TOM HORN (1980) 12349

Original Warner Brothers Insert Poster (14x36) for TOM HORN (1980), one of the more under-appreciated films of Steve McQueen. TOM HORN failed at the box office, and when one views it today, it's hard, with the resurgence of interest in The Western, to understand exactly why. It's a realistic but beautiful film, wonderfully photographed by John Alonzo in Panavision and Technicolor, with a good script by the legendary Texas writer, the late Bud Shrake. Tom Horn was one of the infamous killers of the old west, a man who had played a crucial part in the surrender of Geronimo. He had served with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders and had worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His life as an outlaw began when he hired himself out to some cattle barons in Wyoming involved in a brutal range war. It is at this point in Horn's life that McQueen decides to begin his film. It's an engaging film about an old western outlaw-killer at the time when the Old West was in transition to the Modern West. Other films come to mind which deal in the same currency, notably THE GREY FOX which stars Richard Farnsworth, who is also seen in TOM HORN. Don Siegel was McQueen's first choice to direct, but the film ended up in the hands of a TV director, William Wiard after three other directors (including at one point McQueen himself) bailed. We will never know what this film might have been in the hands of a master director, but what we see here is nevertheless worth watching. Very fine condition.