What boggles my mind is why Howard Hughes would even attempt this garbled retelling of the story of three legendary Western figures. With Hughes' generally obsessive attention to detail in his aeronautical career, you would think that at least some integrity would be maintained with names and dates for historical accuracy, but nothing about the film makes any kind of sense at all. Only Jack Beutel as Billy the Kid comes close to matching his character's age at the time of events in the story. In 1881, Pat Garrett would have been thirty one years old, but Thomas Mitchell was fifty one when the movie was made. An even greater disparity exists with Walter Huston's Doc Holliday; at fifty nine, Huston was almost twice his character's age of thirty. And with all that, the grave marker showing Billy the Kid's 'death' on July 13, 1881 (he actually died on the 14th, but that was Doc Holliday in the grave), how would one explain Doc's resurrection to take part in the Gunfight at OK Corral (10/26/1881)? In all, just a complete mess regarding history.
What's not a mess is Jane Russell's film debut as Rio McDonald, Doc's girlfriend turned Billy's lover. Oh baby, how hot was she? At nineteen, it's a toss up as to who had the more sizzling screen presence, Russell here or Lauren Bacall in her first picture, "To Have and Have Not". I'm willing to call it a tie. But there again, Hughes had to go for that over the top close up of Russell's lips about to kiss Billy, it almost demands a laugh out loud reaction. And how about all those goofy Warner Brothers type cartoon music moments; didn't ANYONE have a clue that they didn't fit with the story?
You know, I'm usually the first to dismiss reactions to a film dealing with alleged homo erotic subtexts, but I have to agree with other reviewers on this board regarding the relationship between Doc and Pat Garrett. There's that conversation between the two just before Garrett takes out Holliday that's just mind blowing in it's suggestion. Just another element that digresses the entire story into never-never land.
I think what might have given this picture half a chance would have been to keep the famous gunslinger names completely out of it. Then at least you could have made a case for a somewhat offbeat Western. Still, I don't care how you might attempt to rationalize it, there's no way anyone in his right mind would take a strawberry roan in trade for Jane Russell.
What's not a mess is Jane Russell's film debut as Rio McDonald, Doc's girlfriend turned Billy's lover. Oh baby, how hot was she? At nineteen, it's a toss up as to who had the more sizzling screen presence, Russell here or Lauren Bacall in her first picture, "To Have and Have Not". I'm willing to call it a tie. But there again, Hughes had to go for that over the top close up of Russell's lips about to kiss Billy, it almost demands a laugh out loud reaction. And how about all those goofy Warner Brothers type cartoon music moments; didn't ANYONE have a clue that they didn't fit with the story?
You know, I'm usually the first to dismiss reactions to a film dealing with alleged homo erotic subtexts, but I have to agree with other reviewers on this board regarding the relationship between Doc and Pat Garrett. There's that conversation between the two just before Garrett takes out Holliday that's just mind blowing in it's suggestion. Just another element that digresses the entire story into never-never land.
I think what might have given this picture half a chance would have been to keep the famous gunslinger names completely out of it. Then at least you could have made a case for a somewhat offbeat Western. Still, I don't care how you might attempt to rationalize it, there's no way anyone in his right mind would take a strawberry roan in trade for Jane Russell.