Winchester 73

This is a fantastic remake of the original that starred James Stewart. John Saxon plays the bad guy and guess who plays his father, Dan Duryea who also starred in the original. I hope someday they will distribute this on VHS or DVD. If not, I hope they will at least air it again on television.

I don't know what it says about some of the contributors to this site that they seem to want to eulogise the guns that are featured in films rather than dwell on their harmful consequences.This is a cheap and shoddy TV remake by Universal of one of the great Westerns of all time.They have a determination to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator .It is quite apparent that they want to keep the cast list to below 10 and use all of their standing sets at Universal City.Their "Indian Tribe" seems to consist of just 2 individuals.The acting of the younger members of the cast is so wooden that you would believe that their faces are incapable of mobility.The shootout at the end is poorly staged and the whole film is a total bore which even a fine actor such as Dan Duryea cannot redeem.

If you have just watched the original Winchester 73 with Jimmy Stewart and foolishly followed it with his one -- you have my utmost sympathy. At least the screen writers didn't make a duplicate of the original. That probably would have even been worse. There are a handful of talented actors in this movie; however, they couldn't save it from the bad script or the other actors who were the proverbial flash in the pan -- only on the screen because they had the Look and nothing more. This movie might be more palatable if I had not watched the original right before this one.

There must be a terrific laundry in this town. Every actor's clothes are perfectly cleaned and pressed except for John Saxon. Appears the costume lady just went down the movies studio's "cowboy clothes" department and pulled out something from the 1950's for everyone. Secondly, I take part in shoot competitions and have never seen anyone who could shoot as well as these guys. Totally unbelievable. Thirdly, the depictions of "Indians" is an insult to real native Americans. It's hard to understand why movie studios would put money into this kind of amateurish film. I gave it a 2 only because it had some nice scenery.

The only thing that kept me watching was how impressed I was with the picture for 1967 - bright, vid, and quite sharp. I don't know if I was watching an upgraded version or what but it looked amazing.

Now, the writing - wow, it's really bad. None of the characters make any sense in what they are doing. None of them. They all seem to make the most random and horrible decisions. I could only watch 20 minutes but it kept getting worse and worse. Do not watch more than a couple minutes.