Fella_shibby Saw this in the early 90s on a vhs. Revisited it few days back on a blu-ray. This is another take on the OK Corral shootout, more entertaining n has a better shoot out sequence n good cinematography. Once again v get to c a young Lee Van Cleef in a very short role but this time he gets a few dialogues unlike in High Noon. Cleef wants to eliminate Doc. Unknown to Cleef, Doc is a skilled knife thrower besides being a qualified dentist n a gunslinger whose aim cannot be questioned because none of his opponents r alive. Watch the reply Doc gives to Earp after being questioned regarding shooting guns. V also get to c a very young n unrecognisable Dennis Hopper who is being preached by Earp about the dangers of a life of gun-slinging for the young. The best thing about the film is the chemistry n the performances of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Sturges' direction is wonderfully simple but nowhere close to The Great Escape n Magnificent Seven.

revtg1-3 Before this movie was released My Darling Clementine (1946)was the most unabashedly absurd movie ever made about the famous gunfight. Both movies were laughable and appalling and a waste of talent. This The Gunfight at the OK Corral had as much to do in reality with the actual gunfight as the re-enactment on Star Trek did. There are no saguaro cacti as far south as Tombstone. Both movies use them as props. When you enter Tombstone from the north the cemetery is on your left, not right as in both movies. The fight lasted less than 30 seconds. It was not a running gun battle. If America cared about history our defense forces would call in an air strike on Hollywood.

mark.waltz If all of a sudden, the "Road" movies usually with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were taken over by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, the film would still be a success even if they weren't comics or singers. These two have great chemistry, and in a beautiful, Technicolor western, it makes no difference that the real-life incident they dramatize here is totally changed to fit the star's personalities, so I simply look on it as an entertainment, nothing more, nothing less.In this variation of the classic western gun battle that took place in 1881, dentist Doc Holliday (Douglas) and Wyatt Earp (Lancaster) are two total opposites who strike up a reluctant friendship even though Wyatt is annoyed by the Doc at first. But every time Earp gets into a jam, Doc is there, and even when Earp warns the Doc to stay out of Dodge City, he doesn't heed the warning. It's a good thing, too, because they seem to suit each other, even as opposites, and when the men take off for Tombstone to fight the notorious Clanton gang. Jo Van Fleet chews the scenery as Doc's drunken mistress who betrays him with the gang yet never gives up hope they'll get back together, and Earp finds himself enamored of a beautiful red-headed gambling lady (Rhonda Fleming). The actual gunfight is strikingly filmed and sticks to some, if not all, the facts.Any movie which opens up and continues playing a Frankie Laine song will be as equally dramatic as it is action packed, and Laine's singing of the title song all throughout the film, ties everything together. Some future TV stars (Earl Holliman of "Police Woman", DeForrest Kelley of "Star Trek" and Martin Milner of "Adam-12" fame) appear, and are surrounded by some great character players like Frank Faylen, Dennis Hopper, Lee Van Cleef and Lyle Bettger. As Hollywood got away from the second feature, the westerns began to improve, and classics like this, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "Ride the High Country" were made on a more epic scale.

secondtake Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957)This has the makings of a classic, and of course the story is one of the great ture legends of the Wild West. Burt Lancaster as the tough and unbending lawman and Kirk Douglas as the unpredictable semi-lawless cad are both great, and the best scenes are probably those with the two of them. The rest of the cast is reasonable, some of them really good, though maybe the all important bad guys lacked some kind of wild evil they might have needed (a Lee Marvin intensity). One of the bad guys, Johnny Ringo, is played by a nice guy actor, John Ireland, even though Ringo was never part of thie OK Corral story. It does have a young Dennis Hopper, which is fun to see (and Hopper hailed from Dodge City itself in real life).Still, it looked like it would really be equivalent to "Rio Bravo" and others from the same time period.Not so, not for me. And it's simply because of that whole range of different things that add up in a great movie and slip and slither in a decent one. For example, there are a number of interludes with horses walking through the big landscape and the corny theme song is sung through a new verse. I can't believe this was effective even at the time (music from 1957 in general wasn't so corny and fakey, including country music), but now it deadened the flow. Likewise the series of events didn't always seem to lead one to the next in a compelling way, as the interludes allowed a shift in location and sometimes a whole new situation to develop.One problem (if this is a problem) is that it's based on facts. I think this made the movie makers add information and keep switching towns simply because it was the way it was and they thought they must. Maybe they did. Oddly, they got lots of the essentials wrong that might actually make a better movie if someone wants to take another crack at it (quick details at wikipedia). The final famous shootout is fun and well done but way too obvious with the good guys always getting their target and the bad guys missing, or hitting a leg.So why the reputation? It isn't bad, and it is always compelling to see Douglas in particular in almost any film. The filming (by Charles Lang, one of the greats) is first rate, and so just watching, whatever the scene, is enjoyable.