Michael Crichton’s Westworld (1973) turns the frontier dream into a murderous theme park. In cinema, the Weird Western has a long, subterranean history, mostly in B-pictures with titles like Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966), only occasionally surfacing for mainstream air. Although typically more interested in playing into than challenging the exoticization of the frontier, comics like Weird Tales understood the West to be not only a physical space but also a set of mutable assumptions about the American spirit. Weird Westerns are a breed of speculative fiction with roots dating to the 1930s, when comic books and short stories increasingly turned to and distorted the woolier corners of the US West. Jordan Peele’s film is an offspring of the Weird West, situating itself in a long media history that warps the wildness of the West and mines the genre not to limn but to pervert society’s aspirations. Even given this omen - “a bad miracle,” to the characters - it’s no less surprising when a nickel falls from the sky, impaling and killing Otis Sr. A perverse Rod Serling surrogate, the chimpanzee invites us into Nope’s world for just a minute, an unstable flicker of the dark transmission to come. They discuss film sets with a mixture of weariness and giddy-up, but we’ve already seen the film’s prologue: a point-of-view shot in a ravaged TV studio, a blood-splattered chimpanzee walking into frame, looking at the camera. Despite the familiarity, something is amiss. (Keith David), riding a horse, his son OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) on foot, discussing the family business training horses for movie productions. Open on: the desert outside Los Angeles, the desolate sensorium Hollywood has long filled with hopes and dreams. WE MEET Nope’s protagonist in a scene that could be lifted from a hundred other Westerns.
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