Winchester '73 (1967)

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Not unwatchable, but close to it. I agree with malcomgsw, this pales in comparison to the classic from 1950, one of my personal favorites from any genre. The changes to the plot do not improve upon the original but overly complicate it - in this case less is more. John Saxon gives the best performance here, making the most of a thin script. Saxon is good at playing creeps, see him in "The Appaloosa" with Brando. Tom Tryon gives a wooden performance, shortly before giving up acting to become a writer. It was gratifying to see Dan Duryea from the earlier film, but his turn here seems tired, while in the original he was one of the more memorable villains in screen history. John Drew Barrymore's hippie character is unusual, but out of place in a western, kind of like Donald Sutherland in "Kelly's Heroes". All in all, an inferior remake of a superior film. I would, however, take issue with malcolmgsw's comment that some IMDb contributors seem to "want to eulogize the guns that are featured in films rather than dwell on their harmful consequences". We can of course, dwell on anything we want to, but while we're dwelling, what about the people living on the frontier whose lives were saved by having firearms nearby? Just saying.

This television remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic finds sheriff Tom Tryon and his no-good cousin John Saxon competing for the title weapon, being offered up as a prize in a shooting contest by Saxon's father Dan Duryea. When he loses, the vile Saxon kills Tryon's father and takes off with the gun and both of his cousins in pursuit.This isn't as loosely plotted or episodic as the original film, nor as great. Still, it's a pretty good TV movie with more of a theatrical feel to it than other movies-of-the-week, with some entertaining action scenes.John Drew Barrymore stands out and delivers an interesting, amusing performance as a long-haired member of Saxon's gang, who talks and dresses like a preacher and drives a hearse!A couple of the actors from the 1950 version return, most notably Dan Duryea.The Winchester looks exactly like the one from the original film, with the same etchings and brass plaque on the stock. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Universal dug through it's prop department and dusted off the same gun.

I don't know what it says about some of the contributors to this site that they seem to want to eulogise the guns that are featured in films rather than dwell on their harmful consequences.This is a cheap and shoddy TV remake by Universal of one of the great Westerns of all time.They have a determination to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator .It is quite apparent that they want to keep the cast list to below 10 and use all of their standing sets at Universal City.Their "Indian Tribe" seems to consist of just 2 individuals.The acting of the younger members of the cast is so wooden that you would believe that their faces are incapable of mobility.The shootout at the end is poorly staged and the whole film is a total bore which even a fine actor such as Dan Duryea cannot redeem.

This is a fantastic remake of the original that starred James Stewart. John Saxon plays the bad guy and guess who plays his father, Dan Duryea who also starred in the original. I hope someday they will distribute this on VHS or DVD. If not, I hope they will at least air it again on television.