Allan "Rocky" Lane on his horse Black Jack -
Rocky and Black Jack starred in almost fifty movies together from 1946 - 1953
What is a B-Western?
So what exactly is a B-Western? What makes it different from any other movie in which two cowboys are gunning each other down in the street at high noon? Well, the answer to that is both simple and complicated.
I suppose the quick answer would be production value. As wikipedia puts it: "B movie [...] is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music)."
After talking movies ("talkies") became the norm in the late 1920's, movies continued to evolve and advance rapidly over the next few decades. More innovative filming techniques were developed and more complex story-telling was attempted. But this also brought higher production budgets. By the 1930's, movie costs had skyrocketed into the six-figure range, with as much as $1 million spent on the higher production projects.
B movies, in contrast, were forced to adhere to a strict operating budget -- which averaged in the lower tens of thousands, and could be as cheap as a few thousand dollars -- and had a rapid production schedule. This allowed studios to churn out dozens of cheap B movies in the same amount of time it took to make one bigger budget A movie. This system helped the studios allocate their average costs in a way that left more money available to the top of the line movies they were making, and also allowed them to bring in profits from their B movies while the longer turn-around time on the A movies was happening.
B movies covered just about every genre of entertainment, from hard-boiled detective stories to slapstick comedy. But the 1930's saw a massive upswing in popularity for one particular type of B movie: the western. Studios were quick to realize what an accidental gold mine they'd uncovered and began heavily focusing on the production of these B-Westerns. What had started out as a quick and easy cash grab would go on to become a cultural phenomenon that helped define the next twenty-five years of pop-culture and film making.
"A vs B" in Westerns
Besides production value, what really sets B-Westerns apart from their more expensive counterparts, the A-Westerns (or "adult westerns" as they're often called)? Originally, B-Westerns were only a quicker and cheaper way of churning out movies while the studios focused on their higher quality productions. But as the popularity of these one-hour cowboy adventures began to take off, they quickly started forming their own sub-genre of film making. As with any genre in entertainment, you could break or bend the rules as much as you wanted, but there was still a more widely accepted "average" or "norm" for what to expect from these movies.
B-Westerns quickly formed a recognizable template which could be easily copy-pasted into each new installment. You had your wholesome cowboy hero (often in the role of a lawman); the scrappy heroine who's ready and willing to throw hands with anyone who gets in her way; the mustache-twirling villain who is easy to root against with how unapologetically, cartoonishly evil he is; and, of course, the goofy sidekick to provide the movie's comic relief. But there was one more element that became such a hallmark of the B-Western genre that even the studio executives recognized how important it was to the marketing and success of these movies. That magic element was the phenomenon known as the Wonder Horses. (Check out the "Wonder Horses" page for more information on these goregous steeds.)
I'm going to toss away any pretense of objectivity here. I love B-Westerns, while the more well-known A-Westerns have never personally appealed to me. Why is that? What makes such a huge difference between the two?
For me, one of the biggest differences is in the characters. More mainstream westerns, especially from the 40's and 50's era of filmmaking, had very specific ideas of how a cowboy hero should act. They tended to be tough, six-foot high, stern no-nonsense attitude, and could outdraw any gunslinger in the west. They were, essentially, exactly what you picture when you think of a John Wayne western.
In contrast, the B-Westerns were a bit unusual in how they let their cowboys behave. They had their own strict rules (brought about by the knowledge that a significant portion of their audience was young children) but not in the same way as the adult westerns of the time. These heroes were never allowed to draw first or be the one to start a fight, they rarely killed, and they couldn't see another person in trouble without automatically jumping in to help regardless of the consequences. But, on the other end of things, they were also allowed to be vulnerable in a way you wouldn't see the A-Western stars. They weren't always the biggest guy in the room, or the fastest gun in the west. They could lose fights; they were allowed to make mistakes and then own up to those mistakes; they sometimes didn't get the girl in the end. They were flawed and human in a way that made them so much more relatable than most cowboy stars of the classic movie era.
The story-telling was also noticably different. These writers had usually about an hour to wrap up the whole story, so things generally moved at a good fast pace and didn't waste too much time on side plots or shoe-horned in romances. There was plenty of action to keep the kids entertained, but the need to keep it cleaner meant that these sequences couldn't solely consist of gunfights; instead, we got treated to a lot of horseback chases, runaway stagecoaches, fist-fights, and an absolutely ridiculous number of fires and explosions. The plots themselves could be a bit formulaic at times, but they were always clean and fun, and the movies that did try to set themselves apart with a different plot style are truly memorable.
What makes a B-Western so great? For me, they're just fun. It's really as simple as that. I love the more human and relatable characters, the wholesome (if sometimes cheesy) stories, the over-the-top action sequences, and the westerns tunes that will get stuck in your head forever. I like watching a movie that wraps up the plot in an hour and finishes with a satisfying feeling as you watch the cowboy ride off into the sunset.