Into the Badlands (1991)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

To me, this movie is perfection.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

You have to admit, Bruce Dern cuts an impressive figure in the black frock coat and white beard. You'll usually find him as a supporting player in older Westerns, usually as a villain, but here he's got the lead as a supernatural bounty hunter named Barston, book-ending a trio of tales set in the Old West. His character does a good deal of narration as the tales move forward, offering bits of gritty, sage advice as he roams an area, by his own admission, somewhere between civilization and the Ninth Circle of Hell.Picking a favorite out of the stories presented is a toss-up to my mind, I liked each one about equally. A casting surprise in the first entry had Helen Hunt as a consumptive whore falling for an itinerant killer portrayed by Dylan McDermott. Her character switches personas in the twist that occurs, reverting to an apparition like figure who might have been right at home in The Band's plaintive song, 'Long Black Veil'.Mariel Hemingway and Lisa Pelikan are distant neighbors in the second story, at odds with each other over the relationships with their respective men. The story is one in which Dracula would have been right at home, considering all the howling in the night the prowling wolves outside their cabin door emitted.Dern's Barston achieves his goal in hunting down bad man Red Roundtree (Michael Metzger) in the final story, but runs into some bad old boys who have other things on their mind when he shows up for the bounty. Even though he's done in by the baddies and is set up for the long dirt nap, he winds up heading for Colorado, just around the bend, and dead ahead. Dead ahead just might have been the operative word here. Throughout the bounty hunter's entire ordeal, I couldn't help but admire an unusual and unlikely physical characteristic - the guy had a beautiful set of pearly whites.

Determined and resolute bounty hunter T.L. Barston (marvelously played with spot-on sardonic verve by Bruce Dern) relentlessly tracks outlaw Red Roundtree (mangy Michael J. Metzger) across a desolate and godforsaken dessert. Barston encounters a diverse array of desperate people during his travels. First, most eerie and affecting tale, "The Streets of Laredo" - Rugged roving gunslinger McComas (a fine portrayal by Dylan McDermott) stops off in a dreary mudhole town and falls for sickly and melancholy saloon gal Blossom (a sound and moving performance by Helen Hunt). Meanwhile, the vengeful Sheriff Aaron Starett (the always on the money Andrew Robinson) closes in on McComas. Second and most harrowing story, "The Time of the Wolves" - Tough Alma Heusser (a credible Mariel Hemmingway) and high-strung Sarah Carstairs (a nicely neurotic turn by Lisa Pelikan) find themselves trapped in a cabin during a fierce snow storm that's besieged by a pack of savage wolves. This vignette benefits greatly from the edgy chemistry between the two leads and offers a good deal of nerve-jangling tension. Third and most enjoyable yarn, "The Last Belt" - Barston finally bags Roundtree, but has a difficult time keeping his corpse so he can collect the hefty bounty placed on Red's head. This particular segment adroitly mines a wickedly amusing line in inspired pitch-black gallows humor. Director Sam Pillsbury, working from a crafty script by Dick Beebe, Marjorie David, and Gordon Dawson, handles the macabre material with tremendous gritty style and assurance, maintains a properly dark and grim tone throughout, makes the most out of the bleak and dusty New Mexico locations, presents a believably grimy and downbeat evocation of the 19th century period setting, and delivers several startling moments of shockingly sadistic violence. Dern does a terrific job of holding the whole picture together. Both Johnny E. Jensen's slick, yet grungy cinematography and John Debney's twangy'n'harmonic score are up to par. A real sleeper.

I love finding offbeat half-forgotten gems where I wouldn't think to look for them. And I wouldn't think to look for them in the 90's because it's generally a pretty bad decade for westerns and certainly not in the field of made-for-TV horror western hybrids because most of their kind wield their western part as an exotic backdrop against which are played the same generic horror clichés. And I love offbeat gems even more when they're rough and unpolished and full of flaws. Everyone can love a masterpiece but it takes a little something to love a movie like INTO THE BADLANDS. A lot of the dialogue is awfully stilted, characters seem like they're reading verse from a page, the love story between outlaw on the run and worldweary whore in the first segment is produced on demand, the grey paint slapped on the faces of the saloon patrons on the last segment that makes them look like zombies adds a needless horror hijink too literal and cheesy it almost detracts from the actual menacing situation. And yet through all this rides Bruce Dern in his ghostly cart, the blackclad Bounty Hunter tying together the three segments of this anthology. And with him comes a love for vivid colors, cool blues and hot yellows, and fluid camera-work; a love of stylization as an end in itself; a love for pure western iconography (for eerie ghost towns and strange horsemen riding into town and open prairies and funerals in small weedy graveyards) and Gothic atmosphere galore; an affection for old EC Comics style supernatural twists. All this geared not towards a realistic gritty western but a cinematic Gothic horror fable that takes place in the Old West.

Which is perhaps the most memorable quote in this movie. Into the Badlands is a fun, and very unique Western. The first of its kind I've ever seen. All across the screen are faces that we all know. Bruce Dern, Mariel Hemmingway, Helen Hunt, and Dylan McDermott. All of them helped add to the neatness of this Western motion picture. Bruce Dern, playing a bounty hunter named T.L. Barston, is perhaps my favorite out of the cast. And after that, Dylan McDermott as a fugitive named McComas is my favorite. Both of them did a very fine job in their roles, especially Bruce Dern. He just did it perfectly. Into the Badlands is a very unique, yet entertaining Western, and one I wouldn't mind viewing again.