Series 3, Episode 33: Philip Jenkinson on Cheese Westerns
The sketch:
(Cut to stock shot of man on horse riding into the sunset. Music swells dramatically.)
CAPTION: ‘ROGUE CHEDDAR (1967)’CAPTION: ‘FIN’
(Ordinary simple Philip Jenkinson sits at a desk simpering and pouting like a cross between Truman Capote and a pederast vole.)
Philip Jenkinson (Eric Idle): Horace Walpole’s ‘Rogue Cheddar’,
(sniff) one of the first of the Cheese Westerns to be later followed by ‘Gunfight at Gruyere Corral’, ‘Ilchester 73’, and ‘The Cheese Who Shot Liberty Valence’. While I’m on the subject of Westerns, I want to take a closer look at one of my favourite film directors, Sam Peckinpah, the expatriate from Fresno, California. SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘GET ON WITH IT’
Philip Jenkinson: In his earliest films, ‘Major Dundee’,
(sniff) SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘AND STOP SNIFFING’
Philip Jenkinson: ‘The Wild Bunch’ and ‘Straw Dogs’ he showed his predilection for the utterly truthful and very sexually arousing portrayal of violence
(sniff) in its starkest form.
(sniff) SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘WILL YOU STOP SNIFFING’
Philip Jenkinson: In his latest film Peckinpah has moved into the calmer and more lyrical waters of Julian Slade’s, ‘Salad Days‘.