the audience applauded

Good start, but then it gets ruined

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

OK movie but like most Westerns, directors seem to forget realism. Before the cons, one pro. Leech shoots holding his revolver with both hands. One handed shooting is or amateurs and "movie cowboys." I've ridden horses all my life and when you are out in the middle of nowhere and dismount, the last thing you do is turn your horse loose without tying them up. These guys do. How stupid! Gee, it's only thirty eight miles back to town, I don't have any water or food so I think I'll just turn O'l Buck loose. How unrealistic. Guns are LOUD. Yet no one ever flinches or even reacts to the noise. Shots inside a room would be deafening. And their horses don't even twitch. A lever action rifle pushes the first round into the chamber. Then each time the lever is worked an empty cartridge is ejected. But for dramatic effect, shooters work the lever and nothing comes out. I know water is scarce, but some of those guys looked like they hadn't washed in years. Typical western. Greasy, dirty guys and the hottest women in the west.

Apparently not a lot of people have seen this 1993 TV Western judging by the number of votes and only three other reviews as I write this. Maybe that'll change with recent screenings on the Encore Western Channel; I guess we'll have to wait and see.I had to chuckle when bounty hunter Quentin Leech (Kenny Rogers) stated his opinion of one of the outlaws as 'dumb as a headless chicken'. It brought to mind George Clooney's comment about John Turturro's character in "O Brother Where Art Thou?", as being dumber than a bag full of hammers. On the dumb or dumber scale, I wonder which one is worse. Maybe it's a dumb question.With Kenny Rogers in the lead role and also having a hand in the production, it looked like this vehicle was put together for some of his pals on the country Western scene. Travis Tritt is generally acceptable as the Preacher's unacknowledged sidekick, but he seemed to lack any inspiration for the role of a newlywed who's bride was kidnapped just shy of the altar. Naomi Judd's the proprietor of Flora Mae Pepper's whorehouse, but she looked just a tad too respectable in the role and you never got a real good look at any of her saloon gals. She apparently had a thing for Leech but without the back story, the relationship seemed rather shallow.This was the second Western now I've seen that used the old rattlesnake in a jar gimmick but I'll be darned if I can't come up with the first one right now. I'll have to get back on that one. I wonder if barkeep Everly (Marl Alaimo) managed to hustle the dead outlaw back to Del Rio.The surprise of the story for me was seeing old Quentin hit the drink in his showdown with Kansas (Stacy Keach). I knew there had to be a reason for all those times Leech offered the 'two choices' gimmick; it set up Ben Taber (Tritt) to use it himself in the finale. For some reason I kept thinking that maybe Quentin somehow might have survived his misfortune, but in the end he faded as quick as Butch and Sundance.

Except for a couple of fatal errors, "Rio Diablo" could have been a great spaghetti western. Kenny Rogers is outstanding as the bounty killer so ruthless he makes "the man with no name" seem like a sissy. Travis Tritt is pretty good, too. Unfortunately, Tritt fails to develop the kind of buddy chemistry with Rogers that's needed for this story (1st mistake). Naomi Judd, on the other hand, is embarrassingly bad as the madam. She's too classy looking and refined, and her line readings are terrible. If Rogers really insisted on casting a country star, he should have considered Dolly Parton or Barbara Mandrell (2nd mistake). Stacey Keach is convincingly slimy in his small, surprise role. However, he resembles one of the main baddies too much,creating unnecessary confusion.In spite of its flaws, "Rio Diablo" is considerably better than another 90s spaghetti knockoff, "The Quick and the Dead." I give "Rio Diablo" a "6".

The typical motifs of the spaghetti westerns can be found also here. The Kenny Rogers character represents greed and the Travis Tritt character is fueled by revenge. His beautiful wife (played by Miss USA) got captured and they are both behind the baddies. Kenny Rogers seems to old as the merciless bounty-hunter and Travis Tritt doesn´t really convince, either. Photography is very well done and stylish, art direction is proper. The plot develops well without any logical flaws. The baddies are stock characters.Neat and cute run-of-the-mill Hollywood production5 / 10.