I don't know the real history of the gunfight at the OK Corral. I saw the recent movie TOMBSTONE with Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer and found it thoroughly enjoyable but I never considered it to be "historical". It was just hysterical.
HOUR OF THE GUN is another, older version of the story. It too is excellent and more believable as a historical drama but I have no conception that it is historical other than the recognition that Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Ike Clanton were real people; Tombstone, Arizona, Colorado, Mexico and the OK Corral are real places; and a gunfight really did take place at the corral. That doesn't matter to me because this too is a fine film and thoroughly entertaining. It has none of the comic element that TOMBSTONE had but it is a high quality western drama.
This story begins at the famous gunfight and then continues on to examine what happened afterward as Earp and Holliday track down the Clanton gang. James Garner plays the famous marshal and does so without the humor he often brings to the screen. He portrays a relatively silent and brooding figure but he does so well. Jason Robards plays Doc Holliday. His characterization is not as memorable for its outrageousness as Val Kilmer's but it is still well done and the loyalty to a friend comes through strong.
This is a western of a style seldom seen anymore. It is a gem.
Sturges second, darker, better take on the Earps and the Clantons
Hour of the Gun is easily my favorite take on the Wyatt Earp legend, with John Sturges making amends for the strangely rather unsatisfying Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with this dark, revisionist take of the aftermath that seeps with post-Kennedy cynicism. People aren't killed, they're assassinated by riflemen hiding in shadows, trials fail to see justice done, the good townspeople buy off bad guys and the motives for the Clanton-Earp feud are more political and economic than personal (Robert Ryan's Clanton is more of a calculating businessman trying to fend off encroaching Eastern conglomerates and willing to sacrifice his family to do it than the usual crooked pater familias). Throughout, James Garner's Wyatt Earp moves further away from the law as an increasingly cold-blooded desire for vengeance takes over from his principles while Jason Robards bitter Doc Holliday can do little but watch and stand dying by his side.
With a terrific script by Edward Anhalt (who gives himself good cameo as Doc's doc) there's a neat symmetry running through the film - Clanton slinks away from the O.K Corral before the lead starts flying only to find his gang deserting him the same way at the end - enhanced by Sturges' strong visual sense, with locations always sparsely populated or streets often completely empty to emphasise the narrow focus of the conflict. Sturges' usually effortless mastery of Scope frame seems a bit forced in a couple of set-ups where you can see him lining up his actors as if blocking them onstage, but you can forgive him when he throws in an opening sequence that Sam Peckinpah borrowed for The Wild Bunch - the unscripted moment Peckinpah referred to as `the Walk thing' when the Bunch go to their final fate (Peckinpah was a great admirer of Sturges, and as even used Hour's cinematographer Lucien Ballard on Bunch). Throw in a terrific score from Jerry Goldsmith just as he entered his prime, and it's a winner.
The 2.35:1 transfer is mostly good with a little occasional edge-enhancement. The only extra - unless you count fulscreen version of the film - is the trailer.
Going Beyond The O.K. Corral
Many films have been made about legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, many of them focusing on his time in Tombstone, Arizona, and the infamous gunfight at that town's O.K. Corral between him, his brothers, and Doc Holliday on one side and the Clanton and McLowery clans on the other. In fact, despite plenty of historical inaccuracies, director John Sturges came up with one of the best-known films of that incident, 1957's GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL. Ten years later, in 1967, he showed us the aftermath of that gunfight in HOUR OF THE GUN.
Whereas the gunfight was the climax of GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, and was placed in the middle later in 1993's TOMBSTONE, HOUR OF THE GUN begins with the gunfight itself, and then goes into the various legal entanglements that followed, as well as the revenge that Wyatt (James Garner) seeks against Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan) and his hired help. Jason Robards, though he was already too old to accurately do the role, does a good turn as Doc Holliday, who becomes Wyatt's moral conscience when it appears that Wyatt has become a vengeance seeker and stopped being a lawman.
As has been pointed out by other reviewers here, HOUR OF THE GUN still doesn't quite stick to all the facts of the gunfight (for one thing, in reality the Cochise County sheriff's name was Behan, not Bryan, as mentioned in the film) or what happened to Ike Clanton (he wasn't killed in Mexico, nor at Wyatt's hand, but in an attempted robbery a few years after the O.K Corral incident). To add to all that, whereas GUNFIGHT was filmed in Arizona, where the events depicted took place, HOUR OF THE GUN was filmed entirely in Mexico; and even a cursory glance by a viewer can tell it's Mexico, and not the real Arizona.
Still, as advertised, Garner and Robards deliver extremely effective performances, and Robards does deliver some sardonic one-liners courtesy of screenwriter Edward Anhalt. Although Ike Clanton's role is enlarged in this film beyond accuracy, the benefit is a solid performance of that role by Ryan, whose low-key villainy is matchless. Jon Voight also appears here (in his first major film) as Curly Bill Brocius. The flavorful score by Jerry Goldsmith, emphasizing minor keys and some Mexican rhythms, enhances the stature of this rather underrated western. It makes a perfect companion piece to other Wyatt Earp films in spite of its historical fudgings, and with this great acting on hand it is well worth viewing.
After being coerced by a roving gang of Kiowas to trade his season's worth of hard-earned furs for a runaway slave, Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) vows to take back what's his. Before he can get them, though, the Kiowas are slaughtered by a gang of `scalphunters' led by Jim Howie (Telly Salavas), who nips Joe Bass's furs in the bargain. With Joseph Winfield Lee (Ossie Davis) in tow, Joe Bass trails the fur and scalp-laden Jim Howie and vows yet again to reclaim his property.
THE SCALPHUNTERS (1968) is a comedy-western that somehow manages to makes palatable some terrible things - specifically, slavery and the harvest and sale of human scalps. It doesn't condone them, of course, but it doesn't dwell on their horrors, either. Lancaster is energetic and perfectly cast as the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Burt Lancaster - Shelley Winters Director(s): Sydney Pollack DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Warlock" is a great classic western with an amazing cast. I am sad to see Dolores Michaels not get billing on the DVD, as she did on the original moive posters. While she retired early from acting, she not only was beautiful, but a very solid actress. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Widmark - Henry Fonda Director(s): Edward Dmytryk DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Yul Brynner is a powerful and dynamic actor. He had donned the cowboy hat before in the 'Magnificent Seven' but quite arguably Jules was his greatest role ever.
In the film Brynner plays a mysterious gun fighter hired to kill a rebel who's property was sold in the war. The man demands answers but is shot. Forced to leave he refuses and returns to his farm where a gun is drawn upon him and he has to defend himself. In killing the man he has a bounty placed upon his head and a gunman is hired. But this movie is more than just a simple Western. It is much, much, much more.
In the town the Mexicans are treated as inferiors. The rebel is the only man that treats them decently. And they beg Jules not to kill him. Jules refuses yet Jules has a dark secret of his... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Richard Wilson DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This restoration of Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western Major Dundee is nothing short of magnificent, a noble attempt at restoring a famously wrecked masterpiece. When Peckinpah went over budget and over schedule during the Mexico shoot, unshot scenes were canceled and the footage rudely cut by the studio. The director disowned the results. In 2005, surviving footage was patched back in, and a new musical soundtrack commissioned to replace the score Peckinpah hated. This raises some legitimate questions about interpreting a director's intentions, and about messing with film history, but Major Dundee--The Extended Version is such a rousing, mysterious experience, one feels grateful.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) is a vainglorious officer busted to the decidedly inglorious job... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlton Heston - Richard Harris Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 20 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Tom Selleck shows a harder side of his persona as a disillusioned Confederate who returns home in the waning days of the Civil War in this adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel. His wife, Suzy Amis, isn't ready to forgive him for leaving his family behind for the "adventure" of war, and his children hardly remember him. Haunted by his actions in the war and caught in a power struggle in the Arizona territory, Selleck's soul-scarred survivor makes a last stand to protect the only thing left that matters to him--his homestead and his family. The film has its share of gunfights, showdowns, conspiracies, and Civil War rivalries, and even a runaway stagecoach, but its power lies in the somber exploration of how misunderstandings and conflicts tear at a marriage during such a volatile time,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Dick Lowry DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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