ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher

Gary D. Rhodes is Professor of Media, Oklahoma Baptist University. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (2012), and The Birth of the American Horror Film (2018). He is a founding editor of Horror Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Rhodes is also the writer-director of the documentary films Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004). Robert Singer, Professor of Liberal Studies, CUNY Graduate Center [ret]. He received a Ph.D. from New York University in Comparative Literature. His areas of expertise include literary and film interrelations, interdisciplinary research in film history and aesthetics, and comparative studies. He is the ReFocus: American and International Film series co-editor for Edinburgh University Press. He has written and directed several independent short films and co-produced the animated film, Ulalume (2022). Among his more recent publications are Consuming Images: Film Art and the Television Commercial (EUP, 2020), co-authored with Gary Rhodes, and “A View from the Boardwalk: The W.P.A. New York City Guide and Coney Island Hypertext,” in Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project, ed. Sara Rutkowski, (2022).

The diversity of approach and the individuality of the writing come together for a common focus with such clarity and illumination, resulting in Refocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher being an essential read. It is the publication that fans of Budd Boetticher have longed for.'

• DedicationIntroductionSection 1 introductionChapter 1: "I never did think he was crazy": Mystery and Criminality in Boetticher’s Psychological Noirs, by Marlisa SantosChapter 2: On ethics and style in Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), by Fredrik GustafssonChapter 3: Domestic Tension and Male Hysteria: The Killer is Loose (1956), by Tony WilliamsChapter 4: The Killer is Loose (1956) and the Televisual Dissolution of Film Noir, by Hugh S. ManonChapter 5: Adventures on the Small Screen: Boetticher, Warner Bros., and Maverick, by David J. HoganChapter 6: The Signifying Heel: Boetticher’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), by Robert SingerSection 2 introductionChapter 7: The Ranown Cycle: Budd Boetticher’s "New Look" Western Programmers in 1950s Hollywood, by Zoe Wallin and Karina AveyardChapter 8: Framings, Motifs and Floating Poker Games in Seven Men from Now (1956), by Steve NealeChapter 9: The Ranown Style: Mapping Textual Echoes, by Lucy Fife DonaldsonChapter 10: You Were Married, But You Never Had a Wife: The Use of Space in the Westerns of Budd Boetticher, by Christopher MinzChapter 11: Ideology and Boetticher’s Westerns from the late 1950s, by John WhiteChapter 12: Outlaws Without a Cause: Generational Conflict in Budd Boetticher’s Ranown Cycle, by Brooks E. HefnerChapter 13: The Box in the Desert: Budd Boetticher, Breaking Bad, and the 21st Century Western, by Robert GuffeyAuthor Biographies