Top 100 Westerns

GreatWesternsWant to know the best Top 100 Westerns movies?  How about the worst Top 100 Westerns movies?  Curious about Top 50 Westerns box office grosses or which Top 100 Westerns movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Top 100 Westerns movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information…and a lot more.

Over the years we have received many requests to do Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) pages on genres.  Besides writing a Sports Movie page many years ago we had pretty much ignored those requests until just a few months ago.  Why you wonder?  We will tell you….they are very very difficult to put together (we know, get us some tissue). People write entire books on the genres…while we are confined to one web page. Recently we wrote pages on Film Noir and Musical Movies.  Both were very popular pages.  They were so popular that Wife of Cogerson said….”You know people seem to really like the genre pages…maybe you should do more of them”.  So taking her advice we went to our request Hotline and saw that Chris had requested a Western movie page.  Very quickly we realized that movie makers have been making hundreds and hundreds of Westerns for over a 100 years.  So we came up with some rules for this page.

Rules for this page:  (1) No musical westerns were included in the page.  So if you are looking for Rose Marie or Rhythm on the Range…you will not find them here.  (2) No westerns that take place in modern time of their production were included….that kicked out movies like Brokeback Mountain, Bad Day At Black Rock and The Misfits (all of these movies were listed on lots of Great Western Movie lists). (3) Comedy westerns were included….we went back and forth on this one….but in the end….the comedies made the page.  (4) We actually set up two pages for these genre.  On this page you will get our Top 100 Westerns based on critic and audience ratings.  On the second page you will get every single Western (over 250 movies) in our database…..those movies are ranked by UMR Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

John Wayne leads the way with 17 movies in the Top 100.
John Wayne leads the way with 17 movies in the Top 100.

Top 100 Westerns Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Top 100 Westerns movies by the stars of the movies
  • Sort Top 100 Westerns movies by adjusted adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Top 100 Westerns movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Top 100 Westerns movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Top 100 Westerns movie received.
  • Sort Top 100 Westerns movies critic audience rating…we start with the 100th place movie and work our way down to the Top Western

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Want more western movie information….then check out our even bigger movie page which has almost ever Western movie in our database.  Ranking 252 Westerns.

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62 thoughts on “Top 100 Westerns

  1. Okay on to the top 100 westerns according to Ultimate Movie Rankings and there are many favorites here, too many to list.

    And there’s Meek’s Cutoff again, what is that? Why is it on a list of 100 greatest westerns, when there are so many classics begging to be listed?

    There are 12 I haven’t seen from this list making 88 watched. The top 3 on the critics chart are among my top favorites, the two best Sergio Leone westerns and John Ford’s masterpiece. Good to see The Big Country in the top 10, a film I never tire of watching. The Magnificent Seven is a little low, a remake is on the horizon.

    Set in the 1920s I have never really counted The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a western, but it has Mexican bandits, shootouts and cowboy hats so yeah sure why not. 🙂

    Not sure if The Wind is a western either.

    The highest rated film I have yet to see is McCabe & Mrs. Miller, I’m not a huge Warren Beatty fan which may be the reason this one escaped me all this time.

    All in all I’d say you’ve listed most of the top rated westerns, if I were to add a few more – Silverado, The Tin Star, Jesse James (1939), John Wayne’s The Alamo I usually see listed as a western, I know it has a big battle at the end but I would have included it here. And unless I’m mistaken King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun was the biggest grossing western of them all until Butch Cassidy and Blazing Saddles came along, and it’s not on here. It wasn’t as important as Meek’s Cutoff? [wink] Couldn’t resist. 🙂

    Good work on an interesting list. Voted Up!

    1. Duel in the Sun is on the list, at least it was when I read it. Please don’t tell me that the movie nicknamed Lust in the Dust made it over to the Top 100 Westerns?

      1. Hey Flora….currently Duel in the Sun is ranked 125th of the movies we found…..it did not really come close to making this page….but on the other bigger page…..it ended up being ranked…. 33rd when looking at all aspects of a movie….box office, Oscars and reviews.

    2. Hey Steve.
      1. Meek’s Cutoff is a well done movie….but pretty depressing….one of Bruce Greenwood’s better roles.
      2. I was originally not going to add it…..it made less than a million bucks at the box office…..but at the end of my research….I did numerous website searches….under…”Top Western Movies”….if I looked at 10 lists….7 of them listed Meek’s Cutoff…..so it went back on the list. Sitting at 94th….I am thinking….in a month….as western suggestion come in….it will fall off the list.
      3. Tally count…you 88…Flora 76….me….80…..probably one of the closet tally counts ever.
      4. The Wind…..is listed as a western drama….on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes….not thinking there is a gun fight….but there is a ranch in the movie…lol.
      5. All the movies you mentioned….made it to our big western page….Duel in the Sun….was ranked as the 125th best western….Silverado…almost made this page….it sits at 104th. Jesse James is at 137th.
      6. I am sure you will be buying Meek’s Cutoff soon….it would make a good double bill with Blazing Saddle….one would be a fun movie to watch and the other would be a long drawn out ordeal to wathc.
      7. I would recommend McCabe & Mrs. Miller….if you do not like Warren Beatty….you will like how his character ends up in that movie…..hint hint….greed does him in.
      Thanks for checking out my Top 100 Western page.

  2. Hi, Cogerson.

    Seems I have been signed out of TCM again and read some comments. I continue to be an interesting source of boring people for their inspiration of new posts in the 20th Century Vole thread. Very funny!

    Isn’t it funny how Arturo de Cordova wasn’t able to make a go of it in Hollywood? I had never heard of him before TCM and frankly, I never pay any attention to him onscreen. In Frenchman’s Creek I am always watching Basil Rathbone – a frequent co-star of Kay Francis.

    Unlike Omar Sharif who spoke 9 languages fluently and was an international movie star.

    1. Sorry about your issues with TCM….the next time I am on that site I will check out the 20th Century Vote. I have no idea who Arturo de Cordova is…..I will have to do some research on him. Sharif was the man…..just watched a movie with him recently….One Night With The King….it was bad….but he of course was good in the movie.

      1. I am still with the site for a handful of threads. Other than that I don’t read anymore. Through this site and Letterboxd I have more fun.

        1. Our website….is stress free….100% guaranteed. Letterboxd.com is also stress free….can not go wrong with either website.

  3. Comment number 2: Greeat time to publish two pages on westerns. May 1st would have been the 100th birthday of Glenn Ford.

    🙂

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