Saturday Night at the Movies - Saturday 6 June 2015, 5pm

Andrew Collins is saddling up and riding off into the Wild West with the best film scores to accompany him

On this week's show Andrew celebrates some of the greatest music written for movie Westerns.

Listen out for pioneering music by Dmitri Tiomkin for Red River, a classic John Wayne vehicle which told the story of the first cattle drive north along the Chisholm Trail. Tiomkin was a Hollywood A-list composer who practically invented the familiar sound world of Western movies. 

That all changed with Ennio Morricone's iconic music for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (pictured). With his use of mock coyote howls, whips and electric guitars, Morricone's score sent music for Westerns off in an entirely new direction. 

Some 26 years later, the soundtrack for Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven transformed it all over again. Its touching, atmospheric approach depicts the old west in more authentic tones perhaps than any score that came before.