Doc

This demystifying "Doc" (Frank Perry, 1971) packs a good cast with Harris Yulin , Faye Dunaway and Stacy Keach . Three nice actors in a huge exciting production . They form an unlikely alliance which culminates in their participation in the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral . At the beginning Doc Holliday , a famous poker gambler , one day he challenges a man to poker , betting his horse against his opponent's woman . There he meets Katie Fisher, also known as Katie Elder (Faye Dunaway) , will follow him wherever he goes . Their next destination is Tombstone , where the law is represented by Sheriff Wyatt Earp . They fought shoulder to shoulder in the wildest stand-up gunfight in the history of the West . They are the strangest alliance between the West's most famous sheriff , Wyatt Earp (Harris Yulin) , trying to overcome outlaws and its deadliest gambling killer , Doc Holliday (Stacy Keach) . When he arrives in Tombstone , the election campaign is in full swing . Earp runs for candidate but the Clantons , a family gang of outlaw cowboys, are not among his keenest supporters . Conflict erupts following the failure of some shadowy bargaining and Doc decides to join Wyatt and his brothers , Virgil (John Bottoms), Morgan and James . There they would see them in a feud with the Clantons led by Ike (Mike Witney) , a local clan of ruthless thugs and cattle thieves . When the showdown becomes inevitable , the help will come from Doc Holliday , a terminally-ill gambler who happens to be another Wild West legend . The four of them gather at the O.K. Corral where the seven Clanton brothers along with The Kid (Denver Collins) are waiting for them . The film correctly builds up its suspense until a tense battle in streets of Tombstone . One day of 1881, it takes place the famed shoot'em up among Wyatt , Doc , Billy , Ike Clanton , McLowery and Ringo .

This trigger-taut Western drama deals with a lawman and a badman , the strangest friendship this side of heaven and hell . It's incomparably performed by the greatest team who ever went into action , Harris Yulin portrays the large-than-life lawman , living by the old rules , driven by revenge , dueling to the death and Stacy Keach is most impressive as a gunslinger , the hellfire gambler , his only friends were his guns and his only refuge was a woman's heart . ¨Doc¨ has an evocative cinematography , well made by Gerald Hirschfeld , being filmed on location in Manzanares Del Real , La Pedriza , Colmenar Viejo and Almeria , Spain , where in the 60s and 70s had been shot lots of Spaghetti/Paella Westerns . Furthermore , atmospheric and thrilling musical score by Jimmy Webb . The motion picture was professionally directed by Frank Perry . He was an expert on dramas that enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with his wife , the playwright and screenwriter Eleanor Perry . As he directed ¨David and Lisa¨ , ¨Man on a Swing¨, ¨Play It As It Lays¨, ¨Diary of a mad housewife¨ and his two greatest successes were ¨The swimmer¨ and ¨ Mommie dearest¨ also with Faye Dunaway .

The film is set in Tombstone where Earp finds Holliday and helps him against Ike , Billy Clanton , Johnny Ringo and McCloury . The final part focuses Tombstone , 1881 , with stimulating scenes about OK Corral gunfight between Morgan , Virgil , Wyatt Earp , Doc against the nefarious Ike , Billy Clanton , Johnny Ringo, and Tom McLowery . The main character is a historical figure , in this case the sheriff Wyatt Earp who participated the most famous duel occurred in the western town of Tombstone in 1881 that has been brought to the big screen many times , as in the classic "My Darling Clementine" in 1946 directed by John Ford with Henry Fonda and Victor Mature , or the more modern "Tombstone : The Legend of Wyatt Earp" (George P. Cosmatos, 1993) with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer and ¨Wyatt Earp¨ (Lawrence Kasdan, 1994) with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid . And , of course, the best version resulted to be ¨Gunfight at O.K. Corral¨ by John Sturges with Burt Lancaster , Kirk Douglas , Jo Van Fleet , Rhonda Fleming , Ted De Corsia , among others . John Sturges would resume the same story in the inferior "The Hour of the Gun" (1967) with Jason Robards , James Garner and John Voight

As a movie it is a semi-interesting curiosity. What I find amusing is the comments of some people have made here, to the effect that unlike the romantic fantasies of previous Wyatt Earp movies, this movie finally reveals the ugly truth behind the legends. I have been studying frontier history for about forty years and to anyone who thinks the events in DOC (even allowing for dramatic license) have any connection to historic fact, I say: Only on the Bizarro Planet, Cheech. As someone else wrote, all it does it replace positive lies with negative lies. I remember when the movie came out, the producer-director was plugging it on TV boasting of how much research had gone into this movie; likewise, in a preface to a paperback edition of his screenplay (which, as I recall, was even stupider than the actual movie), Pete Hamill wrote solemnly about how he--crackerjack journalist that he is--had seemingly unearthed the long-hidden truth about the Wild West in general and Wyatt Earp in particular. What twaddle. Hamill seems to have read one book about the Earps--Frank Waters' discredited Earp BROTHERS OF TOMBSTONE--and then pretty much relied on the time-honored journalistic tradition of Making Stuff Up. He didn't even really follow Waters very closely.

Among the gritiest, dirtiest, noisiest westerns I've seen. As I write this in 2002 Doc holds up very well compared to recent films such as Tombstone and Wild Bill. Doc puts a different "spin" to the famous OK Corral story both in the telling of the tale and in exploring the multi-layered relationship of the characters to one another. Stacey, Faye and Harris are fabulous.

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday did go to Tombstone to get rich, but this film badly represents the "truth". This is typical of the time (Vietnam era) where law enforcement,traditions, and America were questioned and debunked whenever possible. Liberalism at it's finest.

This film may have been thought-provoking (although inaccurate) for it's time, but we've grown up from those days, as we did from the overly-romaticized days that produced "My Darling Clementine" and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Those films were polar opposites of this one, and both were inaccurate. The best film of the Vietnam era on this subject was "Hour of the Gun" made 4 years prior to this one.Add that to "Tombstone" and Kevin Costner's "Wyatt Earp" as perhaps the most close to accurate on this subject as Hollywood will come.

Stacy Keach is Doc Holliday in the umpteenth retelling of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Faye Dunaway is Big Nose Kate, the woman he runs into in a bordello and falls in love with. Harris Yukon is Wyatt Earp, various other people play various other people, and if there's a point to director Frank Perry's handling of Pete Hamill's script, it's that the Old West was a dirty place. Not figuratively, but literally so in need of a good cleaning that cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld shoots all the interiors with a sepia tint. Even Miss Dunaway's white wedding dress looks ivory,

It's not presented as a story, but more as a series of events that happen to some ill-defined people. Of course, in many stories, it's the actions which tell us the characters, but Kerch seems to be just going along with things. I suppose that's a character, and it seems likely that a man who has been dying for years of tuberculosis might adopt the attitude. Still, it gives the impression that any random character at these events could have been the subject. One of the horses, perhaps.