And I can remember when it was in its prime, even if only in fragments. The movies I saw there come in fragments too—it has often taken years to figure out which fragments of memory belonged to which movie. There was a western called Johnny Guitar which, admittedly, is one of the most off-beat of its kind, and it possessed two such indelible fragments, although it would be about a decade before I discovered both segments belonged in the same movie. What’s more, I remember why they stuck in my mind when so much else was forgotten. It was because they broke the rules.
    The first came right at the beginning and featured a man sitting on his horse on a high ridge watching passively while outlaws stick up the stage down in the valley. We know this guy is the hero of the story because he has a guitar slung over his shoulder. Now, the rules insist that in such a situation, Gene Autrey or The Durango Kid would draw their six-guns and propel their fearless steed to plunge down the impossibly steep slope, and then gallop onto the scene, driving off the outlaws and rescuing the commuters. But not this guy. He just turns his back and moseys along the ridge. Outrageous! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! They would never have dared show this rubbish on Ranch Night lest the screen be peppered with peanuts and popcorn.
    But an even greater atrocity occurred at the end of the movie, when the final showdown was fought out by two women! Completely unbelievable! I couldn’t cope. There was after all a profoundly acceptable hero available for the job—the eponymous character played by Sterling Hayden, who did little except follow Joan Crawford around and try and keep her out of trouble—but he just watched on, helplessly, while the two black-haired females blazed away at each other. Even in this age of liberated women, it still looks preposterous.
“I thought you said sheilas don’t have guns,” you plagued Rosely on the way out.
“Shut up, Zed,” she snarled. Plainly it had all upset her as much as it did me.
“Those sheilas had guns.”
“I bloody wish I had one.”
“You can borrow one of mine.”
    She made a noise that girls can only make immediately before they stalk off into the night.