Customer Reviews

Stagecoach [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great little gem of a movie starring the outlaws of country music. A lot of people are comparing this tv movie to that of the original starring John Wayne, there is no comparison. The original will always be a classic, and teamed legendary director John Wayne with The Duke.

But, for me it is hard not to like a film that stars Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. They all do a great job with their roles, and are backed up by a fine supporting cast which includes John Schneider and Elizabeth Ashley.

The film follows the same storyline as the original. Will the stagecoach make it safely to it's destination without meeting its demise at the hands of Geronimo? Will The Ringo Kid get his revenge against the Plummers? How can I find out what will happen? The simple answer is, pick up Stagecoach, and take a trip to the west with The Highwaymen.

Stagecoach (1986)...This movie is a definite must have for western lovers.Set in Arizona,this movie has action from gunfights with Geronimo to the outlaws in Lordsburg.Throw in a love plot for a retired saloon girl to delivering babies among stage stops and you have one heck of a movie.With an all star cast of Willie Nelson,John Schneider,Kris Kristofferson,the late great Johnny Cash,and the late great Waylon Jennings,to name a few,you can't go wrong with this movie.There is even a small cameo with the lovely late June Carter Cash and Miss Jessie Colter.

What a thrill to see all the member's of the Highwaymen together in a movie and playing such memorable roles. I can only imagine the fun they all had while filming this picture. A must see for any fan.

OK, it's not the original. Step back a minute - few movies at ALL before or since the original verison of "Stagecoach" were as good as that movie. Now, move on and look at this version of "Stagecoach" on its own.

It's pretty well written and acted. (June Carter Cash's lines were great, "There's nothing in my contract says I got to feed the Army.") A lot better than most of what I see appearing in the theater today, most of which I won't waste my money to go see.

The only characters I didn't really like were Elizabeth Ashley's Dallas & Mary Crosby's Mrs. Mallory. I loved Elizabeth Ashley in a lot of other roles, especially in "Evening Shade" with Burt Reynolds. I know she's a great actress, but this role, or maybe her dialogue, just didn't work for me somehow. Too overdone. I do like her line to Doc about his fingerprints.

Mary Crosby, a good actress, too, said she campaigned to get this role, because her Dad was in the 1966 version. I understand that. I just thought her character was too bitchy for a Southern lady, especially an Army wife. Again, though, that's the way the dialogue was written, so I guess she was stuck with it. The scene playing as I write this is a good one for her, where she finds out her husband has been wounded. She's strong, but not complaining or bitchy.

The humor is a little dry throughout, you have to pay attention. It doesn't walk up and hit you over the head. And there's no 13 year old talking back at his or her elders for laughs. Maybe that's why it appeals to me.

John Schneider does a great job as the coach driver. Again, not Andy Devine, but, he doesn't try to be. And if he did, it would be ridiculous.

Half the fun of watching this movie is saying, "Oh, there's ______!" spotting other country singers or actors.

Then there's the old saying we use in our household: "It's a western, how bad can it be?"

Great western with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, And Waylon Jennings. The only thing that would have made this better would have been either John Wayne or the LONE RANGER showing up at the last minute.

But, it was fun to see the "Highwaymen" together playing cowboys and indians. Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristoferson, need there be any other reason to see this movie? Other than the title track there isn't any singing. If you want to see Stagecoach, get the John Ford, Duke Wayne's version ... if you'd like to see a remake of that classic, this is the one for you ... years ago Bing Crosby was in a remake of this classic ... This remake with the "Highwaymen" is the best of any of the remakes.

Even though John Wayne's version of this movie is more famous, this is a great western adventure. The cast includes Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristoferson, which is reason enough to make it part of a movie collection. Highly recommended.

Is it blasphemy to remake a movie? The answer depends on who you ask and what movie is under consideration. But we all know that the movie industry is blasphemous by nature. So when the original John Ford/John Wayne "Stagecoach" was remade (for TV, no less!) starring (of all things!) country singers (Oh, horrors!), there was a great flood of negative criticism.

I don't think anyone involved in this production intended to try to eclipse or even equal the original. If anything, I suspect it was intended as an homage to Ford and Wayne and the entire western movie genre which, without Ford and Wayne, might never have moved beyond Saturday matinees.

If you like westerns, do yourself a favor. Watch this without comparing it to the original or, for that matter, to the first remake from 1966. Watch it as a western with a good story. Watch it with an open mind. You might be surprised.

It's not Ford and Wayne. I doubt we will see the likes of that pairing again. But it's an entertaining movie with a warm heart. Give it a chance.

If the 1966 version of STAGECOACH (sadly, never available either on VHS or DVD, and a bit better than its reputation) was basically an attempt to recapture the magic of the earlier film by putting it in Cinemascope and Technicolor, adding large dollops of more-realistic violence and drawing out the story to give the film a more "epic" quality, it seems at first glance that the 1986 film is going in the opposite direction. While the first remake draws the Indian attack out to 20 minutes or so and the final showdown to a series of scenes adding up to several minutes, this Ted Post TV movie starring a bunch of aging country music stars cuts the violence and action to the bare minimum, focusing instead on personality and dialogue. I suppose the theory was that when you've got legends like Willie Nelson (also a producer), Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson as your leads, you'll get that older "country" TV audience and you don't need to worry about the violence that in 1986 you couldn't really show on TV anyway.

Well, that was the theory I suppose. The reality, though, is very little action and a lackluster and plodding series of conversations, most of which feel either weird or hackneyed - or both - and which for the most part aren't delivered with a whole lot of conviction by the famous cast. I think Cash (as Curly the Marshall) and Kristofferson as Ringo, despite being nearly 20 years older than Wayne or Alex Cord were in the role, probably come off the best; Jennings seems to be sleepwalking through his role of Halliday the gambler and Nelson either doesn't understand his part or just doesn't care much as the drunken doctor - inexplicably "Doc Holiday" in this version though no references to his history with the Earps are ever forthcoming. John Schneider, fresh of "The Dukes of Hazzard", as Buck the stagecoach driver is the youngest member of the cast at 26 and he tries hard in a role that just isn't as interesting - despite some added scenes - as it was in the two previous versions, albeit much of the charm came from Andy Devine and Slim Pickens in the earlier roles. Elizabeth Ashley does all right as Dallas, looking a lot more weary and used-up than Claire Trevor or especially Ann-Margret did; Anthony Franciosa doesn't have much to do as Gatewood and Anthony Newley's Peacock turns back in this version halfway through the film, I guess because the filmmakers thought he was expendable and maybe added too much to the budget or running time. Mary Crosby is lovely as the pregnant Mrs. Mallory but she gets little of consequence to do, apart from the very strange scene with Nelson as she's starting to go into labor where he tries to reassure her by telling her he doesn't know what he's doing.

The action as I said is minimal; interestingly the relationship that really gets explored in this version is that between Curly and Buck, which is one thing this film gets right as Cash and Schneider seem to be the most involved in their roles. Lots of frontier humor and a bit of dark satire run through the film, and there's a slightly larger political overtone than in earlier versions, with Nelson regularly espousing anger at the plight of the natives (Apaches in this version, which was filmed in Arizona). The central problem here I think is that the characters that really need developing - Ringo and Dallas, and to some extent Doc - really don't get it, and a lot of time is spent instead on fairly useless if entertaining asides. There's also never any real question here that Ringo is a good guy - ironic in that Kristofferson has played a lot more villains than either Wayne or Cord ever did - and he even gets deputized to help with the nasty Plummer boys at the end! Nice photography by Gary Graver, who had spent the previous couple of decades working both in the adult film industry and for Orson Welles; minimal score by Nelson (who also sings the OK title song) and David Allan Coe.

Overall, watchable enough but rather a waste of some great talent. Let's just hope this doesn't get remade again anytime soon as each version has been weaker than the last by a large margin, and I shudder to speculate on the cast - especially if an attempt were to be made to appeal to the youth audience. Taylor Lautner as Ringo, anyone? The mind boggles...

I LIKE WESTERNS, AND THE ACTORS IN THIS MOVIE. I JUST WISH THEY ALL SANG MORE.