The Far Side of Jericho

you'll like this weak western. As a enthusiast for bad cinema, I seek out the bad, really bad and unwatchable film, and this film is just plain bad. Beautiful cinematography and stunning film locations juxtapose stilted acting, trite dialogue and pointless plot devices. Add in ghosts, gratuitous vulgar language, racial and ethnic stereotypes, poor sound recording, anachronisms such as automobile tire tracks, stock sound effects from 1950's cowboy serials and cap it off with a muddled script and you get a honest to god, crappy movie. Even the final music will cause spontaneous laughter. If you like bad movies, this one will satisfy, sort of.

Im guessing the big names in this movie just had nothing better to do? Painful to watch and the budget mustve been in the hundreds of dollars.

The story of three women who see their husbands hang for a robbery. They decide to go find the stolen money (aka "loot") after various characters start to hunt them down, thinking that they are already after said loot. After riding for a while, they figure out that they are in possession of pieces of a map that will lead them to the loot. Oh, and did I mention that along the way they each start to see the ghosts of their recently departed husbands? I won't spoil it from here on, but if you have ever seen more than a couple of westerns then you have probably figured out how it ends by now.

While it started off interesting, the plot eventually began to bog down and get very predictable (except for the ghosts, which were just plain weird). We had TiVo'd it, and my wife actually started fast-forwarding through the non-action scenes (of which there are plenty). Not sure exactly how the last five minutes played out, as we fast-forwarded through them as well.

A very boring, yet strange film.

Between the horrible acting, with apparent symptoms of low-grade voice-immodulation, and an extremely lacking story line, this film goes nowhere pretty quickly.

I have to say that I was surprised that the acting could seem so unnatural. The lines were delivered as if they were read by a monotone second grader off of a hard-to-read cue card. The action was anything but. The musical score was non-existent. The make-up was done by someone trying to imitate Adam Ant. They should have hired Adam Ant instead, as the video for Stand and Deliver at least had intentional humor.

I doubt anyone will read this review before renting, and thus this will merely be preaching to a choir for people visiting this page. Hopefully, someone will read the back of the DVD before renting. I didn't. It contains this gem: "the woman must find the courage to trust, care, and kill for one another". When there are only two sentences, you would think someone could take the time to check the grammar. Maybe the person writing the description was trying to warn us in a stealthy fashion not to rent this.

This film essentially begins with three brothers named "Jemmy Thornton" (C. Thomas Howell), Cash Thornton (John Diehl) and "Frank Thornton" (Steve Cormier) robbing a bank and subsequently riding off with the loot--but with a young female hostage being killed in the process. Eventually the brothers are caught and brought back to town and hung. However, since the loot was never recovered, suspicion falls upon their three wives, "Bridget" (Lissa Negrin), "Claire" (Judith Burnett) and "Maxine" (Suzanne Andrews). Naturally, the townsmen want their money back, but the problem is that these three women don't know where it is. So, realizing their dire predicament, the women ride off into the wilderness with several different groups all chasing them in order to get their hands on the money. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, although the overall plot had promise, the manner in which it was carried out was rather poor-to say the least. The female characters weren't likeable and having the ghosts of the three brothers pop up every now and then completely ruined the film. In short, while I like a good Western as much as the next person, this isn't one that I would recommend and I have rated it accordingly.