Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Blu-ray Movie Review

Print the Legend

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 8, 2014

The unlikely friendship between lawman Wyatt Earp and tubercular gunslinger Doc Holliday is tailor-made for storytelling. In 1993, it spawned two major films, Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, which was successful, and Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid, which crashed at the box office but has grown in reputation on home video. Thirty-six years earlier, however, Wyatt and Doc were immortalized by two icons of the old studio system in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a far less historically accurate account of their friendship that expanded a thirty-second shootout into a defining event. Novelist Leon Uris (Exodus) reimagined Earp's biography to focus on his quality as a loner rather than a man bound by family blood ties. This made him a naturally kindred spirit to the bitter, doomed Holliday, whose greatest fear was dying in bed rather than upright with a gun in his hand. Under the direction of John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape), Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas filled the boots of these legends so convincingly that they have cast a long shadow over every portrayal that has followed them.

Uris's script dispenses with the backstory of Wyatt Earp's troubled past that Lawrence Kasdan explored at length in the Costner film, although there are hints of it in the dialogue and in Lancaster's delivery. When we meet Earp in O.K. Corral, he is already a famous lawman. The film charts the course of his ambiguous connection—part friend, part foe—with Doc Holliday over an indefinite period of time in three different towns.

The first is Fort Griffin, Texas, where Earp arrives in pursuit of two fugitives, Ike Clanton (Lyle Bettger) and Johnny Ringo (John Ireland). The local sheriff, Cotton Wilson (Frank Faylen), has let them get away, despite outstanding warrants. He says he no longer has the nerve for battling gunslingers, but Wyatt suspects there's more to it. Local inquiries lead Wyatt to Doc Holliday, a former dentist and now a gambler with a nagging cough from tuberculosis, who was seen playing cards with Clanton and Ringo shortly before they left town. Doc hasn't the slightest interest in assisting the law. Besides, he has his own problems, including a tempestuous love/hate relationship with his traveling companion, Kate (Jo Van Fleet, who had just won an Oscar as the hard-bitten madam in East of Eden) and the vindictive brother (a young Lee Van Cleef) of a man Doc killed over a card game. However, when Doc and Kate narrowly escape an angry mob on their way out of town, Doc finds himself in the lawman's debt—and Doc hates owing anyone, let alone Wyatt Earp.

Some time later, the gambler turns up with Kate in Dodge City, Kansas, where Wyatt is the town marshall. Wyatt isn't thrilled to see Holliday in his town, because trouble always follows, but Holliday promises the man he has nicknamed "Preacher" that there will be no guns, no knives and no killing—a promise he sometime finds difficult to keep, especially after Kate leaves him for Johnny Ringo. Doc even proves to be useful in a crunch, when Wyatt has to pursue bank robbers and all his deputies except Charlie Bassett (Earl Holliman) are away on a posse. With great reluctance, Wyatt deputizes Doc, and the two men ride out together. It's the most time they've ever spent in each other's company and the closest they get to knowing one another.

It's also in Dodge City that Wyatt find himself in the unaccustomed position of falling in love. The object of his affection is a lady gambler named Laura Denbow (Rhonda Fleming, who was known as the Queen of Technicolor, because her hair and complexion flattered the process and vice versa). But just as marriage and a normal life seem possible, Wyatt receives a telegram from his brother, Virgil (John Hudson), asking for help in Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt's old nemesis, Ike Clanton, owns a ranch and behaves like he owns the town. Tombstone is the third town where Wyatt and Doc share adventures, because Doc tags along for the ride. He still has a debt to discharge.

The Clanton scheme involves stolen cattle, but the livestock is a classic Macguffin. What matters is that the Clantons are the bad guys, and the Earps—Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan (a pre-Star Trek DeForest Kelley) and James (Martin Milner)—are the good guys. Virgil and Morgan object to Wyatt's connection with a notorious gunslinger like Doc Holliday, but the coughing gambler turns out to be their most reliable ally. After an increasingly violent and eventually deadly buildup, including an attempt by Wyatt to persuade Ike Clanton's younger brother, Billy (a baby-faced Dennis Hopper), to sit out the fight, the Earps and the Clanton gang find themselves facing each other in the gunfight of the title. Unlike Lawrence Kasdan's staging in Wyatt Earp, which followed historical accounts of a short, sudden eruption of gunfire, Sturges stages a grueling battle that, in the era before Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, was startling for its kinetic intensity. (The film's editor, Warren Low, was nominated for an Oscar.) By the time the battle is over, Doc's debt to Wyatt has been paid in full.

O.K. Corral was the second of seven films that Lancaster and Douglas made together, and the film crackles with the intensity of two huge stars playing off each other. Their versions of Doc and Wyatt don't really like one another. Indeed, Sturges often keeps them at a distance within the frame, as if they're watching each other for signs of betrayal. For all their distrust, though, the lawman and the gunslinger share a mutual respect, because each man recognizes in the other the same loneliness. Both have fallen victim to that essential change in one's nature of which Alan Ladd's Shane speaks when he compares killing a man to a brand: "Right or wrong, it's a brand . . . a brand sticks. There's no goin' back." And both of them know the truth of what Wyatt tells Billy Clanton: "There's always a man faster on the draw than you are, and the more you use a gun, the sooner you're gonna run into that man." The only difference is that Wyatt wants to quit before he meets that man who's faster, while Doc wants to find him so that he can die on his feet.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

After the disappointment of Hatari!, I am happy to report that the news on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray (from a Paramount transfer) of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is much better. The Vistavision photography by Charles Lang (one of the four cinematographers responsible for How the West Was Won) has been transferred with care to preserve the original's detail, colors and natural film grain, without obvious filtering, artificial sharpening or other inappropriate digital maniuplation. The colors are beautiful: blue skies, green poker tables, Laura Denbow's fine evening wardrobe, the browns and greens of the Arizona and California locations. The blacks of Wyatt's and Doc's clothing are dark enough to show the dust of travel (or fights), and the contrast levels are correctly set to create a sense of depth without losing shadow detail (though some of the day-for-night scenes are slightly washed out, which was unavoidable with that process).

The average bitrate of 20.84 Mbps is somewhat low by Warner's standard, and one wishes that this 123-minute film had been placed on a BD-50 for maximum bandwidth and less tight compression. In fact, though, O.K. Corral has less action to it than it seems. The climactic battle is such a satisfying payoff that it echoes back through everything that preceded it, much of which is quiet and still enough to give a compressionist plenty to conserve. Artifacts were not a problem.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

O.K. Corral's original mono track has been remixed for 5.1 and presented in lossless DTS-HD MA. Like most such remixes, it's been conservatively done with the front soundstage still dominant. O.K. Corral's sound mix was nominated for an Oscar, no doubt primarily for its effects-laden finale, and tampering too heavily with that precision work would be a crime. The various gunshots may not have the dynamic range or impact of a contemporary soundtrack, but the rifles, pistols and shotguns all have distinctive sounds and register forcefully. Thankfully, no attempt has been made to spread them around the room. The dialogue is clear, and the only element of the track that has been "opened up" in the remix is the energetic score by Dmitri Tiomkin (Giant, It's a Wonderful Life and many others). The track's fidelity is demonstrated by its faithful reproduction of the title song composed by Tiomkin and Ned Washington and sung by Frankie Laine, whose voice is associated with the theme songs of many Westerns. Verses are heard throughout the film, and nearly all of them reflect on the men buried in the cemetery at "Boot Hill".

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included. Paramount's 2003 DVD was similarly bare.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral may not have the mythic resonance of Shane or The Magnificent Seven or The Searchers, but it belongs in that select canon of Westerns that have endured over the years because of that special blend of craftsmanship, star power and subject matter that the studio system, at its best, knew how to spin into gold. Warner's Blu-ray of this Paramount classic may lack extras, but it has excellent audio and video and comes highly recommended.