gkhege
This is one of those movies that come in handy when you can't sleep at night. Watching Bobby Darrin attempt to play a tough ex- Sheriff, is simply to hard to believe. His hair remains perfectly groomed for the entire movie. The outfits are for the most part, wrong for the period in which the film takes place. For me, the background music upstaged all the stars who performed in this boring film.
classicsoncall
Are you kidding me - Bobby Darin - in a Western? I would have lost that bet big time. But you know what, he wasn't that bad. There were a few times I thought he was over-acting the role but in general a credible job. One problem though, was his casting as a baby face in the starring hero role. Like Audie Murphy, the matinée good looks don't always work when going up against the town bully or a gnarly gunslinger like Joe Slade (Donnelly Rhodes). Not only that, but when sized up against some of the other players, he was pretty much on the small side.But all in all, the story was pretty good. Now Leslie Nielsen - I guess I've seen him too many times in Airplane and Police Squad pictures to take him seriously in a dramatic role. So with that club hand of his, injured by Cal Wayne (Darin) when they were youngsters, it looked like a caricature and any minute I was expecting the kind of treatment we got from Kenneth Mars as the inspector in "Young Frankenstein". It came pretty close at one point too, when he started banging the hand on the back of a chair, but that was it. You have to admit though, Nielsen's character Grant Evers looked pretty fast on the draw for a cripple. It would have been something if the final showdown was between him and Cal.You know who got the short end of the stick here though, don't you? After all her fussing over Cal, Leann (Barbara Werle) got broomed so quickly she didn't even show up at the end of the picture. She could at least have gotten eighteen yellow roses for her trouble.
TankGuy
In the 1960s,due to the very stiff competition from television and the European Spaghetti westerns, it was common for Universal to remake some of their low budget 1950s westerns in order to make more money and restore favour with the masses. GUNFIGHT IN ABELINE was made in 1967 and is a remake of their 1956 effort, SHOWDOWN AT ABELINE.During the American Civil war, Confederate soldier Cal Wayne(BOBBY DARIN)accidentally kills his friend in battle, traumatised and distraught, Cal vows never to use a gun again. At the end of the war, he returns home to Abeline,Kansas where he is pressured into taking the job of sheriff by ruthless entrepreneur Grant Evers(LESLIE NIELSEN)in order to keep tensions between the ranchers and farmers under control, but as range war looms will Cal be forced to use his gun once again...GUNFIGHT IN ABELINE is a solid and plausible western, not one of the best I've seen, but still serviceable and entertaining. It has good, tight direction, it's excellently scripted, but a bit slow in some scenes, I found the whole love triangle uninteresting, it was handled much better in the original,I felt it didn't really bring much to this film, it just bogged it down and made it feel longer. As with most other westerns, I was impressed with the camera-work, but this was ruined by the terrible print shown by 5USA who showed it in 1:33:1 full screen rather than it's proper 2:35:1 widescreen,However,the shots of the horses riding and racing across the plains were fantastic and exhilarating, I thought the shots of the cattle were also terrific, even if they did look to be pinched from another film, it was great to see them as there were no such shots in the original. The storyline was really intriguing and gripping and tension is built up superbly as the film progresses. The main title song "Amy" was beautiful, one of the loveliest songs I've ever heard in a film, the performances were also very good, Bobby Darin was competent in the lead but Leslie Nielsen and Donnelly Rhoades gave magnificent performances which overshadowed his. Two scenes in the film which really stood out for me were the scene at the start where Cal kills his friend and the scene near the end in which Slade murders Evers,both scenes gave the film a fantastic new dimension in terms of the way they were filmed and acted and they were simply incredible. Darin chills the audience in the firstly mentioned scene with his raw disbelief, fear and desperation and in the second scene, the shot of Rhoades' face as he casually and coldly shoots Evers several times will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.The action scenes were exciting and incredibly put together, but they were done better and more briskly in the original, the final showdown between Wayne and Slade was a let down and was horrible compared to the one in the original, this one was just so anti climax it hurt. The suspense is built up amazingly and there are some awesome camera angles, but the part in which Wayne shoots Slade has got to be one of the worst death scenes I've ever seen in a film, Slade simply frowns and collapses to the ground, this ruined the film for me as from the beginning, tension had been built up remarkably and I was biting my nails waiting for an epic showdown. Another factor which tarnished my view of the film was the fact that the brutal whipping scene had apparently been omitted from the TV version. Before the character is about to be thrashed, the scene just fades away, making it appear to the viewer that the whipping was never included in the finished film, but according the IMDb message board for the film, the full whipping sequence was included uncut in a print that was shown on Encore westerns. I was gravely disappointed that Channel 5 committed it from their version, it let the whole film down completely and also ruined an incredible sequence in the film as this scene was exceptionally written and was probably the most taut, intense and chilling scene in the whole film. The battle montage at the beginning of the film was brilliant, the shots of the thundering cannons were both electrifying and spectacular and blew me away, something like this in the original would have looked outstanding.It's nowhere near as good as the original, but GUNFIGHT IN ABELINE is an engrossing western drama with a powerful and interesting script and impressively acted scenes and strong characters.However it does have it's flaws, at times the dialogue really slows the film down as some of it is just pointless and mushy,the final showdown was terrible and the removal of the whipping scene really destroyed the film, but I think if it was to get a proper, uncut DVD release, then I would enjoy it as much as I should have done. It's well above average and sill has the energy to entertain and excite, it's a great film to watch on a dull, rainy afternoon.8/10.
