Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die (1942)

Such a frustrating disappointment

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

SYNOPSIS: Two prospectors, Tadpole (Clem Bevans) and Ed Schieffelin (Wallis Clark), discover silver in the Arizona hills and they name the spot "Tombstone". Years later, they establish the Schieffelin and Foster Mining Properties and with this as a centre, the two rich partners create a town which soon grows big enough to sport "The Epitaph", a newspaper. The editor of the paper writes editorials to chide "the Mayor and his phoney peace officers", because Curly Bill (Edgar Buchanan) and his circle of outlaws really run the town. Things become so tough in the town that Wyatt Earp (Richard Dix), one of three brothers from the Southwest, is pressed into service as Sheriff. NOTES: Locations at Long Valley in the High Sierras, and Lone Pine in the Alabama Hills.COMMENT: Here's Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and all our other friends of the O.K. Corral, this time directed by Bill McGann. Although it doesn't quite achieve the epic stature it's obviously aiming for, and suffers by comparison with the other versions, particularly My Darling Clementine and Frontier Marshal, it's still a fascinating, suspenseful, action-packed piece of entertainment.

Richard Dix (Wyatt Earp) rides into Tombstone and is given the role of sheriff to keep order and keep out the lawless behaviour that is led by Edgar Buchanan (Curly Bill). The film ends with a shoot-out, apparently the famous OK Coral gunfight.The film could have been better. It's a bunch of cowboys shooting guns and isn't very interesting and the cast is uninspired. Dix doesn't cut it as the lead player – he just falls short – and Buchanan is just a lump of lard. Surely he wasn't the hardest looking villain they could find? The best part of the film was Beryl Wallace (Queenie) singing in the saloon. The final shoot-out is ridiculous. For a while, people just stand there and shoot without any cover. They would all be dead.

I agree with Frankfob's comment on this film. It's nicely made, with some interesting actors. The only point I would carp about is the unlimited number of bullets that Curly Billy and his gang fire off early on in the film without appearing to re-load their revolvers.Perhaps Richard Dix is a little old for the film, and he doesn't convey the machismo that Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper retained in middle age, but he does well enough.Don Castle has a great screen presence - lots of charisma, and it's interesting to note that he later had a minor role as a drunk cowboy in "Gunfight at the OK Corral". The love interest is reasonably muted and Frances Gifford doesn't have too much screen time.And Edgar Buchanan as Curly Bill doesn't mumble, as he was inclined to do later in his career

This is an unheralded little gem of a western. Full of rock-solid actors, but no big stars (Richard Dix, the biggest name in the cast, was beginning to settle into character parts after a long career as a leading man), this tight little western moves like lightning. Director William McGann made his name as an action specialist and second-unit director at Warner Bros. (it definitely has the Warner Bros. "look" to it, even though it's from Paramount), and he proved here that he was more than capable of handling a bigger-budget western. Tightly paced, full of rousing action and good performances, it deserves to be better known than it is.