5 Rowdy Western Horror Movies Ranked

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Yeehaw! Are you ready for some western horror flicks? Horror and westerns have more in common than you think. Both feature dark themes, isolated locations,  a stark contrast between good and evil, and extreme violence. Here are five rowdy western horror movies ranked.

Horror movies and westerns both tell tales about external threats that threaten to upend and/or destroy communities. Societal disintegration is a major theme in each genre, as you’ll see in most of the movies below.

In horror westerns, cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws battle a wide variety of fearsome foes, including vampires, cannibals, witches, zombies, and underground monsters.

Sinners inspired me to write about this neglected subgenre. While Sinners is technically not a western (it’s set mainly in Mississippi), it draws  inspiration from the genre’s tropes. You can read my thoughts on the film here. Anyway, without further ado, let’s take a look at some western horror films.

5. The Pale Door (2020)

An outlaw posse pulls off a train heist. They think they’ve made off with a chest of gold. After opening it, they instead find a beautiful and mysterious young woman inside. Pearl (Natasha Bassett) tells the men to take her to her nearby hometown, where they will receive a handsome reward for rescuing her.

The men arrive in town and visit the local brothel. They are blissfully unaware, at first, that Pearl and the other women are supernatural witches who need human blood for sustenance. Jake (Devin Druid), a young gay cowboy, is the only one who’s not entranced by the witches’ seductive charms. Can he hatch a plot to escape?

I really wanted to like this movie. The witches vs. cowboys concept is fantastic. Unfortunately, The Pale Door never reaches its full potential. It’s a very low budget film, and the acting and writing are a bit amateurish. This is an earnest, well-meaning effort by a cast and crew who didn’t have the resources or experience to make this movie as great as it could have been.

Where to Watch:

4. The Dead and the Damned (2010)

Mortimer (David Lockhart), a cowboy bounty hunter, is hot on the trail of a Native man, Wolf (Rick Mora), who allegedly assaulted and murdered a White woman. He purchases a reluctant brothel girl, Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery), and ties her up in the woods as bait, hoping to lure his target.

A mysterious meteor lands in town, transforming everyone who makes contact with it into zombies. Mortimer, Rhiannon, and Wolf (who turns out to be innocent) are forced to team up together in a desperate struggle for survival.

Like The Pale Door, The Dead and the Damned is a low budget effort with minimal production values and barely adequate acting. But it’s funny, self aware, and surprisingly entertaining. This unabashedly shameless flick features a copious amount of gratuitous topless nudity.

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3. Bone Tomahawk (2015)

After dwelling in obscurity for the first couple entries, we hit the big time with this star-studded western horror film. Samantha O’ Dwyer (Lili Simmons), the wife of hobbled gunslinger Arthur (Patrick Wilson), is abducted by a mysterious group that lives out in the desert.

The local sheriff, Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell), his elderly deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), and John Brooder (Matthew Fox), a trigger-happy, borderline sociopathic hired gun, travel through the rugged terrain to rescue her. A determined and desperate Arthur limps along behind them.

Their journey is slow and arduous. It takes a long time for this movie to reach its climax, but it’s worth the wait.

Bone Tomahawk looks and feels like a conventional western for the first three quarters of its runtime. It makes a hard turn into horror toward the end, when the group encounters a bizarre cannibal clan. You won’t be prepared for how brutal this movie gets. It’s not every day that you see someone graphically scalped, gutted, dismembered, and devoured.

Kurt Russell is perfect for roles like this, and he delivers a solid performance, as does Wilson. My favorite character is Chicory, a good-natured and surprisingly formidable old geezer who gets many of the script’s best lines.

Where to Watch:

2. Tremors (1990)

Slasher fans remember Kevin Bacon from the original Friday the 13th, but that’s not the only famous horror flick he’s starred in.

Tremors is about a tiny Nevada desert town terrorized by colossal subterranean worm monsters. Val McKee (Bacon), a handyman, and his business partner Earl (Fred Ward) are among the first people to discover the creatures. They team up with a seismologist, Rhonda (Finn Carter), and a variety of other folksy characters to save the town.

Tremors is a significant departure from most western horror movies. It’s a fun and cheesy cult classic that’s spawned a long series of sequels. The graboids (as they were later named in Tremors 2) are unique villains. Their capability for mass destruction is second to none.

It was close between Tremors and Bone Tomahawk for second place, but I went with the former due to its faster pace and greater overall entertainment value.

Where to Watch:

1. Near Dark (1987)

Near Dark is the most underrated vampire movie of the ’80s. This film should be as famous as Fright Night and The Lost Boys. Its overlooked status is cemented by its lack of availability on streaming services.

This creepy and atmospheric western horror film is about Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), a strapping young cowboy who meets a beautiful girl named Mae (Jenny Wright). Unfortunately, she has a major red flag: she’s a vampire!

Not to be deterred, Caleb is determined to rescue her from the violent gang of bloodsuckers she hangs out with. But who’s seducing whom? Is Caleb bringing her into his world, or is she drawing him into hers?

Near Dark, which is directed by Kathryn Bigelow (who later won the Best Picture Oscar for The Hurt Locker) isn’t satisfied with being a near-perfect blend of western and horror tropes. This ambitious flick also adds a dash of film noir stylishness for good measure.

Yup, this is a western horror vampire noir flick. How’s that for a combo? The only other such movie I’ve seen is A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.

The Future of Western Horror Movies

I’d love to see an experienced director, perhaps Jordan Peele (he made Nope, which is something of a horror western), try a cowboys vs. witches movie.

In fact, there are many monsters that would fit well in a western setting. How about werewolves? Demons? Ghosts? I’m surprised there aren’t more horror westerns about hauntings, considering there are plenty of real life ghost stories that originate from the Old West era.

Western horror movies have never been one of horror’s top subgenres. With an assist from Sinners, perhaps they will become more common in the future.

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