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I served my time in Korea. Five years after I came back old time school mates of mine were being drafted for Vietnam. I later heard their stories over quarts of beer and doobies. This movie IS their story. I was sitting on my couch watching the big ambush scene and it scared the hell out of me in my own living room. The scene where Brian Dennehy tells Lt. Catuto that 19 year old kids in Korea checked their rifle sights by shooting down Korean farmers came home to me. My brother, who fought from the first of the Korean war through the Chosen battle, told me the same thing. This movie has it all. The boredom, the terror, the frustration, the slaughter, the sadness, the futility. And it is real. It starts out slow but when it kicks in it gives no quarter, cuts no slack and takes no prisoners. If you ever carried a rifle in a combat zone at night alone you can relate to it. But even if you have no recollection of the Vietnam war era you can still sense the reality.

The English language has its limitations. A sorcerer could not conjure up enough negative adjectives to properly describe this two hour and 38 minutes of film wasted on an absurd and insane movie about an absurd and insane man and the seemingly hapless people he intimidates and berates with his insanity. After the first thirty minutes you began to wonder if the movie will be interminable. Then you realize the answer is yes. And during the endless boredom of its interminability it is fragmented, senseless, pointless, dull, ridiculous and insultingly banal. If you have not seen this movie I envy you. I wish I had not. While watching it you may keep thinking soon, soon it will make sense. A plot, a point, a focus will emerge and there will be an actual story instead of a piecemeal collage of scenes of insane raving and insane acts. The producer and director could have saved time and money by going to an inane asylum and following the most violent and deranged inmate around with a camera. And it would have made more sense.

Starts out interesting. Prison scenes are real enough. George Raft carries the "nice guy who just made a mistake" to the point that he appears soft. Then William Holden chews up too much scenery with his angry young man act. Then Raft gets a martyr complex and throws himself in front of the gang's guns to save his kid brother. Marc Lawrence, stereo-typed as a meanie and low life hood, turns in his usual good role. He had to go to Europe in the 50s to be taken seriously as an actor. Paul Kelly's talent is wasted but he does his usual solid performance. The director, Lloyd Bacon, wasted a good cast. Just before he died William Holden told this story about George Raft during an appearance on the Tonight Show shortly after Raft died. Holden was brand new to Hollywood and a little nervous and insecure. Lloyd Bacon was an egomanic and a bully. One day on the set Bacon went berserk and began berating Holden, shouting in his face in front of the cast. Raft ran over and got him by the lapels and said, "That's a man you are talking to, not a dog. If you ever talk to that young man like that again you'll answer to me. You got that?" Bacon became a little more polite. But not a better director.

This is not the worst spaghetti western ever made. That honor belongs to Death Rides a Horse (1968) with Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law. If you have not seen that one you are blessed. This one is, however, far and away the hokiest spaghetti western ever made. The talents of two fine actors, Henry Silva and Dan Duryea, are wasted. Silva makes no attempt whatsoever to act. Duryea does and to his credit he does not break up laughing once. Viewers, on the other hand will. An Army fort has an up and down swinging traffic barrier pole, painted with STRIPES. People are shot to pieces and there is never any blood or holes in their clothes. The dialog was taken right off the pages of See Spot Run. At the end of the movie Duryea pins a marshal's star on the bandit turned hero that looks like it came off of a 1940s Christmas tree at St. Vincent de Paul. The pistols whistle softly instead of banging and the good guys throw dynamite at the bad guys.

This is a good Audie Murphy western for one reason only; it is a spaghetti western. The writers didn't know Audie Murphy and did not write a western script FOR him. They wrote a western script. Unlike anything Hollywood ever did for Murphy,this script has a plot, a story, some depth and real characters. The only distractions, and they are not small, are the ridiculous whistleing sounds made by 45 Long Colt revolvers and the nagging, irritating background music. Where the Italians came up with the ridiculous idea that a 45 Long Colt revolver makes a whistling sound beats me. I know the sound of a 45 Long Colt. I own several. It is triple the sound of a Dodge 440 Magnum backfiring. They do not whistle. And the asinine, continuous, nagging, dragging music that is supposed to be dramatic but is just a pain in the butt. Whoever dreamed that up should have been sentenced to listening to railroad cars coupling and uncoupling continuously for twenty years and then forced to listen to their own "music" for another twenty. The only Audie Murphy western I think comes as close to being enjoyable as The Texican is Ride a Crooked Trail. And only because of the outstanding work done by Walter Matthau.

As Steven Segal movies go this one is bottom of the barrel. His best was just fodder for bored teenagers. This one tips the scales, then falls off. The characters are all cardboard. The story is double lame. I can't spoil it by telling you the ending. You already know how all Steven Segal movies end if you have seen one. Here goes. He is a super-dooper government agent who know too much to turn loose so they decide, instead of killing him, to dope his brain until he don't remember squat. He escapes, of course, gets arrested and is located by his old general who needs his one man in a million experience to get back a stealth plane that has been handed over to a terrorist gang in Afghanastan by a rogue Air Force pilot who, surprise, surprise, Segal trained. All the heroes, except Segal's character and his dusky girlfriend, die heroically and Steve-Baby save the whole world in one swell foop, or fell swoop. Whatever. Made with some surplus Air Force and Navy flying film. And a lot of boom-booms. Get some Popeye cartoons instead.

From the opening shots through every scene acted out afterward NOTHING that is depicted in this movie EVER happened. It is a worse distortion than "Tombstone." I don't know where to start. For openers, the actor portraying McNelly admonishes a Ranger who is about to leave the service that he is "riding a Ranger horse and saddle, wearing Ranger clothes and carrying a Ranger gun," and if he leaves he will be arrested for theft. Anyone who knows squat about the Rangers of that day knows they had to bring their own horse, tack, weapons and clothes and then they would be considered for the service. Using Ranger badges for target practice is absurd beyond words. At that time the Rangers HAD NO badges. Just a letter stating they were Rangers. The makers of this movie either did not know or care. All a Ranger had to do to quit is ride away with what he brought. Also, John "King" Fisher was not a Mexican. He never shot down a crowd at a cattle auction. Leander McNelly's assignment in the Nueces Strip was to stop Mexican raiders from stealing cattle in Texas. His run in with John "King" Fisher was incidental and no shots were fired. McNelly and his men rode out to Fisher's ranch, arrested him and turned him over to a local sheriff. Days later they met Fisher and some of his men on the trail. Turns out Fisher had a friend who was a local judge and the judge let him bond out. McNelly had no authority to override that and Fisher went free for a time. The Black man McNelly took into his band was a former slave named Ben Kinchlow. He was hired as a tracker at no pay,just meals and equipment. When the shooting started between McNelly and the Mexican raiders, Kinchlow held the horses. The Mexican General was an officer in the Ruales, not the Mexican army, and he had no connection with Fisher. He was killed in the first shoot out with McNelly's men. The pistols McNelly's men used were black powder five shot revolvers. The pistols used in the movie had not been invented at the time. The rifles they used were single shot, black powder muzzle loaders. It wasn't until around three years after McNelly raided Mexico that the Rangers were given 1873 Winchesters. Over all the movie is an almost amusing "western" shoot-'em-up. The kind kids paid 15 cents to see back in the 1950s. It has nothing to do with the Texas Rangers. I don't know where the movie was filmed, but I know the land from Corpus Christi to Brownsville to the Rio Grande and is is an ancient sea bed, flat as a football field as far as you can see. This movie could have been titled "Leo Gorcey and the Dead End Kids" and the title would have been no more non-related than calling it "Texas Rangers."

This movie is a waste of time, a waste of film and a waste of talent. The story as acted out is beyond sophomoric, it is dumber than a box of rocks. Beyond improbable, it is implausible. Tommy Lee Jones couldn't even save it. Man comes upon a mass murder scene wherein dope sellers and buyers have shot each other to pieces. Finds one still alive sitting in a truck, bleeding from the chest and asking for water. Finds the one in possession of a million in cash, dead as a hammer, takes the money and goes home. Now, this dirt poor redneck is lying in bed with a million dollars cash at his disposal but is worried about the man who asked him for water. He gets up, gets a jug of water and goes back to the shootout scene in the middle of the night. The backers of the buyer want their money and they are waiting. He outruns a truck, swims a river, chased by a mean dog, shoots the dog, the body of which is the same phony looking fake dog he saw at the murder scene the day before, and goes back home. From there is gets dumber and dumber. There are many things more productive and entertaining you could do than watch this movie. Trying to stack greased BBs would one.

And that means the writers and producers and the director. The supporting cast was great. And their talents were wasted. All through the movie the LAWMEN are running FROM the bad guys. Trying every way they can to avoid a confrontation. The whole story falls apart near the end when the local sheriff and his boys have the perfect opportunity to ambush Ben Wade's gang from upstairs hotel windows (the gang is in the middle of the street below on their horses) but instead throw down their guns and throw themselves on the "mercy" of cold blooded, sadistic killers. Guess what happens. I could tell you WHY the ending is such a syrupy, sappy, sophomoric crock of dung beetle bait but that would require a "spoiler." Let's just say that all through the movie Russell Crowe's character is proud of the fact that he has no socially redeeming qualities whatsoever and then suddenly, almost instantly becomes a saint. Well, that's Hollywood. They made William Bonney, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and Buford Pusser heroes.

TV was never better than this and never got any better later. As soon as the credits were shown Rod Serling's phone never stopped ringing. But what amazed me was I discovered Jack Palance was one hell of an actor. It's a great story but without him it would just have floated instead of soared. After SHANE I figured he'd make good, ugly background for gritty movies, not much else. Great supporting cast. Palance is a prize fighter who almost makes it, then is tossed away like all fighters who don't measure up. His handlers, Ed Wynn and his son Keenan, dump the washed up fighter and he hits the streets, untrained, uneducated and seemingly unemployable. In a final act of desperation he goes to the state employment office. A feel good ending ensues. If you haven't seen it, do so. Feel good movies are hard to come by anymore.

The star was a Los Angeles real estate executive who always wanted to be an actor. The character he played, Tate, was a man whose left arm was paralyzed by a wound in the Civil War. He drifted, hungry and disabled, and practiced with his pistol until he became a one armed gun for hire. After it became known that Tate was as quick and deadly as the killers and bullies he was paid to deal with he was sought after by every crazy in the country. He faced them all. Tate became paranoid and overly defensive because he had only one arm. When people messed with Tate he shot old women, school teachers, stray dogs, preachers and innocent bystanders. He struck out out every threat, real or imagined. The first attempt at reality TV in the western genre. And it was great. Still is. I want it on DVD. Now.

Burl Ives has all the best lines and he doesn't waste a one. Chuck Connors plays a slimy weasel and makes you believe he IS one. All the cast is strong except Carroll Baker. Poor girl never did learn how to act, but she tries. Gregory Peck is his usual no-nonsense character, from the steel spine school of Frank Lovejoy and George C. Scott. His soft talk and quiet demeanor leads Charlton Heston's character to believe him weak and timid. Peck adroitly side steps all the challenges until he picks the time and the place for a showdown. What can one say about Jean Simmons? One could watch that beauty and grace with the sound off. AND she's a great actress. A story of a man who steps into what is to him a totally alien world and decides not to become a part of it. Instead he forces it to come to his terms by proving nothing to anyone except to himself. When the people who have damned him for a pantie waist realize he is stronger than all of them, they clamor for his favor. He smiles in amusement and walks away. What a story. If you love westerns and you haven't seen this one I envy you. I'd like to see it again for the first time.

One thing you should see in western movies that you never see is piles of horse apples all up and down the dirt streets. You know they were there but you don't see them in the movies. "Tombstone" is a video of a crock of horse apples. Wyatt Earp was a brawler, a bully, a pimp, a horse thief. He made his money in Dodge City beating up drunks (at $3.00 a head knock) and keeping the peace in whore houses. That's how he earned the title "the battling pimp." He and his brothers were vagrant thugs and bullies. They were cited for the robbery of the Benson, Arizona stage but they had the badges so they blamed it on the Clantons and their friends. Then they closed the case by killing them at the O.K. Corral. One of Wyatt's brothers, Warren Earp, was a drunk and a brutal bully who lived in Wilcox, Arizona. One day he walked into a saloon and got too far out of control and someone shot him as many times as he had bullets. But back to the movie. You know you are looking at a crock of horse apples when Powers Booth's character, Johnny Ringo, stumbles out of an opium den and fires his two six shooters twenty-one times without reloading. According to records John Rheingold shot one man in his entire life. He shot a drunk in the face in a saloon because he didn't like the man's beard. The man did not die. Then in the re-enactment of the famous O.K. Corral gunfight, Val Kilmer's character, John Henry Holliday, fires a double-barreled shotgun three times in less that two seconds. Now you know someone has foisted a crock of horse apples off on you. The only saving graces of the movie are Robert Mitchum's voice over and Charlton Heston's underplayed and unannounced role. But, watch it because it is well scripted, well cast, well directed and a very entertaining crock of horse apples.

They also tried to be correct, but Woody Strode wasn't the only race faux pas. The lieutenant portrayed by Rip Torn was an American Negro. He didn't know that Hollywood didn't know, or maybe didn't care, that he was a black man, so when he was told his character would be featured prominently in the movie he assumed a well known black actor would be cast in the role. He took his family to see the movie so they could get an idea of what he went through in Korea to win his medals. Surprise, surprise. When the word got out you could hear the movie moguls shrug their shoulders all the way to Malibu. As Fred Allen once observed, "You could take all the sincerity in Hollywood, drop it into a flea's navel and still have room for an agent's heart." Does it make you wonder what else they got wrong? Or overlooked? Or made up as they went along?

Another overlooked, under rated movie. The ghost of Vietnam hovers in every scene. A group of poorly trained, misfit soldiers are lost in a jungle. They antagonize an enemy they can't see and know nothing about. They swagger and employ bravado. The invisible enemy strikes from ambush, swift and silent. The soldiers have no leadership. Their guns fire only blanks. They flee. The enemy come after them, on his turf, on his terms. One by one the soldiers fall prey to lack of adequate training. Lack of adequate equipment. Lack of fighting skills. Lack of self confidence. And a total lack of support. Bryon James, the one prisoner they have escapes. He comes back and exacts revenge on the soldier that has tormented him. Then he sums up the entire Vietnam story in one pronouncement shouted from a railroad trestle. "Dis our home down here. Don't nobody fock wit us!"

Most people you might ask (those who have some idea) would tell you that "On the Beach" starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astaire is the most sobering movie made about a possible civilization ending nuclear war. They would be wrong. "Alas, Babylon" will chill you even now that the threat is gone. Andrews is a military officer on the Florida panhandle talking on the phone to his brother in southern Florida. The line goes dead. He walks outside and looks up to see a giant mushroom cloud over the city where his brother was. It goes downhill from there. The anarchy. The savagery. The beastliness of a human civilization thrown immediately back to the stone age and subjected to the cold blooded kill or be kill code in what was a few days before friendly neighborhood streets. No one's politics can overcome this stark reality.

Name a genre of political or social satire. It is in this movie. Name a sacred cow that needs to be kicked in the udders. A swift kick is delivered in this movie. Here's a sample. Loretta Swit is selected as vice president of the US because it is "PC". His first day in office the president dies. Our first female president is faced with some serious foreign policy decisions and decides to seek the advice of the former president, Murray Hamilton. You get the first hint of outrageous satire when her limo arrives at the gates of a federal prison. Hamilton portrays a hilarious amalgamation of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in an understated performance that borders on genius. He takes a break from busting rocks and advises Swit with a lot of film-flam and jibber-jabber, then embraces the two Secret Services agents. They walk back to the limo talking about how the former president is the salt of the earth. When they turn around you see he has stolen the shirts off their backs while leaving their neckties and suit coats in place. After that the outrageous satire comes rapid fire in every scene. After every scene you think, "They can't upstage that." Then they do. In spades and doubled. It doesn't end until the end of the movie. See it with some friends. Laugh out loud.

The guys from I, Spy are back and "it" hits the fan. Hickey and Boggs are two long in the tooth private investigators on their last legs, physically and financially. They get a case that seems like a good deal to make a few bucks. Then they uncover some things that the really, really bad guys do not want uncovered. The more the bad guys try to get them off the case the harder they press. Then one of their families is murdered as a warning and they go methodically ballistic. Now they are looking not for information but for some people to kill. Also featured is Bill Hickman, one of Hollywood's most sought after stunt drivers and the driver of the black Charger in "Bullitt." You never saw Bill Cosby portray a quiet family man turned into a methodical, cold blooded killer. Don't miss a chance to see it.

You can be told this was a good series and should have run much longer but that means nothing to you if you haven't seen it. Michael Beck, the dower Houston detective, is not happy with being given a smart talking cop transplanted from Chicago for a partner. Michael Pere is "in your face, I ain't backing down" tough and the two have a rocky start. Then one day a man looking to kill Beck over an old grudge walks up to an unmarked police car where Beck is sitting off guard and lost in thought. He turns his head to see his old homicidal enemy pointing a gun at his face and grinning. He freezes, realizing he is a dead man. From nowhere Pere appears firing automatic pistols with both hands. The man flees and gets away but Beck now realizes Pere is the real thing and a friendship begins. Together they roust Houston's seamier side, which is about the size of Costa Rica, and fight crooks and their own head office. By the way, the remark about Pere's brown and white wing tip shoes did not come from Beck. They are visiting Beck's old home town in east Texas and Pere runs afoul of some local toughs. One says, "I can tell from your shoes you ain't from around here." Pere responds, "Yeah, well I can tell from your forehead your parents were first cousins." A fight ensues wherein Pere is trying to defend himself against three or four mean rednecks. When he finally drives them away he sees Beck standing nearby, grinning.

An odd show, if you watch it closely. First of all, it ran from 1958 until 1963 and it was about honest cops in New York City. It had some great performers, but some of the scripts, especially those done by Sterling Silliphant, were a little pretentious bordering on klutzy. Not as stilted, formulated, pretentious or klutzy as Dragnet, but borderline. The other thing interesting is in the episodes done in 1961 the detectives drove brand new Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs but the blue suits guys drove 1953-54 Fords. In one episode the mean hit man, whose speciality was killing people with a car, drove a 1950 or 1951 Buick chasing the cops who were in a 1950 Oldsmoblie. Now that's low budget. The character of the main focus, a hard working detective played by James Franciscus, is a little too introspective and self doubting to be a good New York street cop. The same demeanor was carried on by Paul Burke. A cop in New York with those kinds of hang ups would have lasted about one month. New York City, even in those days, was a lot more interesting than the show is able to present it. No real New York native characters. Just the mysterious Emerald City and hard working, deticated public servant cops putting it all on the line. That and Wheaties is as all-American as in got on TV back then. Good show for car buffs who like to see the old machines in action again, though.

If you haven't seen this movie you owe it to yourself. A feel good movie where the bad guys are really bad and the good guy is really good and the good guy wins. Sean Connery is a Marshal who finds out almost too late that the criminals opposing him are the directors of the mining company that hired him. And he's stuck in outer space, a six months rocket ride back to earth. James Sikking (Hill Street Blues Lt. Hunter) and Frances Sternhagen (as the company doctor) are outstanding. Peter Boyle is the subtle, laid back, evil nemeses. Sternhagen has a great line. Connery asks her, "What are you doing here?" And she replies, "I'm like a ship's doctor. One jump ahead of a malpractice suit." Great special effects. Worth the time and money to watch. Do it.

The British anti-terrorist police assassinate a well known member of the Irish resistance in order to blame it on members of his own organization to create an internal fight. But they also kill an American journalist who is along for the ride. Now, more than ever, they need to blame the IRA. An investigator is sent from London to "find out the truth." Unfortunately for him he is an honest cop who wrongly believes he bosses really do want him to find the truth. When he gets close he is warned to back off. He refuses and the same people out to destroy the IRA set out to destroy him. Too late he learns pawns are not allowed to have the courage of their convictions.

Jack Elam's best role ever. Deputy J.D. Smith DID NOT take crap from anyone or any thing. When he sensed things were about to get tough, he shot old women, kids, dogs, cats, horses, tree stumps, preachers, shadows and, now and then, an outlaw. If an outlaw in the Dakota Territory had to make a choice between being captured by hostile Indians or facing J.D. Smith he might flip a coin, if he was really brave. If he was not really brave he'd run towards the hostile Indians. If this series had had Amanda Blake and Glenn Strange it might have run as long as Gunsmoke. Given the propensity of producers of "western" TV shows during this period of having a "good guy" or well meaning but troubled "good guy" in the leading role, (Jim Bowie, Sugerfoot, Johnny Yuma) this western series stood out bold enough to make a pablum fed audience, weaned on formula plots, really uncomfortable. It exhibits a whole new definition of "ahead of it's time."

All the positive clichés apply here. Fast moving. Intriguing. Hard hitting. Unrelenting. Absorbing. Casting, editing, story line, directing, acting and photography all come together. A seemingly innocuous, but tenacious, reporter starts out to find the persons and reasons behind a political assassination. The more obstacles that appear in his path, the more determined he becomes. Opposition seems to come from every direction. He is ambushed by persons he would never suspect could be involved. The search evolves into a struggle, then a physical fight for his life as the people responsible target him and he has no way of knowing where the next ambush will come from. The goal of uncovering the truth becomes secondary to staying alive when he becomes the hunted instead of the hunter. No one who could help him believes him, of course. Warren Beatty fan or not, if you don't like this movie then stick to Disney cartoons. As fine a supporting cast as one could ask for.