Kurt Russell has always been a natural for the Western genre. Escape from New York, his breakthrough into Hollywood as an adult performer after years as a child actor on the Disney lot, has its Western elements. Then, of course, there’s Tombstone, a movie he essentially co-directed off the books. But Tombstone is just one of three movies he’s made that’s firmly rooted in the genre, and all three are great. One of them you’ve likely seen or at the very least heard about: Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. The other one may very well have flown under your radar. Specifically, the Western horror film Bone Tomahawk.
It’s without a doubt as worthy of a rental as Tombstone and The Hateful Eight. At least, as long as you have the stomach for it, because Bone Tomahawk is one seriously grisly affair.
What Is Bone Tomahawk About?
Bone Tomahawk was the directorial debut of S. Craig Zahler, who has released three films, each of which are essentially B-movies with an A-level gloss and at least one A-lister on the poster. And, for the record, both the neo-noir prison film Brawl in Cell Block 99 (starring Vince Vaughn) and neo-noir cop thriller Dragged Across Concrete (starring Vaughn and Mel Gibson) are almost as fantastic as Bone Tomahawk.
The film opens on two lowlife robbers, Purvis (David Arquette) and Buddy (the late Sid Haig) as they stumble upon a Native American burial site. Buddy is brutally killed, at which point Purvis hustles to the nearest town, Bright Hope. There, he buries the latest stolen stash, which is seen by one of the town’s deputies, Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), who turns him over to Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Russell).
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That evening, a stable boy is murdered with an arrow, which the town’s resident professor links to Troglodytes, cannibalistic cave dwellers living in the nearby cliff-bound caves. Worse yet, three people have been taken by the Troglodytes from the sheriff’s office: Purvis, Deputy Nick, and the town doctor’s daughter, Samantha O’Dwyer.
To rescue them, Sheriff Hunt needs a posse, so he wrangles up Deputy Chicory and the town’s best gunslinger, John Brooder (Matthew Fox). And, even though he’s injured, Samantha’s husband, Arthur (Patrick Wilson) insists on coming along to lend a hand.
From there, the film follows a relatively anticipated quest to track down the tribe, though along the way, and especially in its finale, Bone Tomahawk delivers gruesome and grisly sequences more at home in the horror realm than in other Westerns.
How Gory Is Bone Tomahawk?
Anything that includes cannibalism is going to be a nasty viewing experience, and Bone Tomahawk is right in line with something like Cannibal Holocaust or The Green Inferno (perhaps just a small step below on the grossout scale). The easiest to stomach (no pun intended) death is a tomahawk to the skull.
One death in the film’s finale is its most talked-about scene, and for good reason. It’s basically straight out of a Terrifier movie. While we won’t recall all the specifics of the sequence, it’s fair to say it’s a sequence that will stick in your memory for quite some time, whether you want it to or not.
Bone Tomahawk is currently streaming on Netflic, Tubi, and PlutoTV.
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