Cross-media picks for Howard Hawks fans — films, series, games and books in the same vein.
Fans of Howard Hawks tend to reach for stories built on action over explanation — characters who show who they are through what they do, not what they say. The picks here share that sensibility: twilight Westerns where old cowhands face an era closing around them, crime tales driven by pace and double-cross, and adventures where getting through the day is its own reward. Lean plots, purposeful people, and the quiet cost of doing things the hard way.
Film
Wild Rovers
Two cowhands facing obsolescence in a fading West — melancholy loyalty under a lean, elemental sky.
Film
The Hawks
Half-brothers, a contested woman, and a Robin Hood outlaw band — revenge and honor tangled together.
Film
Monte Walsh
Long-time ranch hands whose code is simple: nothing they can't do from a horse.
Film
Man with the Gun
A lone stranger dismantles a town's corrupt power structure — one quietly dangerous step at a time.
Film
The Magnificent Seven Ride!
A marshal driven by personal loss assembles a makeshift crew to face a brutal gang of bandits.
Film
Something Big
A roguish schemer's big ambition tips into absurdist comedy with every miscalculated step.
Film
The Desperadoes
Small-town corruption, a crooked banker, and a robbery gone sideways — classic frontier double-cross.
Film
Texas
Two drifters, a stagecoach robbery, and years of rivalry and friendship across the open Texas range.
Series
Wounded Man
A journalist sent to Brazil finds a gold-rush frontier where greed and danger ride side by side.
Series
The Roaring 20's
A reporter covers cops and gangsters in 1920s Chicago — fast-paced and punchy as a tabloid headline.
Series
Old Time Buddy
Two friends chase stardom together until luck splits their fates — bittersweet, sharp, and funny.
Series
Watching
An on-again/off-again couple whose sparring hides real feeling — brisk romantic comedy of errors.
Series
High Tide
Two brothers who solve crimes together — partnership and wit carrying every investigation.
Series
Hunter
A global spy and his sharp partner — fast-moving intrigue that trusts competence over sentiment.
Series
Bonanza
A patriarch and his sons defending their land and community — loyalty, duty, and the high frontier.
Series
Rawhide
Trail boss and foreman drive cattle across the old West — professional camaraderie tested every mile.
Game
Redneck Rampage
A redneck and his buddy crash-land a UFO and navigate a chaotic small-town nightmare to get home.
Game
Jack Orlando: Director's Cut
A noir detective story set the day Prohibition ends — cynical, atmospheric, and wickedly plotted.
Game
Full Throttle
A biker framed for murder hits the road against corruption — lean, fast, and dripping cool.
Game
Scarface: The World Is Yours
A man stripped of everything rebuilds his empire through sheer nerve and relentless forward momentum.
Game
Blues and Bullets
Eliot Ness pulled back into a corrupt city's darkness — a reluctant hero who can't walk away.
Game
Close To The Sun
A journalist on a colossal ship discovers horror beneath the gilded surface — dread and ambition collide.
Game
Quarantine (1994)
A decayed city ruled by corporate power — one driver carving out survival in the brutal margins.
Game
Leisure Suit Larry
A hapless romantic lurches from one failed conquest to another — broad comedy with a knowing wink.
Book
The searchers
Two men with opposing motives push into Comanche territory — obsession and endurance on the frontier.
Book
Gable and Lombard
The real Hollywood power couple of the 1930s — ambition, glamour, and the human cost of stardom.
Book
The Deluge
A rough-edged speculator battles Wall Street and enemies alike — capitalism's brutal, restless energy.
Book
O dingos, ô châteaux!
A ruthless businessman's fortune conceals dark family secrets — money, power, and lethal consequences.
Book
The straw men
Two investigators piece together a conspiracy spanning funerals and abductions — cold, propulsive, dangerous.
Book
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Updated and Expanded 5th Edition
A rigorous look at how Hollywood's power structures shaped and constrained Black performers across decades.
Book
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Depression-era marathon dancers pushed past endurance — desperation and dark spectacle in equal measure.
Book
As the Crow Files
A street-market dreamer builds an empire from nothing — ambition, loyalty, and the long game of survival.
Start with the Westerns in this list — Wild Rovers, Monte Walsh, and Rawhide all share the twilight-of-the-frontier mood Hawks fans tend to seek out. For something with more crime and pace, The Roaring 20's captures hard-boiled Chicago energy with a reporter at the center of it all.
Yes — The Searchers is the novel behind one of the great Western films and rewards any fan of the frontier myth. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? captures the Depression-era desperation that runs through so much classic Hollywood, and Gable and Lombard offers a vivid portrait of the studio era.
Blues and Bullets puts you in the shoes of Eliot Ness navigating a corrupt city — morally weighted crime fiction in a noir setting. Jack Orlando: Director's Cut is a full adventure set in Prohibition-era 1933, and Full Throttle delivers lean, tough, get-it-done hero energy in a road-crime setting.