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Billy the Kid Week 2010: Review of The Left Handed Gun (1958)

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews on August 10, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to Day 2 of Billy the Kid Week 2010. I’ll be reviewing Billy the Kid movies all week. Yesterday I reviewed the 1943 Howard Hughes movie, The Outlaw starring Jane Russell. Today, I’m reviewing The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman.

In 1955 Gore Vidal wrote a teleplay for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse called The Death of Billy the Kid. It starred Paul Newman as Billy the Kid. Several years later Vidal’s teleplay would be used as the basis for Leslie Stevens’ screenplay for The Left Handed Gun. Originally, James Dean was cast to play Billy the Kid for this movie but he died in 1955 and the studio cast Paul Newman as Dean’s replacement.

Many critics of this movie believe star Paul Newman was miscast. Newman, at the time, was 33 years old and seen as too old to play the teenage Billy the Kid.

I originally watched this movie back in the late ’90s when I was trying to watch as many movies that had Billy the Kid in it as I could find. I thought, “Paul Newman as Billy? This should be pretty good.” However, I was wrong. You can tell that this screenplay was written for a younger actor. Dean probably would have been able to pull off the “troubled teenager” bit a little more convincingly than the mid-30 year old Newman. But even with a more convincing lead, this movie is just boring. Newman’s Billy seems like a petulant child and the events transpiring barely registered in my consciousness. By the time the movie was over (what felt like 6 hours later) I had forgotten most of the story. Plus, Billy’s “love interest” shows up half way through the movie and all of sudden they are in love. It’s weird. She’s played by Lita Milan, and she’s pretty, but she has a very distracting haircut; the infamous femme-mullet. The whole movie feels like a jumbled collection of boring scenes capped off with a very unsatisfying ending.

Per the movie’s title, for many years Billy the Kid was believed to be left handed. The mistake occurred because the one known/verified photograph of Billy the Kid (above) was a ferrotype (or, tintype) which portrays a mirrored image of the subject. Unfortunately, publishers over the years reproduced this photo in numerous books “as is” and didn’t document the fact that we are looking at the mirror image of Billy the Kid. This led to the mistaken belief by many people that Billy was left handed (as that’s where his gun is holstered in the photo). Extensive expert photo analysis has concluded that Billy wasn’t left handed and this image is in fact reversed.

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Billy the Kid Week 2010: Billy the Kid in pop culture

Posted in Billy the Kid, comic books, magazine, pop culture, toys with tags Billy the Kid, comic books, pop culture, toys on August 5, 2010 by Paxton

Billy the Kid Week 2010 starts officially on Monday. However, I thought I’d do a “soft opening” of the Kid Week today.

After seeing the Young Guns movies, especially the first one in 1988, I went on the hunt for a movie novelization and/or a souvenir magazine for either movie. Back then, there was no Internet to search, I had to “pound the pavement” at all of my local malls and bookstores to find these items. And I was never able to find anything. Surprisingly, I now know, neither Young Guns movie had a novelization nor a movie souvenir book released. And it crushed me. I really wanted that novelization.

While I never found a souvenir mag or a novelization, there were plenty of Billy the Kid items I did find. Some of them right away, some of them years later. Here are some items I found throughout the years featuring Billy the Kid.

Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine – This magazine began in 1950 and was published by Toby Press. It lasted 29 issues and finally ended in 1955. The magazine featured old and new Wild West stories including tales told from the point of view of a killer bear as well as Katie O’Donnell, the first female prospector. The magazine also contained artwork by the great Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson and Mad Magazine’s Harvey Kurtzman.

Charlton’s Billy the Kid – Published sporadically throughout the ’60s and ’70s, this comic book featured artwork by the great Cracked magazine artist John Severin. The book told fictional tales featuring a fictional version of Billy the Kid. The comic was twice put on a year long hiatus in the ’70s and finally canceled in 1983.

(via Plaid Stallions)
Kenner’s The Real West – Kenner originally planned to release these figures as a tie-in to the 1979 film, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days. The film was a prequel to the Redford/Newman classic from 1969 and it starred William Katt as Butch and Tom Berenger as Sundance. Needless to say, the movie bombed and Kenner opened the line up to all mythical figures of the Old West and tried to re-brand it The Real West. In the image on the left above, you can see the figures in the line which include Billy the Kid in the lower left corner. Click the image to see it bigger over on Plaid Stallions. The top five figures were all from the movie and released with the Butch and Sundance branding. The bottom three figures (including Billy) were planned to be released as the second series with the new Real West branding, and were produced, but never actually released. In the image on the right, you can see the Western Cafe playset. Look familiar? It was a redressed Star Wars Creature Cantina playset.

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Young Guns II turns 20 years old today plus Billy the Kid Week

Posted in Billy the Kid, movies, nostalgia, sequels with tags anniversary, Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, movies, pop culture, Young Guns on August 1, 2010 by Paxton

As you know, we love movie anniversaries here on the Cavalcade. Together, you and I have seen huge franchises reach their 25 and 30 year anniversaries (Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back), which, I don’t know about you, makes me feel old as hell. Anyway, today’s movie could still be considered a “young” one (compared to these other franchises, oh, and PUN!). It was released in the first year of a new decade, 1990, but is hands down one of my favorite movies from when I was growing up.

Young Guns II was released on August 1, 1990, 20 years ago today. I was 16 years old when this movie was released.

The original Young Guns was one of my favorite movies of all time. So, needless to say, in 1989, while watching MTV Movie News, when I first saw a report about the filming of Young Guns II: Hell Bent for Leather (original subtitle while it was filming), I nearly lost my damn mind. I had no idea they were going to make a sequel (oh, the days before the internet).

So, I saw this movie the day it came out and I loved it nearly as much as the original. In my mind, it had a few flaws but it was a solid sequel. Both of these movies touched off a love in me for the Old West. I was soon reading everything I could get my hands on about Billy the Kid and other famous gunfighters like
Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the Sundance Kid. I even started reading Louie L’Amour novels (which are boring as all hell). It was the Young Guns movies that got me to watch Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns (The Good, Bad and the Ugly) and newer “modern” westerns like The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead and Tombstone. I actually had a picture of Clint dressed as Josey Wales hanging above the bed in my college dorm for 4 years. I still have a love for westerns (as well as Billy the Kid).
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10 Ridiculous and awesome vintage movie posters

Posted in advertising, movies, pop culture with tags advertising, movies, pop culture on July 21, 2010 by Paxton

The movie poster can either be the best thing or the worst thing about a movie. If the movie studios are careful, they can sell the movie on poster alone. What usually happens though is the studios want to put the most recognizable faces on the poster and what we end up with is a horribly composed Photoshop creation of like 3-5 faces over some action scene in the movie. Utter crapola.

However, sometimes movie studios get a wild hair and create some ridiculous movie poster that has to be seen to be believed. The actual movie couldn’t possibly live up to the greatness of the poster, but you want to see the movie to find out.

Here are some of those posters. You can click any of the images to see them BIGGER.

Ape (1976) – Giant gorilla + Giant shark + Giant snake = F**king AWESOME. Obviously this movie was trying to cash in on the ’70s remake of King Kong with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange (note the Not to be Confused With… disclaimer), but I don’t remember that Kong fighting a shark. Or stepping on and crushing a cruise ship while strangling a giant snake. Maybe that’s why the King Kong remake sucked. Replace Jessica Lange with a giant shark and you would have me at hello.

(Via Lost Video Archive)
Too Late for Tears (1949) – “WHERE’S MY DINNER?!” *SMACK* “WHY ARE YOU CRYING?!” *SMACK* “I HAVE NO TIME FOR YOUR TEARS!” *SMACK* Wow. Just…wow.

(Via Wrong Side of the Art)
Champion of Death (1975) – Okay, you have a movie starring the awesome Sonny Chiba called Champion of Death. What goes on the poster? Chiba karate chopping a giant bull right between the eyes. Wha-?! This movie was also called Karate Bullfighter, which is pretty awesome and brings some much needed sense into the poster design, however, when you know that this movie is about a famous sensei who founded a popular style of Japanese karate and has nothing to do with bullfighting, we are right back into Crazytown.

(Via Wrong Side of the Art)
The Devil’s Partner (1961) -It’s always fun to speculate what these movies are about based on the poster. Here you have a naked chick riding a centaur (!) through a cemetery while being watched by an invisible devil. Yeah, I don’t really care what the movie is about, I just want to see that insanity and have it wash over me like warm sunshine.

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Discovering Unofficial Movie Trilogies

Posted in 80s, movies, pop culture with tags movies, pop culture on July 7, 2010 by Paxton

I was talking with Shawn Robare of Branded in the ’80s over Twitter a while ago (click here to follow him) and he came up with a great movie game: unofficial movie trilogies. The idea was to name three movies that weren’t sequels or remakes of each other, but had some type of over-arching connection through subject matter or archetype. Shawn originally focused his trilogies on ’80s movies, but I started ignoring his “rules” and opened it up to include ’70s – 2000s. However, after doing this, I noticed the majority of our answers did in fact come from the ’80s and ’90s.

So, we tweeted back and forth different lists of movies we grouped together in these “unofficial trilogies”. Just looking at the movie titles you couldn’t tell what they may have in common, but when you look deeper, the connection becomes apparent. It reminded me of that board game, Tribond.

In TriBond, for those that don’t know, you are given three seemingly unrelated things and you have to name what they have in common. For instance, on the box above, you have pie, Earth and bread. How are those three things related? The answer, they all have a crust. See? How about another one; Florida, door, piano. What do they have in common? Give up? It’s keys. They all have keys. Clever right? Well, that was Shawn’s idea, relate three previously unrelated movies. So we went back and forth giving our answers and we came up with some good ones. I thought I’d share them with you guys and let you in on the fun.

As a special treat, Shawn has agreed to write a companion piece over on Branded in the 80s. I’ll be discussing my list of movie trilogies here at the Cavalcade (you are reading it now) and Shawn will discuss his list of movie trilogies over on Branded. It was fun to do this with Shawn and I think you guys are going to like it. Let’s get started.

Tim Matheson “Eric Stratton” trilogy – In 1978 Tim Matheson played Eric Stratton in Animal House. It was a classic role that pretty much jump started his career. Don’t get me wrong, Tim was in a crap-ton of stuff before Animal House, but Eric Stratton would pretty much define his career. Not surprisingly, Tim would play a similar irreverent jokester character, Bob McGraw, in the 1984 college romp, Up the Creek. I couldn’t find a trailer, but here’s a funny 5 minute clip from the movie. Then, to cap off the hat trick, Tim would play Van Wilder’s dad in National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, thereby coming full circle as Animal House was also by National Lampoon and in the movie Van’s dad is inferred to also be a former partier. As an adendum, Tim would play a famous college alum in American Pie: Book of Love (2009). He would appear in a scene with other actors who portrayed famous high school/college characters like Dustin Diamond (Saved by the Bell), C Thomas Howell (Red Dawn, My Secret Admirer), Christopher Knight (Brady Bunch) and Robert Romanus (Fast Times at Ridgemont High).

Kevin Costner “Crash Davis” trilogy – In 1988 Kevin Costner made Bull Durham and introduced the world to “Crash” Davis, catcher extraordinaire and mentor to “Nuke” LaLoosh. It was a career defining role and one many consider to be his best. In 1999 Costner would return to the baseball diamond in For Love of the Game. Costner played a pitcher, Billy Chapel, about to pitch the last game of his career. Then, in 2005, Costner played retired baseball player, Denny Davies in Upside of Anger. While Billy Chapel wasn’t as irreverent and funny as Crash, Denny Davies was every bit as irreverent and funny as Crash. I’m surprised they didn’t just name him Denny Davis and maybe have one mention of his nickname being Crash or something. The roles are really that similar. I was close to putting Tin Cup in this group mainly because that character is essentially “Bull Durham on a golf course”, but I like the idea of three baseball movies.