Ghost Rock

I am a true lover of westerns, including the "B" westerns of Hollywood's golden era, so I tend to be tolerant of diverse production values. However, this is truly a time-waster. Continuity is sporadic, transitions are sometimes clumsy, comedy breaks are mediocre to silly, and stunt work is often abysmal. Gary Busey is the highlight in this film, although he did nothing to elevate his status by playing in this movie. He is a talented and accomplished actor and would undoubtedly shine, in even the worst movie. (Perhaps he just had that chance.) Now, not every small movie is a time-waster. Some of them turn out to be real gems. This is not one of them.

First, let me say that I am a fan of westerns, including many of the more recent in the genre. Still, I found this movie to be an utter waste of time.

The action scenes in this movie are easily the worst that I have seen in a movie which was not a total spoof. This is made clear in the second scene of the movie as a man is "thrown out" of a building, which involves hopping a few times out a door into a small somersault. Action scenes throughout the movie have some of the least convincing fake punches, gun wounds, and deaths in cinematic history. Some of the kung fu scenes are a small step up, but the editing into and out of these scenes is awful.

The tone of the story is mostly serious, with random bits of comic relief thrown in, but it becomes difficult to sort these from the extremely shallow story and pathetic acting.

When I saw that Gary Busey was in this movie, I had to see it. I knew it would be bad, but I did not know how bad. This movie was bad, and not in a funny way. Gary Busey plays the mayor of a little Western town, and his job is to maintain order while a group of Chinese railroad workers and locals fight for control. There was so much fighting in this movie that it was hard to keep track of the reasons. The fighting was also matrix style, and it was kung fu. Gary Busey was not the only horrible actor in this movie, everyone involved was equally nauseating. I had to turn the movie off after an hour. The worst part is that I had this movie in my home for almost a week.

It wasn't an original idea, the thought of combining the martial arts and western film genres into a single project. It's been done before: Kung Fu with Davind Carradine, The Fighter aka Savate (a straight to video film by Oliver Gruner). However, none before were this horrible.

For starters, the acting was wooden throughout the entire film. The only recognizable actor was Gary Busey, and I truly pity him for having to resort to this kind of crap to pay his rent. It is such a fall to a truly talented actor.

Then there's the so-called martial arts in this. Holy crap, can none of these "martial artists" really do martial arts? It's almost as bad as most of Bloodfist! I've seen children who are more impressive martial artists than these people! The only possible upside to this entire thing is that the two lead actresses were very attractive, and this certainly isn't enough to carry a movie, especially if the viewer has any appreciation for acting talent.

At all costs, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE!! You will waste valuable brain matter if you do! For the sake of your intelligence, do not watch this!!

A "western" with people running around doing Shaolin kung fu. There's a "Chinese" character who looks as Chinese as my Aunt Sally, who has never seen a Chinese person in her life. All the bad guys are dummies, and even though they always have their guns aimed at the good guys at point blank range and could kill them at any time, never bothers to pull the trigger. This, despite the fact that the bad guy's head honcho (Gary Busey) has killed people randomly throughout the film, but for some reason always lets the hero go so he can come back for one of those final shoot-outs. The script by the star is nonsensical, even as camp. The martial arts is actually quite good, but in the background of a western, it's just...wrong. Also, did the female lead steal Sharon Stone's clothes from THE QUICK AND THE DEAD? Someone call the police.

4 out of 10