Dead
Man's Gun Debut is Uneven but Weirdly Promising
by
Kristin Battestella
Produced
by Henry Winkler and narrated by Kris Kristofferson, Showtime's
1997-98 western anthology series Dead
Man's Gun debuts
with twenty-two episodes
of somewhat rocky but no less entertaining weird and vengeful
parables.
Originally,
the first three episodes of Dead
Man's Gun were
shown in a television movie block opening with John Ritter (Three's
Company) as
an ambitious sideshow assistant in “The
Great McDonacle.” He's tired of trick shooting and buys the titular
gun despite warnings that the devil himself made it such bad luck.
The poor Shakespeare shows and bad saloon singing are slow to start,
however the six shooting spectacles, bullets caught between the
teeth, and obvious kiss before the shot add to this business of
illusions. He's not a real marksman, so why does he need a real gun?
Playing against the odds with one more shot, unfortunately, proves
costly amid well done character interplay, shootouts, and Billy the
Kid references. Seemingly slick thief John Glover (Smallville)
steals money, documents, and our gun in “Fool's Gold” before
selling a $200 claim to local rube Matt Frewer (Orphan
Black) and making moves on
saloon girl Laurie Holden (Silent Hill). Bankers, mining
equipment deals, bets on recouping the cost of this speculation, and
contracts with survivor claims lead to some hefty interest policies,
double crosses, and blackmail. Fortunately, this gun comes in handy
for eliminating all those little technicalities. Producer cum down on
his luck peddler Henry Winkler (Happy
Days), however,
takes a dead man's identity as well as his gun and employment papers
to become the next town marshal
in “The Impostor.” He's thrust into a standoff and inadvertently
saves the day – earning free meals, service, and respect as he
settles local disputes and finds romance. Our town hero begins
believing he can stop bank robbers and help others, but we known such
innocence doesn't last long on Dead
Man's Gun. This
first episode of the series proper is a much better start to the
series than the spliced feature, and dreaded undertaker Larry Drake
(Dr. Giggles)
pilfers jewels, boots, and clothes off the dead in “Buryin'
Sam.” He reuses the linens and rusty nails in the caskets but
charges the bereaved $12 for all the trimmings. Shootouts from our
gun are good business when not pursuing widows – after all, it's
really about comforting the living. Interfering heart conditions and
indirect fatalities, unfortunately, lead to murder, lightning, and
supernatural betrayals as empty graves and night time burials
invoke fine horror elements. Night caps, syringes, and killer sex for
“The Black Widow” leave the titular Daphne Zuniga (Melrose Place) with
will readings, black
veils, and our inherited gun before she sets about ensnaring a local
jeweler. Hot
air balloons and romantic picnics quickly lead to the marital grand
manor complete with a pesky old maid, locked attic, and treacherous
stairs. Gems, fortunes, and memento mori accent the suspicions
alongside poison mushrooms, nitroglycerin, well done suspense, and
deadly interplay.
A
birth in the brothel and the Dead
Man's Gun is
offered as doctor
William Katt's (House)
payment in “The Healer.” He insists on helping a dying gunslinger
after a standoff in the saloon, and the townsfolk quickly turn into a
trigger happy mob. They want him to look the other way while they
'take care' of a feverish patient who will hang anyway, and past rows
reveal they never really were that neighborly. The doctor's missus
has some history, too, and it all comes out thanks to a dreamy romp
in the hay. Though rough around the edges, the vengeance,
responsibility, and consequences here make for an interesting gray.
Of course, racism abounds with buck, squaw, and redskin talk in
“Medicine Man” as Adam Beach (Windtalkers)
receives a bottle of whiskey instead of real payment for his work.
His father Graham Greene (Dances
with Wolves) dislikes his
cold gun with an evil spirit and wishes his son would return to the
chants, drums, and tee pees – but these are a proud people made
low, warriors with nothing left to hunt. The Nez Perce language is
minimal and some of the Native American motifs are stereotypical,
however this parable is told from the proper point of view and the
audience understands the anger and rage. Dreams and spiritual wisdom
add a slightly supernatural touch, but the gun only makes it easier
to pursue ruthlessness, and revenge only begats more revenge. In
“Next Of Kin,” Ed Asner (The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
invites Helen Shaver (Supergirl)
and the rest of the snotty, presumptuous family to finalize his will.
Can they stay the weekend enjoying his gourmet food and luxuries to
prove themselves worthy of his legacy or will they bicker and toy
with his priceless loaded gun? Despite blaming, blows, and supposed
self-inflicted gunshots in the night, no one's willing to leave and
lose their fortune. The accursed gun is tossed into the fire, where
it doesn't get hot or burn, but its E&S initials – Latin for
'ruin and destroy' – glow. Certainly there are similar mysteries
and horror tales, but the period dynamics and stir crazy of our
looming heirloom make for one of the season's best – a superb
little potboiler with kinky relations, past bitterness, and bodies in
the hall. Blacksmith Meat Loaf (The
Rocky Horror Picture Show),
however, is displeased when his new wife arrives with a son for “Mail
Order Bride.” On top of this awkward situation, he recognizes our
gun that keeps coming back to haunt him. The tender father son
bonding is somewhat try hard, too on the nose with its lessons, but
Meat Loaf's fine performance raises the uneven drama and keeps things
intriguing as the gun falls into the wrong hands.
Fire
eaters and carnival atmosphere accent “The Fortune Teller” when
charlatan Elizabeth Peña
(La Bamba) really
beings to see the future in
her crystal ball after coming into the Dead
Man's Gun. The
town is at odds over believing the tea leaves and tarot cards or
ignoring the hocus pocus, but the price to hear of one's adultery,
murder, or vengeful fortunes goes up from fifteen cents to a dollar!
Eerie images and an unique hedge maze finale converge as the gun
brings the visions to a sharp point.
He cures sleeplessness with stimulation through the power of the mind
in “The Mesmerizer,” but this doctor is really using hypnosis to
assault the lady patients and steal from the gents. Stealing our gun,
however, makes the power of suggestion stronger – enchanting people
in the streets, using old ladies to rob a bank, and invoking new
death bed will signatures. Though similar to Poe's The
Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, we
want the nastiness to get its due, and Dead
Man's Gun provides
it with deathly
vengeance and full on horror in the just desserts. By contrast, the
sepia stills and vintage equipment of “The Photographer” seem so
quaint until Gary Cole (Veep)
takes a photo of our jinxed gun in action. He has no qualms about
snapping pictures of the departed, and townsfolk are shocked when he
captures a bank robbery – unlike today where smartphones galore
make everything an instagram story. Is he a vulture seeking
disturbing images or a chronicler capturing fatal action as it
happens? After selling his graphic photos to the local gazette,
national papers write that they will pay top dollar for more scenes
of a violent nature. After all, folks who can't read buy the paper
for the scandalous pictures! As he snaps more shootouts and
convinces dangerous outlaws to pose before his camera, our
photographer traces the gun as it changes hands five times, and it
would have been interesting to have had this period premise that's
still relevant today featured regularly throughout the season.
Despite
a strong mid-season, Dead
Man's Gun is
quite uneven in its first half with an often embarrassingly wooden
secondary cast and continuity issues despite the anthology format.
Instead of completely tracing the gun's travels from one episode to
the next, our inanimate anchor is picked up at the end of one hour
with our never knowing what happens next. Likewise, openings that had
more to tell dump the piece onto the next victim as Dead
Man's Gun further
misses the opportunity to have Kristofferson (Blade)
appear as a sage in pursuit. After a few clunky episodes, my husband
wrote off the series as being too “random” in its gun portrayal.
Fire and brimstone Tim
Matheson (The West Wing)
is putting on the healing under the revival tent in the penultimate
“Wages Of Sin” with plants in the crowd and holy elixir shams. He
charms the ladies and convinces a violent brother to give up his tool
of evil. From
fevers to blindness and broken wings, our reverend begins to believe
in the miraculous nature of our gun. He wants to build a permanent
temple thanks to wealthy neighbors and tempting blondes, but some pay
for seeing through the con and double crosses as the gun giveth and
taketh.
Although
the narration calls the weapon legendary, its sentient or evil
natural is not fully explored – it's not infamous and is passed on
quite innocuously at times. Some own it decades despite its
misfortune while others are done with it in a few days. Beyond a
general Old West, towns and locations are never mentioned, and while
all these bads probably don't take place in the same town, every
place sure looks the same. A Horse or carriage ride scene opens every
episode, any kids seen are dang annoying, and the nineties
flirtations are laughable amid the try hard speak oldeth. Dead
Man's Gun also
has a noticeable abundance of lookalike blondes
– several each episode where having had one woman witness it all
would have been more interesting. “My Brother's Keeper” is the
weakest of the initial three television movie segments, as poor
brothers in bar room quarrels and quick draw fights are somehow slow
to get to the point. It's too early for Dead
Man's Gun to
seem like it will be the same episode all the time – if you've seen
one, you've seen them all. The shabby boarding house of “Highwayman”
is different from the usual lookalike town, but the weak,
undistinguished cast and thin story also contribute to that same one
trick pony feeling. A then unlikely shorter episode order would have
kept the series taut instead of repetitive. Despite a shopkeeper
looking for dime novel excitement and a creepy old lady customer
offering our gun as payment, the dream sequences in “Bounty Hunter”
are too hokey. A wife so young she could be his daughter is just
obnoxious, and the powerful temptations for a man made small by his
station in life are somehow too plain. Sage characters in these
faulty episodes also add to the ambiguous nature of the gun – which
can be triumphed by a good person or consume one in an evil that was
already there. Is it the person or the gun's influence? Some stories
portray the philosophical debate well while others remain
inconsistent. When grieving mother Kate Jackson (Dark Shadows) demands justice in
“Death Warrant,” the gray area between legal bounty hunting and
killing an innocent bystander is disappointingly lame, even pointless
thanks to bad faux southern accents and greasy styling. Everybody
looks rode hard and put away wet thanks to some juicy out of place
saloon girls showers, and ultimately, the gun is an afterthought.
“Stagecoach Marty” Jo Beth Williams (Poltergeist)
handles holds ups and precious silver cargo
before
buying lavender soap and getting a makeover that catches a handsome
passenger's eye.
Unfortunately, the sassy woman humor and unladylike likable
awkwardness are too unevenly mixed with suspect romance, decoy
wagons, and secret heist plots trying to do too much. A drunk
ex-gunslinger returns to form in “The Resurrection Of Joe Wheeler,”
but the slow start is laden with rapacious violence, thuggery, and
incompetent town officials. Outlaws are raiding town, and Dead
Man's Gun resorts
to the same old one man
with issues and a blonde on his arm. Of course, the straights,
flushes, aces, and pairs pile up in “The Gambler” until a sassy
blonde in a cowboy hat joins the high stakes game. Here the
impressive gun action – one must kill to keep his luck – simply
can't overcome the contrived romance, card playing montages, and
streaky where is this going plot, for hot hand run cold stories are
as old as the West itself. Likewise, Union troops are having a
terrible time thanks to an inept young officer in “The Deserter.”
No matter how many mystical riding montages we have, he keeps
returning to the same painfully obvious cornfield, and the over use
of both slow motion and hectic for the cowardice feels D.O.A. before
we even get to the soldier being tied up and bathed by a bunch of
women. The titular safe cracker in “Snake Finger” faces a newly
designed, supposedly full proof, time release safe installed at the
local bank while romancing the owner's daughter. The drama is never
sure if we're supposed to like the charming crook or support the
crusty lawman in pursuit, and what should be an exciting cat and
mouse is ultimately a sappy finale with little connection to our gun.
Fortunately,
covered wagons, horses, painted ponies, gun powder, long rifles, and
mud set the Dead Man's Gun
mood alongside western
facades, saloons, spurs, stagecoaches, hay, and saddlery. While the
slow motion strobe when the gun's firing is unnecessary, the ominous
music themes and subtle guitar strings are a fine touch. Rays of
light through doorways, silhouettes, and reflections in mirrors or
windows also make for interesting visuals. Our holstered gun is often
in the foreground ready and waiting amid lanterns, candles, old
fashioned money notes, ticking pocket watches, period patterns,
chewing tobacco, and wanted posters. Corsets, bustles, parasols,
lace, chokers, ruffles, and bobbles provide a feminine touch while
rustic outdoor filming, bitter snow, and shabby slat homes contrast
luxury luggage, grand staircases, fancy mansions, and Victorian
gardens. Sound effects and more foreboding lighting invoke spookiness
as needed while flies buzz around the horses or the dead, yet Dead
Man's Gun is
surprisingly colorful
with rich greens, maroon, and purples highlighting rugs, antiques,
and velvet sofas. Cigars and smoking are a realistic touch obviously
not seen as much today, but how did they film that real rattlesnake
bite?! The sex scenes however, are totally lame with little to see
and nothing steamy before Showtime goes overboard later in the season
with out of place butt shots and side boobs. There's a warning on the
video that the picture quality is old, and indeed
the nineties production looks VHS flat on a 4K television with some
dark, tough to see nighttime photography.
The relatively late Dead
Man's Gun DVD
release also has no subtitles, and the episodes are spread out across
a lot of discs despite the otherwise slim and bare bones set.
Thankfully, Dead
Man's Gun makes
the most of its real locales, a pleasing sight compared to
contemporary CGI. There isn't an over-reliance on action or blood,
gore, and typical western fast. Instead, the gunshots are
realistically blunt with just enough splatter and drama to the
shootouts. Such choice use makes
the anticipation all the more intense and violent when gun action
happens. After all, Chekov says that trigger's got to be pulled!
Though
occasionally rerunning on western themed channels, creators Ed and
Howard Spielman's (The Young
Riders, Kung Fu) series
always seemed unloved by Showtime and Dead
Man's Gun remains
a little elusive. I
remember waiting for new episodes back then and was disappointed when
the more recent DVR was likewise filled with the same few reruns, so
it's pleasing to see all the episodes here almost anew. While some
legs are better than others are and the series doesn't go as full on
horror or mystical as some audiences may like, Dead Man's Gun is
the perfect weird western for steampunkish viewers looking for
something that's not your daddy's western.
1 comment:
What mean the S.G. on side revolver in Dead Man's Gun?
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