Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone

Long live his fame and long live his glory, And long may his story be told.

I can remember the theme to this day. The original TV program was a regular stop on my viewing schedule as a kid. My adulation of the legendary lawman composed of many hours pouring over books about Wyatt Earp and those wild West days.

Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone is a nice walk back in memory, but it doesn't play half as well as during the Western craze on American TV. It's wonderful seeing the old series, interspersed in new footage with an older, wiser Hugh O'Brien, BUT, it would work so much better if they just bring back the old series in its entirety.

The "current" story just doesn't ring true, hence, the entire film is choppy and uneven. Too bad, IMO, as "Wyatt Earp" was one of the best TV shows ever produced.

I give it 7/10 because of the old footage, but would've given it a 9/10 if the "current" story was better.

New footage combined with colorized segments from the popular TV series. Interesting enough to hold your attention and revisit days of old, when we had sanitized violence to watch. Of course, Hugh O'Brian will forever be our minds personage of the famed lawman with his trusty "Buntline Special".

Just a few of the memorable faces in the cast include: Paul Brinegar, Bing Russell, Bo Hopkins, Martin Kove, Don Meredith and Harry Carey Jr.

This was a very long sit (sic). Did people in those days really enjoy these series? Probably by lack of something better. Bad plot, bad acting and very lame fighting scenes. I have not seen much of these western-style type series, and I hope I don't have to see a lot more in the future. Because I hadn't heard of Wyatt Earp beforehand, I was a little confused in the beginning. But the time difference between the two periods became noticeable quickly enough when looking at the quality of the footing. Many of the story lines I could not really follow, but I couldn't care less. All the time while watching this movie I tried to find something that could hold my attention. No luck. I give this one 2/10 instead of 1/10, thanks to good ol' Johnny Cash...

Why did they plaster Hugh O'Brian with pancake make-up to depict the elderly Wyatt Earp? Was Earp a mutant whose face only got wider with age instead of wrinkling? Or was the idea that the photo quality of the new footage shouldn't differentiate it too harshly from the old colorized footage? Anyway, even painted an inch thick, O'Brian didn't need his standing bolstered by the voice of Johnny Cash on the theme song and narration. On the contrary, I think the movie was weakened by its clutch at Cash's coattails. The original TV series used a choir as musical backing, and that was the show's uniqueness. Sometimes the best form of emphasis is not the predictable form but a contrast instead.

I don't remember the original TV series very well, but maybe given the advantage of many more hours of storytelling, it managed better with the large configuration of individuals and factions that comes with the Wyatt Earp story. In this movie version, they required close attention and the viewer didn't get much insight in return for that attention.

Nonetheless, the emergence of this material from the vaults has got to be cause for celebration. This was the Wyatt Earp of a whole generation, and deserves to be remembered together with the older and newer ones.