Out West AND DOWN UNDER

Quigley Down Under challenged the status quo of Western filmmaking in 1990, and it continues to inspire three decades later.

- STUART ROSEBROOK

Thirty years ago, Dances with Wolves was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and was awarded 10 Oscars. The film’s star, Kevin Costner, earned Oscars for direction and production, the first producer to accept a Best Picture Oscar for a Western film since Cimarron in 1931. Costner’s film, categorized as a revisionist versus traditional Western, was only one of a dozen big-screen or television Westerns released in the United States in 1990. Of those 12, only a third stand out critically: Wolves, Back to the Future III, Young Guns II and Quigley Down Under. Future III was, of course, a mash-up of science fiction, comedy and Western, while Young Guns II, ’the second installment in John Fusco’s highly successful and popular Billy the Kid series, was the most traditional Western of the year. Quigley Down Under, in its form, style and production, is as traditional as any Western before or since, yet it’s considered a revisionist Australian Western. And, compared to Dances With Wolves, Quigley Down Under was not a box office or major critical success.

So why is it that 30 years later, Quigley Down Under has overcome those box-office and critical disappointments to be considered the best Australian Western with one of the genre’s most beloved characters, Tom Selleck’s Matthew Quigley? And how did it develop a cult following of Western firearm aficionados?