Tonight on TV: An Unfairly Nasty Western With the Great Val Kilmer Revisiting the Settling of Scores at the OK Corral

Tombstone, Arizona. A group of outlaws wreaks havoc in the region until former Dodge City Marshal Wyatt Earp arrives, just looking for a place to live in peace. But a conflict between White and his friend Doc Holliday and notorious gunman, gang member Johnny Ringo forces the ex-marshal to return to work.

Tombstone celebrates director George P. Reuniting Cosmatos with Rambo II story writer Kevin Jarre. Starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as his brothers, and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. On the gangster side we meet Stephen Lang, Powers Boothe and Michael Biehn. Note also the presence of the great Charlton Heston as the head of the ranch.

Kevin Costner tried to kill the project

Tombstone is best known in the US for being a rival Wyatt Earp film directed by Kevin Costner. The latter even tried to derail the Cosmatos version, but it backfired badly, as his biopic was a box office failure, while Tombstone was a public success.

In the original version, the narrator’s voice that we hear at the beginning and end is that of Robert Mitchum. He was originally slated to play Father Clanton, but injured his back after falling off a horse to give up the role.

“OK Corral Cinematic Universe”

The myth of the score being settled at the OK Corral (which is true but largely fictional) inspired several Westerns, most notably Settling the Score at the OK Corral, starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and its lesser-known sequel Seven Seconds in Hell.

But we also find Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die with Richard Dix, The Infernal Pursuit with Henry Fonda, Doc Holliday with Harris Yulin and Stacy Keach, and even the series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp with Hugh O’Brien, not to mention films inspired by Holliday without reusing figures.

Finally, know that Val Kilmer played an aging Wyatt Earp in Wyatt Earp’s First Ride, directed by Michael Pfeiffer and released on video in France in 2012.