This is a really good movie and all, but watching it primarily makes me wish someone would put together a compilation of all the gosh awful ballads that overpowered the soundtracks of so many Westerns in the 1950s and 60s. The one here has to be in the top 10. It's a shame to think what you'll remember most from this film is that song, but it's just so bizarre to hear anything like it in a theoretically grown up story and it serves as one of those surprising reminders of how much American culture has changed.
Made during that era when Hollywood considered history an inconvenience to be dispensed with, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is the story of Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and Doc Holiday (Kirk Douglas). Those two Western legends portrayed by those two legendary actors is all any motion picture would need to be worth seeing, which is fortunate because that's just about all this movie has to offer. Its assembly line plot and sparse dialog pale in comparison to other versions of this tale. Put two 1950s B movie actors in the lead roles and this would have been a completely forgettable exercise. With two movie stars of this caliber, it becomes eminently watchable.
In case you just fell off the turnip truck, Wyatt Earp was perhaps the greatest and certainly the most famous lawman of the Wild West. His mythic status as a paragon of virtue, however, has always been tweaked by his friendship with Doc Holiday, a tubercular gambler and vicious killer. They, along with Wyatt's two brothers, faced down the forces of Ike Clanton in a blaze of glory that became one of the most enduring stories of the Wild West. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes that nugget, throws in a love interest for Wyatt and has the two men wander from town to town as they're serenaded by this stupid song.
The only thing of interest besides Douglas, Lancaster and an appearance by "Bones" from Star Trek is to see how this film tries to stay true to the violent world these violent men lived in while remaining within the boundaries of what would now be considered G rated storytelling. The cynical self-loathing of Doc Holiday has to be covered up with a lot of veils but you can still see the outline if you look hard enough, especially in Doc's abusive relationship with a woman he hates precisely because she loves him so much. And the way the film strongly condemns the Earp's for taking the law into their own hands in their feud with the Clanton's is just not something you see in similar stories today.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is an unexceptional Western beyond giving you a chance to see Lancaster and Douglas strut their stuff. It's not a must see, bit it's worth checking out.
Made during that era when Hollywood considered history an inconvenience to be dispensed with, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is the story of Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and Doc Holiday (Kirk Douglas). Those two Western legends portrayed by those two legendary actors is all any motion picture would need to be worth seeing, which is fortunate because that's just about all this movie has to offer. Its assembly line plot and sparse dialog pale in comparison to other versions of this tale. Put two 1950s B movie actors in the lead roles and this would have been a completely forgettable exercise. With two movie stars of this caliber, it becomes eminently watchable.
In case you just fell off the turnip truck, Wyatt Earp was perhaps the greatest and certainly the most famous lawman of the Wild West. His mythic status as a paragon of virtue, however, has always been tweaked by his friendship with Doc Holiday, a tubercular gambler and vicious killer. They, along with Wyatt's two brothers, faced down the forces of Ike Clanton in a blaze of glory that became one of the most enduring stories of the Wild West. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes that nugget, throws in a love interest for Wyatt and has the two men wander from town to town as they're serenaded by this stupid song.
The only thing of interest besides Douglas, Lancaster and an appearance by "Bones" from Star Trek is to see how this film tries to stay true to the violent world these violent men lived in while remaining within the boundaries of what would now be considered G rated storytelling. The cynical self-loathing of Doc Holiday has to be covered up with a lot of veils but you can still see the outline if you look hard enough, especially in Doc's abusive relationship with a woman he hates precisely because she loves him so much. And the way the film strongly condemns the Earp's for taking the law into their own hands in their feud with the Clanton's is just not something you see in similar stories today.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is an unexceptional Western beyond giving you a chance to see Lancaster and Douglas strut their stuff. It's not a must see, bit it's worth checking out.