians attack a tiny ring of wagons, somehow the paleface always win.
• Friendly Indians always manage to get into trouble.

ACTION

• There has to be spectacular stunts in which no one ever gets hurt.  These stunts include falls, swinging on chandeliers, jumping on to and off of horses and runaway stagecoaches, etc.  (You’d think the fact that no one ever gets hurt would make it safe for children, but apparently it’s not safe enough.)
• No one ever goes to the bathroom or takes a shower.  (This could be another important reason why children are never in westerns, as the action would have to stop every 5 minutes for a bathroom break.)

GUNFIGHTS 

• Everyone, including the womenfolk, carries a gun.  (Thus, it is impossible to get through a western movie without at least ONE gunfight breaking out.) Naturally, the only way for main characters to work out their personal differences is by seeing who can beat the other to the draw and gun the other down.
• When main characters decide to schedule a gunfight, the time of choice is high noon. 
• In mass gunfights, there must always be at least one guy on the roof with a winchester rifle.
• During a gunfight, everyone would rather break a window with their pistolbutt and shoot through that, than simply shoot through an open doorway.
• There’s always more shooting than is necessary, just to keep things exciting.
• Six-shooters are only allowed to have deadly accuracy when wielded by the hero and the villain.  The rest of the time, they couldn’t hit the side of a barn at 5 yards.
• Only extras get fatally wounded, unless it’s the father of the pretty girl. 
• The guy on the roof with the winchester rifle always gets killed first. 
• The wounded never scream, cry, or say “Ow!”.  They only press their hand to the wounded area.
• No blood is ever shown
• If extras on horseback are shot, they fall to the ground and die, unless they are bearing vital information to the hero.
• Any good guys left for dead will live, or survive only long enough to fulfill their purpose of existence in the plot.

DEATH

• There’s never a death that isn’t dramatic.
• It takes 2 seconds for an extra to die, but the death of a main character requires 5 minutes of drama.
• Dead bodies never stiffen up.  They always stay conveniently limp so that people can carry them.
• Anyone can carry a dead body with ease.  The preferred method is over the shoulder.
• Anytime a main character dies, their heads fall back or roll limply to one side.

HORSES

• You can’t have a western movie without horses.  (None of this horseless carraige nonsense!)
• Horses are always saddled, ready, and waiting.
• The horses always run at warp 9.  (A-ha!  Now we know why it never takes anyone very long to get anywhere!) And no matter what, the hero’s horse is the fastest.
• Horses never get shot.  (The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have a fit if they were.)
• The only time horses get spooked is so that the hero and the pretty girl can meet.
• Main characters never have brown-colored horses.

SALOONS

• Saloons have tiny swingy doors and a big mirror behind the bar. 
• The only appropriate background music for a saloon is a Scott Joplin rag on a tinny piano.
• Fistfights are best started in saloons.  If fact, anyone worth fighting with is always at the saloon.  (Very convenient...)
• The bartender is a permanent fixture behind the bar.  (He has no life, so he never leaves.)
• The western drink of choice is whiskey, and the bartender knows everyone and their “usual”.  (Not that hard, since everyone drinks whiskey.)
• The hero never has to order a drink.  It’s always THERE.
• No one ever drinks sitting down.  They must do it while leaning on the bar.
• No matter how long main characters have been drinking they never seem to get drunk.
• It is rare to see anyone pay for their drink.
• Poker games only take place in the saloon. 
• A poker game is always won by an obnoxiously high hand.
• When playing poker, someone always cheats and starts a fight.
• No one’s hands hurt after engaging in a round of fisticuffs.
• In mass brawl in a saloon, the following must always happen:
•     a) All the liquor bottles get broken, yet shot glasses remain intact.
•     b) People only get knocked out when hit from behind with a chair.
•     c) Someone must ALWAYS swing from the chandelier.
•     d) The large mirror behind the bar must get smashed

STAGECOACHES

• Stagecoach security measures are notoriously lax. 
• It is impossible for a stagecoach to drive through a western movie without getting held up and robbed by bandits.

FEUDS

• The children of feuding families WILL fall in love.
• Any family feuds continue until near the end of the movie, when they unite with the hero to get the bad guys.

WESTERN MOVIE PLOT

• Everything and everybody is always saved in the nick of time.
• The audience always anticipates what is going to happen, but the movie characters never do.
• The townspeople never figure it out until the very end, and then it’s 15 minutes after the audience figured it out.
• If the hero wears a mask, no one ever figures it out until the very end, and only if he voluntarily removes it.  (You never hear “Hey, you’re ____!”)
• When the hero takes off his mask, everyone is more surprised than they should be, and they say “I should have known!”
• There’s always some dippy joke at the end.