The western genre has endured because of its ability to evolve. The simplistic and moralistic westerns of the 1950s, led by directors like John Ford, gave way to the grittier spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. From there, western subgenres proliferated, including horror westerns and weird westerns, which bring in sci-fi elements. This era also saw the rise of the acid western, one of the most distinctive western subgenres.

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Acid westerns are characterized by psychedelic imagery, nonlinear and often dream-like plots, and characters whose minds are altered by substances or other forces. Users on the film subreddit r\movies have discussed the best acid westerns multiple times. These are some of the most notable, mind-bending recommendations.

'Blueberry' (2004)

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Blueberry (aka Renegade) is an adaptation of a Belgian comic about Marshal "Blueberry" Donovan (Vincent Cassel), an antihero serving in the cavalry in the years after the Civil War. He takes on the villainous Blount (Michael Madsen) but must first confront his demons by drinking a shaman's entheogenic potion.

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Blueberry is very hallucinogenic, even by the standards of the subgenre. The film is informed by director Jan Kounen's experiences in Mexico and Peru in the early 2000s, where he immersed himself in some of the local religious customs, including ayahuasca ceremonies.

'Greaser's Palace' (1972)

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This absurdist comedy western directed by Robert Downey Sr. follows Jesse (Allan Arbus), a man who travels to a frontier town and begins performing miracles. He heals the sick, raises the dead, and tap dances on water. It only gets more bizarre from there. Soon, a local woman plans to crucify Jesse in the hopes that this will bring her dead son back to life.

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Director Paul Thomas Anderson is a huge fan of Greaser's Palace. "[The film] is actually a brilliant, timeless masterpiece that transcends all categories, genres, and other would-be limitations," he has said. Greaser's Palace is also notable for being the film debut of Robert Downey Jr., who was 7 years old at the time.

'Glen and Randa' (1971)

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"The city's far, far away, over the mountains..." Glen and Randa is a post-apocalyptic western from filmmaker Jim McBride, who also directed the American remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. After a nuclear Armageddon, people live with limited technology, much as they did during the Old West. Two young survivors (played by Steven Curry and Shelley Plimpton) set out to find a city that they have seen in some of Glen's old comic books.

It's impressive, especially for being independently produced on a budget of just $480 000 and starring largely unknown actors. They play intense characters who sometimes have to be brutal to survive. "I think that shocking people is a very good way of making them pay attention to your story," McBride has said. "I think it’s important for films to show aspects of life that one doesn’t encounter in his day-to-day experience."

'A Girl is a Gun' (1971)

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This experimental satire pokes fun at western tropes. It was made on a shoestring budget by French New Wave director Luc Moullet and is deliberately goofy. The dubbing, for example, is intentionally bad, and the lead actor (Jean-Pierre Léaud, most famous for starring in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows) is given a comically deep voice that doesn't suit his appearance.

The film builds up to a classic desert showdown—except with lots of LSD involved. "It is a western in the same way that Anatomy of a Relationship is a sex film," Moullet has said, referring to his 1976 drama about a couple navigating a rocky relationship. A Girl is a Gun doesn't make much sense, but it's entertaining in its own madcap way.

'The Hired Hand' (1971)

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Peter Fonda directed and stars in this film as Collings, an aimless man who wanders the southwest for years. When he returns to his wife Hannah (Verna Bloom), she says he can only live on their property as a hired hand. He reluctantly agrees, and they slowly rekindle their relationship. At the same time, bandits kidnap Colling's friend Harris (Warren Oates), and he sets out to save him.

"I read this script, and it was such a beautiful story. I can’t think of another Western before that could, I guess, be called a feminist western, because it really all pivots around [Verna Bloom]," Fonda says. "And I figured, this is really cool, this is a far out Western, and Westerns are the way Americans talk about their mythology."

'The Last Movie' (1971)

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After the success of his 1969 film Easy Rider, Dennis Hooper was given a huge budget for his next feature, this metafictional Western about the making of a Western. Hopper stars as a stuntman working on a film shoot in Peru. After an accident on set, he quits the movie and decides to live with the locals. However, things turn for the surreal when some Peruvians decide to make their own "movie"—with real violence.

The Last Movie was a major flop and derailed Hopper's career for the next few years. However, subsequent audiences have been more generous. Many now consider its unorthodox structure and general weirdness to be an asset. "I'm trying to say our lives are fragmented," Hopper has said of the film. "That some people care and some people don't care and some people don't know to care." He also said it took him two and a half years to edit the movie, "and I'm still trying to figure out what I did."

'High Plains Drifter' (1973)

Clint Eastwood as The Stranger in High Plains Drifter
Image via Universal Pictures

High Plains Drifter was Clint Eastwood's second feature as a director. He plays a mysterious gunslinger who rides out of the desert, as if emerging from nowhere, to hand down justice in a corrupt mining town. It's full of black comedy, subversion of Western tropes, and occurrences bordering on the supernatural. The score by Dee Barton also sounds like something you'd hear in a sci-fi rather than a western.

"It's just an allegory," Eastwood has said of the movie. "A speculation on what happens when they go ahead and kill the sheriff, and somebody comes back and calls the town's conscience to bear. There's always retribution for your deeds."

'Ride in the Whirlwind' (1966)

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Ride in the Whirlwind is one of two Western collaborations between Jack Nicholson and director Monte Hellman, the other being The Shooting. Wes (Nicholson) and Vern (Cameron Mitchell) are two cowboys who survive an attack by vigilantes who try to hang them. Looking for a hideout, they head to a nearby farm and hold the family hostage.

Ride in the Whirlwind echoes the westerns of an earlier era and the social issues of the time in which it was made. For example, some people have drawn parallels between the vigilantes with their hangings and the Communist witch hunts then taking place in the US. "The whole thing is painted with primary colors on a grand scale," Hellmann has said. "It's bordering very closely on satire."

'Dead Man' (1995)

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Johnny Depp stars in this black-and-white Western directed by Jim Jarmusch. He plays William Blake, an accountant in the late 1800s who goes on the run after killing a man. After he is shot, Blake is nursed back to health by a Native American man named Nobody (Gary Farmer), who instructs him to embark on a vision quest.

"Dead Man is a very simple story on the surface but there are so many things the film is about—history, language, America, indigenous culture, violence, industrialization," Jarmusch says. "The film has a lot more levels than any of my other films but I wanted to stay focused on the simplicity of the story and let those other levels coexist without one taking precedent."

'El Topo' (1970)

A man riding on horseback through the desert in El Topo (1970)
Image via ABKCO Films

"I believe that the only end of all human activity - whether it be politics, art, science, etc - is to find enlightenment," says director Alejandro Jodorowsky, the king of trippy cinema. "I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs." No movie illustrates this philosophy better than El Topo, one of the earliest acid westerns and probably the most iconic. Jodorowsky stars in the film as well as the titular gunslinger, who goes on a mission of revenge across the desert.

Along the way, he encounters a host of bizarre characters (which may or may not be real). There's also a healthy dose of surreal imagery and symbols from Christian and Eastern philosophy. "I made El Topo out of total artistic honesty," Jodorowsky says. "I didn’t want money, I didn’t want to work with big stars. I wanted nothing, except to do my art." The result is the defining work in the acid western genre, which has since been cited as an influence by David Lynch, Nicolas Winding Refn, and even Bob Dylan. Readers in search of pure mind-melting, gun-toting entertainment need look no further.

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