La leyenda de los rivales

The popularity of The Kingston Trio's record of the song guaranteed The Legend Of Tom Dooley a built in audience. As a lad I remember going to see this film as the second feature of a double bill at the old Nostrand Theater in Brooklyn. I also remember for months during 1958 you could not avoid hearing the title song over the radio.

Before he was Little Joe Cartwright Michael Landon plays the title role in this film. Tom is a part of Mosby's raiders along with his two fellow soldiers Dee Pollock and Richard Rust and they do all kinds of guerrilla type action behind enemy lines like holding up the stagecoach you see in this film. The problem here is that after killing three Union soldiers acting as escort they find out the war is over. Worse than that Landon is from the area and the passengers recognize him.

Here's where common sense departs and the male member takes over. It would be the reasonable course of action to flee immediately, but Pollock is wounded and Landon wants to see the girl he left behind Jo Morrow. He was of Confederate persuasion in a Union area and they remember. And Morrow has Jack Hogan looking to move in on Landon's claim.

The Legend Of Tom Dooley is a cheaply made quickie by Columbia to take advantage of the song's popularity. Still I have to say that Landon and Morrow are a pair of winning young lovers who deliver sincere performances and that helps put the film over.

Not great, but a decent film and Michael Landon's fans should love it. He's even got the left handed draw that Little Joe Cartwright had.

I have just seen this film on TV last night, it is the first time I have seen it, and although not a classic, it does have a certain amount of charm and given that it was a cheaply made 'B' movie I thought it was well acted and well directed. It certainly held my attention and kept me entertained for the 90 minutes or so that it was on for. I would certainly like to watch more films like this one than the majority of the films that are made now. I notice that several reviewers have stated that it is not historically accurate in a few details, maybe that is so, I couldn't say, but whether it was accurate historically or not is of small consequence to me, I watch a film to be entertained not to have a lesson in factual history. Others have said that it is too much like an episode of "Gunsmoke" and uses the same sets, as "Gunsmoke" was one of the longest running and best western series ever aired on TV I would have thought that was not a bad thing and a plus rather than a negative.

After a lot of tv works, Ted Post directed a first western (The Peacemaker) and then this "Legend of Tom Dooley", who looks like tv movie with same kind of light, casting and settings. But the hit song "Tom Dooley" by the Kingston Trio is here to serve the story (I have heard this song since the 60's when my father brought it back from Usa). The action is non stop, every scene is important. The main attraction of this movie is Richard Rust, he's so precise and threatening in all his main scenes (his arrest, his escape,...)(remember him as gus in "Underworld Usa"). The best scene of the movie is the violent fight between Tom Dooley (played by Michael Landon who can move fast, but with no charisma) and Grayson, in a Phil Karlson style.

Michael Landon is Tom Dooley, in charge of a Confederate cavalry unit who have just killed some Union soldiers.... only the war is over. This makes it murder, because no one believes him, except his girl, Jo Morrow, who marries him. But the law and the Union Army are still after him.

It's a decent little movie made to take advantage of the Kingston Trio's recording of the song, It was a popular North Carolina folk song by this point, but it was based on the murder of Laura Foster by Tom Dula; he, like Landon in this movie, was a Confederate veteran. The case attracted national attention as an early case of a crime of passion. Dula's lover, Anna Melton was implicated, but Dula, in a letter written just before his death, took sole responsibility.

It was Landon's fourth big screen appearance. He would make more over the years, but his career was consumed by television. He died in 1991, aged 54.

I'm surprised how many of the reviews here trash this movie...

Okay, first the bad stuff. Maybe there is some historical inaccuracy to the guns people were using in the movie for that era, and I'll say I agree that the 'Tom Dooley' song doesn't really fit with the plot other than the character's name and that he might be hanged. For all I know the army uniforms didn't have the right number of buttons. For a general entertainment film such as this, sometimes you have to grin and bear the small flubs to enjoy the rest of the film, and that's true here.

But now let's get to the good stuff and it's considerable. The story begins when Tom Dooley (Michael Landon) and Country Boy (Richard Rust) kill someone in the line of following their orders as soldiers. Unfortunately the war has ended but they weren't told - and nobody is going to cut them any slack. While they thought they were just doing their jobs, now they are called murderers and try desperately to get out of this mess alive.

This movie has a few things that really hooked me. First off, the main characters played by Landon and Rust were likable types you could care about what happens to. If you don't care about the characters, then what interest is the story? But here, that's no problem - you can't help wanting to see them come out okay. And they got into this mess by accident, through no fault of their own, and every other person they encounter calls them 'murderers' and says they will hang for their crime. Here, the 'bad' guys are really the good guys, and the 'good' townspeople and sheriff etc. are the bad ones. I found Rust's character of Country Boy to be better-played than Landon's Tom Dooley, but both were quite good.

Part of the story is that Landon and Rust might get away, but Landon insists on going back to get his girl so she can come with them. That complicates things tremendously and contributes to the final outcome.

This movie moves along at a good pace and stays interesting from the beginning to the end. It has engaging characters caught in a tough situation. No, you can't count on it for historical accuracy, and the occasional playing of the Tom Dooley song in the background is not the best idea, but really - it is much better of a movie than many I've seen which got good ratings. I usually prefer Westerns by far to Civil War movies, but this one I like.