Wonderful character development!

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

SYNOPSIS: Two prospectors, Tadpole (Clem Bevans) and Ed Schieffelin (Wallis Clark), discover silver in the Arizona hills and they name the spot "Tombstone". Years later, they establish the Schieffelin and Foster Mining Properties and with this as a centre, the two rich partners create a town which soon grows big enough to sport "The Epitaph", a newspaper. The editor of the paper writes editorials to chide "the Mayor and his phoney peace officers", because Curly Bill (Edgar Buchanan) and his circle of outlaws really run the town. Things become so tough in the town that Wyatt Earp (Richard Dix), one of three brothers from the Southwest, is pressed into service as Sheriff. NOTES: Locations at Long Valley in the High Sierras, and Lone Pine in the Alabama Hills.COMMENT: Here's Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and all our other friends of the O.K. Corral, this time directed by Bill McGann. Although it doesn't quite achieve the epic stature it's obviously aiming for, and suffers by comparison with the other versions, particularly My Darling Clementine and Frontier Marshal, it's still a fascinating, suspenseful, action-packed piece of entertainment.

Good grief. I must have been watching a different picture than the two reviewers above. This is about the fourth movie containing the famous gunfight at the OK corral I've seen and it is the most uneven version. The others are more action-packed, but this one is a case of a good cast wasted. In order, here are the best "OK corral" movies;1."My Darling Clementine" (46) - Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Walter Brennan 2."Gunfight At The OK Corral" (57) - Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Lyle Bettger 3."Frontier Marshal" (39) - Randolph Scott, Cesar Romero, Ward Bond 4."Tombstone, etc..." (42) - Richard Dix, Kent Taylor, Edgar Buchanan. This last one is the one we are reviewing and it is the most disappointing.It starts out with a terrific gun fight by the local hell-raisers, led by Edgar Buchanan. It is put down by Wyatt Earp (Richard Dix), and here follows a long stretch of talking and planning, made worse by the presence of 'Johnny', a young cowhand who is followed to Tombstone by the girl he left behind, Frances Gifford. We are then treated to a romance until the final rousing gunfight between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'.Oh, I almost forgot. The celebrated gunfight at the OK corral is squeezed in between romantic encounters for about 30 seconds. It takes place in close-up since the fight is in such a small area (Gunfight at the OK phone booth?) It could have been so much better but too much time was wasted on a love story - it was only 79 minutes long but seemed like hours longer.

I agree with Frankfob's comment on this film. It's nicely made, with some interesting actors. The only point I would carp about is the unlimited number of bullets that Curly Billy and his gang fire off early on in the film without appearing to re-load their revolvers.Perhaps Richard Dix is a little old for the film, and he doesn't convey the machismo that Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper retained in middle age, but he does well enough.Don Castle has a great screen presence - lots of charisma, and it's interesting to note that he later had a minor role as a drunk cowboy in "Gunfight at the OK Corral". The love interest is reasonably muted and Frances Gifford doesn't have too much screen time.And Edgar Buchanan as Curly Bill doesn't mumble, as he was inclined to do later in his career

This is an unheralded little gem of a western. Full of rock-solid actors, but no big stars (Richard Dix, the biggest name in the cast, was beginning to settle into character parts after a long career as a leading man), this tight little western moves like lightning. Director William McGann made his name as an action specialist and second-unit director at Warner Bros. (it definitely has the Warner Bros. "look" to it, even though it's from Paramount), and he proved here that he was more than capable of handling a bigger-budget western. Tightly paced, full of rousing action and good performances, it deserves to be better known than it is.