Fort Doom

I bought this 'film' from a gas station in the 3.99 bin for one reason: Billy Drago, who is one of my favorite actors. He is terrifically creepy and good, but that's where it stops. The movie itself is a dirt cheap, gratingly awful attempt at a horror western, and manages neither, never mind a successful merging of the two genres. The acting besides Drago's is so bad I wanted to put the couch cushions over my ears, the production values are nonexistent and the script , I don't even know where to start.

Avoid at all costs unless you are a die hard Drago fan like me.

Terrible, shameful unforgivable.

This movie is about a group of women (perhaps not of the highest repute) who are heading to a small fort to take over a recently departed uncles property where they plan to set up shop. Upon arrival in a nearby city they find no one will go there (even though its only 15 miles away), so they walk. When they get there they find there are no soldiers but a good amount of people who have taken over use of the fort and built up a small city nearby. They soon find that something isn't right here and Fort McMillan (Ft. Doom as the locals call it) is in some serious trouble.

Rather than go into the plot line I will make some comments about things I noticed about the movie. First off the acting is very flat, only a few of the people seem to be real enough to believe in. My first though was poor acting, but at the end I watched some of the outtakes and these same people became alive. So my only thought left is this is how the director wanted it. On top of the bad acting I have a great problem where the people don't react right to a given set of circumstances. Take for example no one would take them to Ft McMillan for any price even though its only 15 miles away. Yet when we arrive at the Fort we find it is well maintained by a decent population of people, all of whom must get supplies from some one, not to mention mail etc. It is supposed to take place in 1867, yet we can see the railroad car has electric lights (they aren't on at least) and a locomotive engine that is at least 30 years later, not one of the general style of locomotives so popular at that time. There are also places where you can see paved blacktop, (and maybe a car at one point, didn't want to bother to go back and look) and other anachronistic items. If they had followed the rules of the "world" they made and let the actors be actors it might have gotten a 4 from me instead of the 2 I gave it, and they rewritten it about 4 more times it might have done even better.

An interesting premise, and Billy Drago is always good as a dangerous nut-bag (side note: I'd love to see Drago, Stephen McHattie and Lance Hendrikson in a flick together; talk about raging cheekbones!). The soundtrack wasn't terrible, either.

But the acting--even that of such professionals as Drago and Debbie Rochon--was terrible, the directing worse (perhaps contributory to the former), the dialog chimp-like, and the camera work, barely tolerable. Still, it was the SETS that got a big "10" on my "oy-vey" scale. I don't know where this was filmed, but were I to hazard a guess, it would be either an open-air museum, or one of those re-enactment villages, where everything is just a bit too well-kept to do more than suggest the "real Old West". Okay, so it was shot on a college kid's budget. That said, I could have forgiven one or two of the aforementioned faults. But taken all together, and being generous, I could not see giving it more than three stars.

This is John Wayne meets Jason Vorhees. You've never seen the Old West with quite a sinister eye before. Well, lemme slow down a bit - that might be setting the bar a little high. Like all lower-budget films, it's got it's problems... but I thought it was a creative hybrid of two genres that we don't often get to see cross paths. Some funny stuff thrown in there too. I dug the train scene at the start of the film, the shootouts, and the original score upped the production value quite a bit. The title is a little on the cheese side for me. They coulda went with something a little more mysterious, I dunno. Overall, It's worth checking out. C'mon, any movie with a brothel, gunfights, and a skinny dipping scene is time well spent.

Other than Billy Drago doing his usual whispering, the effort by everyone else in this post Civil War stinker is beyond bad. For certain I have seen better acting in high school plays. Everything deteriorates with each passing minute finally reaching an unbearable climax with nausea inducing hand held cameras. Dialog is totally inept, with long meaningless talks taking the place of character development. Finally, the wheels come off completely as the story morphs from mortician slasher to revenge seeking rouge Confederates on mind altering drugs. "Fort Doom" looks like it was shot at a tourist attraction and the entire film can easily be summed up in one word TERRIBLE ! .... - MERK