This 1977 Charles Bronson Western Is a Bizarre Experience You Can Stream for Free

Early in his career, Charles Bronson appeared in a classic horror film before a low-budget crime thriller turned him into a star. After that, the actor made quite a career with his rugged yet nuanced anti-hero persona, starring actors of all types while still managing to maintain a sense of vulnerability in the face of his otherwise stern and intense characters. Of course, as Bronson gained notoriety in the 1960s and 1970s, his CV includes many westerns. The genre wouldn’t really die out until the late ’70s, and Bronson became as much a Western legend as an action hero.

Although he is best known for his role as ruthless vigilante Paul Kersey in the “Death Wish” films, Bronson has also forged an enviable career as one of the best Western actors of all time. From Sergio Leone’s 1968 seminal “Once Upon a Time in the West” to John Sturges’ famous “Seven Samurai” remake “The Magnificent Seven,” Bronson’s western filmography is as beloved as it gets. What you might not hear much about, however, is the weird, offbeat Western version of the “Moby Dick” legend he created in 1977.

“The White Buffalo” saw Bronson play a legendary lawman obsessed with tracking down the titular beast. It’s a simple enough premise, but the film itself is a strange and often surreal experience, punctuated by dream sequences and questionable practical effects. It’s also a unique example of a genre trying to update itself at a time when the western was falling out of favor. That means “The White Buffalo” is worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet, and luckily it’s streaming for free on Tubi.

Although “The White Buffalo” is not the most well-known, it is one of Charles Bronson’s best films. This 1977 effort was the actor’s second collaboration with director J. Lee Thompson, who had directed Bronson in “St. Ives” the previous year. While that crime thriller was a fairly formal exercise that failed to impress critics, the pair’s second collaboration was anything but formal, although it also debuted to less-than-stellar reviews.

“The White Buffalo” stars Bronson as famous lawyer Wild Bill Hickok, whose dreams of a giant white buffalo became so all-consuming that Hickok decided to find the beast no matter what. The film follows him as he crosses the West in search of the buffalo, which may or may not be a legend. Along the way, he teams up with Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, played by Will Sampson, who a year earlier played the stoic Chief Bromden in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” It turns out that the giant buffalo killed Crazy Horse’s daughter, prompting the Lakota chief to begin his quest for revenge, which ultimately leads Hickock and his unlikely comrade to question their assumptions about each other.

While such a premise could have made for a haunting and thoughtful take on a Western story, much of that potential was undercut by the titular mammal, who is seen on screen in the form of a constructed buffalo that was, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Monthly Film Bulletin, a “clumsy mechanical contraption resembling a giant shaggy toy whose roars sound uncomfortably like the sounds of a growling stomach.” But there’s something about the mismatch of the film’s crazy practical effects and surreal ambition that makes it an interesting watch, to say the least.

“The White Buffalo” isn’t as surreal or subversive as something like 1970’s “El Topo,” a disturbing work considered the first Acid Western and a film to which Roger Ebert gave a perfect score. But neither is it your typical Wild West adventure, which seeks to achieve more through its fantastical elements. Even if it doesn’t always succeed, it’s a crazy adventure. If you need to know the Rotten Tomatoes score, it’s 17%. But this review score is based on just six reviews and isn’t really representative of much. The film received more positive reviews on Letterboxd and certainly deserved more praise than critics gave it at the time of its release.

More than anything, “The White Buffalo” is worth a watch, even if you’re just interested in seeing where the western genre was in the mid-’70s. That’s when the revisionist western truly emerged, with the standard archetypes of heroes and villains entirely deconstructed for a mass audience that was also questioning its own leadership in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the increasingly apparent failure of the 1960s counterculture to stem the rise of commercialism and corporate greed. Bronson’s obsessive lawman, haunted by dreams of a wild beast that may or may not exist, is a far cry from the swaggering gunmen of traditional Westerns, and although the lone figure is a long-standing Western trope, Bronson’s version was a truly unique take on that trope, aided greatly by the actor’s own inimitable nervousness. So in “The White Buffalo” you can see one of the most interesting examples of a genre attempting to evolve with the times.

“The White Buffalo” is streaming for free on Tubi.