5 Best Burt Lancaster Western Movies, Ranked

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It would be hard to discuss Hollywood’s greatest classic era stars without dropping Burt Lancaster’s name. His decades-spanning filmography features over 80 different movies and TV shows. Whether he was giving an Academy Award-winning turn as the titular character in Richard Brooks’ “Elmer Gantry,” joining the all-star cast of “The Field of Dreams,” or even starring in one of the best pirate movies no one talks about anymore, Lancaster could command the attention of an audience like few others.

His magnetic screen presence made Lancaster a natural choice for many Western roles. Granted, some of his classic Western movies are unwatchable today due to uncomfortable racial stereotypes and other attitudes that were so prevalent in filmmaking during that bygone era. Still, his roles as marshals, cowboys, and guns for hire have also resulted in a number of truly great Western movies that every fan of the genre should check out. Here are five of the actor’s finest Westerns, based on their Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer scores.

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Based on a real historical event, “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” puts Burt Lancaster’s Wyatt Earp and fellow Western legend Kirk Douglas’ Doc Holliday together in a tense, iconic film that slowly leads up to the titular incident. Lancaster is in great form as the legendary marshal, and there are few weak links to be found in an all-star cast that also includes names like Lee Van Cleef, Dennis Hopper, and many others. 

Directed by John Sturges from a screenplay by Leon Uris, the 1957 movie is well-regarded and critically appreciated, with great reviews and a very solid 87% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone is in top form here, but for Lancaster fans in particular, “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” is a must-watch. Lancaster gets plenty of moments to shine, and uses them all in a way only one of the finest leading men of Hollywood’s classic era can.

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Richard Brooks’ 1966 Western “The Professionals” has a simple yet interesting premise that has all the makings of a true classic: Four guns for hire join forces to rescue rancher J.W. Grant’s (Ralph Bellamy) kidnapped wife Maria (Claudia Cardinale) from the dangerous bandit Raza (Jack Palance). Soon, however, the quartet discovers that their mission isn’t quite what it appears to be, and that everyone involved is playing a very different game than the titular professionals were led to believe.

The four men — who are all experts on their own different fields, of course — are played by Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, which is a high-caliber cast if you know the genre. The end product is worthy of all that talent involved, too. “The Professionals” received three Academy Award nominations, and its solid 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating means that it’s one of the better classic Westerns you can pick for your next movie marathon.

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Made in 1972, Robert Aldrich’s “Ulzana’s Raid” represents the revisionist leg of Burt Lancaster’s Western résumé. The movie is a relentless and bleak story about the mistreated Native American warrior Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez) gathering a small force to flee his designated reservation and terrorize the nearby area. Eager to put a stop to Ulzana’s trail of destruction, the powers that be task a grizzled tracker called McIntosh (Lancaster) with bringing him down.

Though McIntosh and his military associates get plenty of focus, it’s interesting to note that at the end of the day, the movie’s true battle is between Ulzana and his brother-in-law Ke-Ni-Tay (Jorge Luke), who has chosen a different path and works with the army men to put a stop to Ulzana’s cruelties.

Rated 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, “Ulzana’s Raid” offers plenty of brutality and evil deeds, but the movie makes it abundantly clear that Ulzana’s actions are borne of desperation and anger over the way his people have been treated. The movie is both violent and thought-provoking, and while it’s definitely not your average classic bang-bang Western, it’s a quality movie, through and through.

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Director Robert Aldrich’s “Vera Cruz” puts Burt Lancaster up against his greatest Western challenge yet: Gary Cooper. Right down to its poster, the film is effectively an excuse to put the two titans together in a way that ends in a climactic duel. Made in 1954, the film is notable for avoiding squeaky clean characters. Everyone kind of sucks here, including Lancaster’s gun for hire Joe Erin and Cooper’s Civil War vet Benjamin Trane, both of whom become mercenaries during the Franco-Mexican war under Marquis Henri de Labordere (Cesar Romero).

“Vera Cruz” is a complex film about morally grey characters; one that came out well before spaghetti Westerns made such an approach widely known. It’s also a very good representative of its genre, and the evolving relationship between Erin and Trane takes place against a backdrop of a conflict that feels truly massive in both scale and stakes. The film has a well-deserved 93% Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rating, and is genuinely one of Lancaster’s finest works.

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“Vengeance Valley” is a curious one: It has a full 100% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which more than qualifies it as the top entry on this list, based on our criteria. Yet, its Popcornmeter audience rating is just 25%, which implies that “Vengeance Valley” is an acquired taste, to say the least.

As pure quality of the movie goes, it’s easy to firmly hitch your horse to the “‘Vengeance Valley’ good” wagon. Instead of a heroic, roaring rampage of revenge, Richard Thorpe’s 1951 film is about family tensions at a large Colorado cattle ranch. Burt Lancaster plays Owen Daybright, the foreman and adopted son of ranch owner Arch Strobie (Ray Collins), who values Owen at least as much as his biological son Lee (Robert Walker).

An ever-escalating mystery around an illegitimate child and a complex set of circumstances lead to assorted confrontations, which escalates tensions until the brothers in all but blood are forced to solve their differences with violence. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (much of the modern critique makes it a potential choice for Tarantino fans who thrive on dialogue, and lots of it), but “Vengeance Valley” tells the exact story it wants to tell in the exact way it wants to tell it, which is precisely what any great movie should aspire to do.