For lovers of westerns, this isn't the movie to rent. For those who enjoy a cross of horror mythos, tall tales, and undead vengeance, give it your consideration. Bruce Dern plays the mysterious Bounty Man, a nearly ancient gunslinger who keeps a tattered parasol extended over his buggy, in search of his next (financially lucrative) victim. With a similar format to the more tepid Grim Prairie Tales (Brad Dourif & James Earl Jones telling campfire stories in the Wild West), Into The Badlands gives us three tales, all of which border on the supernatural, held together by the greedy Bounty Hunter played by Dern. Helen Hunt (pre Mad About You, post Girls Just Want To Have Fun), Mariel Hemingway and Dylan McDermott round out the name cast. A twisted ending/beginning adds enormously to the dark feel. An absolute must for players of Pinnacle's Deadlands: The Weird West role-playing game.
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peabody-53 July 1999
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merklekranz4 November 2013Some might describe "Into the Badlands" as a surreal tale of the Old West. I on the other hand would call the film a sleep inducing waste of talent and time. Sure Bruce Dern looks convincing as a bounty hunter, in his black duster and specs. Even the music is interesting and appropriate. Everything else is not good. It begins and ends with the story, which is disjointed and talky. The first part involves a gunslinger talking and talking with barroom whore Helen Hunt. The second is something about Mariel Hemingway talking and talking to a frontier neighbor before some unexplained wolves show up. Dern reappears in the final sequence killing a wanted baddie and then dragging his rotting body around the desert for the rest of the film. - MERK
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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.
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Yikes! I just kept waiting for something to happen. Never did! The old western atmosphere was the only thing worth anything. No story line, no plot, characters that go nowhere. You have to wonder what ever makes actors, a director or movie production company think this is going to be something worth spending money, time and talent on.
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poe42614 October 2007INTO THE BADLANDS, like DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW and GARGOYLES and THE NIGHTSTALKER (to mention but a trio), proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that even television itself is capable of delivering the goods from time to time. Bruce Dern is the ghastly glue that holds these brief tales of terror together, and a better choice to play the "bounty man" would be hard to imagine. Every aspect of this production rates high marks: the cinematography is truly stunning, the music is moving, and the performances memorable. Better direction couldn't be hoped for: the segment featuring Helen Hunt is downright hauntingly beautiful- what every ghost story should aspire to be. Bravo.
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helpless_dancer6 April 1999This was not a well done western. You've got this nut riding around in the blazing sun in a buggy with a parasol over it, killing people for his own reasons. You've got this same person sitting in a snow cave during a blizzard, cutting off pieces of his anatomy which have been frostbitten. Then you've got some woman in a house out in the middle of somewhere shooting wolves that are not there. What is the point of this film? Couldn't Bruce Dern find something better to do? This was a waste of film.
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classicsoncall2 May 2017You 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. -
CarfaxAbbey7 April 2002Dern burns up the desert.
Dylan McDermott & Helen Hunt are good, but who needs supporting cast when Dern's soliloquies with corpses are so deadly riveting. A character reminiscent of Kane the `preacher-man' in Poltergeist II, and portrayed almost as eerily, though with Dern wit.
Good western portrayal with authentic undertones. And a dern-good soundtrack too, if you can find it. -
This movie is a bit of an odd duck - it is sort of like an episode or two of "Twilight Zone" masquerading as a western. Nothing wrong with that, it's just that the various story threads in the movie never get developed to their fullest.
However, what this movie lacks in the way of compelling story development, it more than makes up for with a very rich, absorbing Old West atmosphere. There is just something about the feel of this film - the photography, the costumes, the weapons, the Old West sets and real western locales (New Mexico), the expressions on people's faces... Call it a victory of style over substance... In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the "look and feel" of this movie from start to finish. Watching the movie, there were more than a few times where I felt myself being transported back to a different place and time. I just wish the rich story development of a good western-genre movie such as "Unforgiven" (1992) with Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman, could have been woven into "Into the Badlands," as that would have completed this film and would have ultimately made for one very awesome Western movie.
But even in its current configuration, this movie is definitely worth checking out. I think you will be suitably dazzled by the Old West atmosphere that is conveyed in the film. Just don't expect a dazzling story to complement it. -
Woodyanders10 April 2011Determined 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.
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Eric-12268 April 2002The Sci-Fi channel screened this movie yet again last Sunday morning, and, since I liked it so much the first time, I watched it again - and was every bit as enthused about it (actually even more so) as I was the first time I watched it. I felt compelled to rethink my previous comments, and decided to kick them up a notch and submit them here.
For starters, I can't get over how utterly beguiling, or perhaps bewitching, this movie is. That was my initial impression, and it still remains after another viewing. Rich with atmosphere, this movie just plants its spurs in you, grabs you by the chaps, and whisks you off to a (slightly twisted) dreamland of a place called the Old West.
In addition to those things that I mentioned in my previous comments, I noticed several other things that thoroughly enchanted me. I loved the background music - sometimes stylized and lilting, sometimes melancholy and haunting, but always very "Old West", and right on the mark. I liked the oddly bemused twangy voice of Bruce Dern, who gives running commentary at various points throughout the movie. I liked the slow-motion running of the wild horses: vaguely symbolic of Heaven knows what, they were just mesmerizing. And I liked the attention given to minute details, like the sets of spurs and other paraphernalia hanging from the Bounty Man's dilapidated horse-drawn cart.
Last but not least (and perhaps that which I like MOST about this movie) is the persona of Helen Hunt. I'll say it right up front: she plays a character who is basically a tippling saloon whore - dying of consumption, no less. But... she comes across as so alluring and bewitching, so surreal yet so tangible, that I had to do several double takes. Her character in the movie, tragic beyond words, is so... well, let's just say her image quite literally haunted me and remained with me for weeks after viewing the movie the first time.
After the first viewing I thought the three stories that essentially comprise the movie were somewhat sparse and underdeveloped. But upon second viewing, I realized that they were perfectly played out. Just like the Old West itself, they were minimally set up, sparse on details, yet rich with hardscrabble verisimilitude and parable. Kind of reminds me of O. Henry short stories...
I won't say the movie is totally flawless. There are a few (but only a few) parts where "made for TV" production values glaringly show through. The part where Alma (Muriel Hemingway) is fending off the ravenous wolves at the window is one example that comes to mind. But these flaws are minimal compared to the overall satisfaction that I derived from this movie.
Finally, let me make clear to all who would listen: I'm putting forth these comments NOT because I want to hear myself blow a bunch of happy hot air, but because I really want the creators of this movie to know that their efforts in making this haven't gone by unappreciated. (In other words, I'd like to see more movies of this calibre).
I certainly can't guarantee that everyone will like this movie or see it my way... a thousand other people might see this movie and not even remotely agree with my reaction to it. Be that as it may, for those who really want a movie rich in Old West atmosphere and with hauntingly memorable characters, then this movie is one I highly recommend. -
ulht128 January 2006Unfortunately I have only - at this point - seen the last 35 minutes of this film but based on that it is undoubtedly the finest spaghetti western ever made - or the best not done to be funny parody of one. cinematographer, director , make-up and sets duplicated the look and feel of the Italian films, threw in some marvelous Felliniesque and neo-realism, as done the in the late 40's /early 50's, and made New Mexico pass beautifully as the plains/deserts of Spain. Have to have this in my collection!!! (Just in case, yes I know it is an American made film.) That is the only important thing that needs to be said about the film but read on if you must . Bruce Dern gives a quite interesting version of his bad guy persona (though he is the good guy) and the only flaw I personally found in the 35 minutes was in a bar scene where Dern has pulled back his coat to show an obviously well used gun and he stops when a bad guy shows he is holding a shotgun - by the barrel with the stock on the floor. Sorry guys (writing problem) from that position any halfway decent gunman could take out the shotgunner and at least one person of normal ability without concern. Ah well - it stretched the action a little!.
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chaos-rampant20 August 2009I 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.