I Killed Wild Bill Hickok

The story of Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back in Deadwood is legend enough and familiar enough for me to question why such a film as I Killed Wild Bill Hickok is even made. In this independent and very low budget western not even the name of Jack McCall the guy who actually did the deed is even mentioned. No story of how he was holding a full house hand of aces and eights the famous dead man's hand is mentioned here either.

Wild Bill is played by Tom Brown and he's one quick man on the draw all right, but he's also corrupt and in league with a crooked horse trader played by Denver Pyle who wants the army to have no horses unless Indian trouble gets so bad they'll pay stratosphere dollar for them.

Johnny Carpenter who plays a former lawman himself is now in the horse business himself and his arrival with a herd upsets a lot of people. That's the start of events leading up to a shootout with Carpenter and Brown. The sequence by the way was inspired by John Wayne and Tom Tyler and brothers shooting it out in Stagecoach.

I doubt this film is a candidate for restoration since it's pretty shoddy with the production values and camera work. It certainly is a film that tells you right in the title what it's all about.