Any euro "western" by director/producer Karl May is the absolute pits and should have never been imported into this country. Stuart Granger starred in them & must have been extremely desperate for money to appear in such tripe. I can never watch more than 5 minutes of them.
TOMBSTONE
How can any of you pards catagorize that movie as one of the worst? It's got to be the most historically accurate & one of the best oaters Hollyweird has put out in the past 100 years. Sure it has it's inaccuracies, & timeline compression to keep the movie from being too long. But the clothing, firearms, leather, tack & sets are extremely well done.
I've seen the movie many times & never noticed Kurt Russell flinching. I'll have to watch for that the next time I see it. Wyatt Earp was a store clerk, teamster, buffalo hunter, lawman, gambler, shotgun guard for Wells Fargo, sports refferee, saloon keeper, prospector, real estate speculator and possibly a pimp throughout his life. But he was never a "cowboy" and shouldn't be characterized as such.
Virgil Earp was shot by 3 unknown assasins with shotguns on Allen St. while crossing 5th St (westbound) from the Oriental Saloon to the Crystal Palace Saloon at about midnight on Dec. 28th, 1881. Ike Clanton, Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, Hank Swilling and Frank Stilwell are the suspects. But no definitive proof has ever surfaced to say without a doubt who those assailants were. So take your pick. One load hit him just above the left hip & the other shattered his left elbow. He turned around and staggered back to the Oriental & collapsed in front of it in Wyatt's arms who had come outside to see what the shooting was about. Dr. George Goodfellow removed 13 pieces of buckshot from his body along with his shattered left elbow rendering the arm useless for the rest of his life. Even so, Virgil left Tombstone to later become the first city marshal of Colton, Ca..
At 10:00 Saturday night, March 18th, 1882, while engaged in playing a game of billiards in Campbell & Hatch's Billiard parlor, on Allen between Fourth and Fifth, Morgan Earp was shot through the body by an unknown assassin. At the time the shot was fired he was playing a game with Bob Hatch, one of the proprietors of the house and was standing with his back to the glass door in the rear of the room that opens out upon the alley that leads straight through the block along the west side of A.D. Otis & Co.'s store to Fremont Street. This door is the ordinary glass door with four panes in the top in place of panels. The two lower panes are painted, the upper ones being clear. Anyone standing outside can look over the painted glass and see anything going on in the room just as well as though standing in the open door. At the time the shot was fired the deceased must have been standing within ten feet of the door, and the assassin standing near enough to see his position, took aim for about the middle of his person, shooting through the upper portion of the whitened glass. The bullet entered the right side of the abdomen, passing through the spinal column, completely shattering it, emerging on the left side, passing the length of the room and lodging in the thigh of Geo. A.B. Berry, who was standing by the stove, inflicting a painful flesh wound. Instantly after the first shot a second was fired through the top of the upper glass which passed across the room and lodged in the wall near the ceiling over the head of Wyatt Earp, who was sitting as a spectator of the game. Morgan fell instantly upon the first fire and lived only about one hour. His brother Wyatt, Tipton, and McMasters rushed to the side of the wounded man and tenderly picked him up and moved him some ten feet away near the door of the card room, where Drs. Matthews, Goodfellow and Millar, who were called, examined him and, after a brief consultation, pronounced the wound mortal. He was then moved into the card room and placed on the lounge where in a few brief moments he breathed his last, surrounded by his brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, James and Warren with the wives of Virgil and James and a few of his most intimate friends. Notwithstanding the intensity of his mortal agony, not a word of complaint escaped his lips, and all that were heard, except those whispered into the ear of his brother and known only to him were, "Don't, I can't stand it. This is the last game of pool I'll ever play." The first part of the sentence being wrung from him by an attempt to place him upon his feet.
Val Kilmer did an outstanding portrayal of Doc Holiday. He lost 40 lbs to look emaciated as Doc certainly would have been at that period in his life. He also brought out that Doc was a heavy drinker who took chances because he didn't want to die a slow death from TB (which happened anyway). Whether consiously or subconciuously we'll never know but from historical accounts it seems that Doc had a death wish. He was sufferring & wished someone would kill him. Being a native of Georgia I can say that Kilmer had that deep south Ga. drawl down pat.
"I'm your huckleberry." is a 19th century term meaning "I'm the man to get the job done."
Spaghetti Westerns YUCK! The only reason they exist is that Hollyweird wasn't interested in doing westerns and the Italians were. The background music and sound effects are horrible. Whoever saw a cowboy riding an Arabian horse? But that's what they used in the Italian oaters. The Arabian was first brought to North America in 1725. Geo. Washington owned a few. U.S. Grant was presented with a pair of Arabian stallions in 1877. But the breed did not become popular in the US until the 1920s. They can't even get the tack right in some of them. I've seen what are supposedly US Cavalry troopers riding English saddles instead of McClellan saddles & cowboys riding Australian stock saddles (no saddle horns). And some of the dialogue is really hokey. As bad as some of them are, nobody can make a western as good as we can because this is home of the cowboy & where the "west" really happened. It's part of our history & heritage.
News & Blogs
Home
Posts
Recent Posts
Help
Business Directory
Calendar
Advertising Rates
Contact Us
Login
Register
