Guns of Diablo (1965)

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I think The Travels of Jamie McPheeters is only really known today as Kurt Russell's first big job, as a child actor playing the title character in a TV series that struggled to find an audience and was cancelled after a single season. A year later, MGM expanded the final episode into Guns of Diablo, a stand-alone movie that could be sold to the European market. Make no mistake, despite having added some slightly (very slightly) more adult content and presenting it in color, this adventure is quite televisual. The choice of lens, the almost empty frontier town, the plot cribbed from western tropes, the way we get into an extended flashback to give context for the past event that has come back to haunt Charles Bronson's character... None of it is very fresh, but it does flow well enough, with little Kurt doing well with his subplot about a sick old man who will become important to his ultimate destiny. The fact they recast the dad should give you clues as to what the new filmed material was all about. The reason to see this is in part because it is a curiosity, but I'd say, for the actors. 12-year-old Kurt Russell in only his second movie role (TV reprise though it may be), Bronson a movie star in a TV production, and though I see no reason for giving her latin make-up, Susan Oliver (Vina in Star Trek's The Cage) is always a welcome presence. 3 years 10 months ago