This Nicholas Ray gem from 1954 has Joan Crawford at her most lesbionic, according to Queer Film Theory 101, as a saloon owner with a former lover by the name of Johnny Guitar. (After all, it does contain the quote, “I never met a woman who was more man.”) But the central tension is between two women, Vienna and Emma Small, ostensible rivals for the affection of “Dancin’ Kid,” who is in love with Vienna and has rejected Emma. When a man dies in a gunfight in town, Emma attacks Vienna’s saloon and thus ensues what Roger Ebert called “one of the most blatant psychosexual melodramas ever to disguise itself in that most commodious of genres, the Western.” – Lina Fisher
