Probably going to awful, but you never know. It does have a good cast:
I might just see it for Danny Trejo. Ah, but you think Mickey Rourke looked a little like Klaus Kinski? 
I got that kind of vibe, esp at the 0:40 mark.
http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Dead_in_Tombstone
It’s taking them long enough. Out in September apparently.
One of the few new movies I’m curious about.
After Giovanni Korporaal, El diabólico in 1977, Roel Reiné will be only the second Dutch director to have made a feature-length western.
Halfway through. Not good.
Awful: Dude is held at gunpoint by six or seven guys, but nobody shoots him because he has a gun too. What!?
Similar: Armed bad guy let’s an otherwise unarmed Trejo assemble a pistol, to be shot by said pistol. Huh?
Plastic face Rourke has a stab at Satan ;D my god (and I’m an atheist).
Yep, it sucks. Will probably review it.
Awful: Dude is held at gunpoint by six or seven guys, but nobody shoots him because he has a gun too. What!? Similar: Armed bad guy let's an otherwise unarmed Trejo assemble a pistol, to be shot by said pistol. Huh?
Sure, these don’t make much sense, but they sound like pretty typical unrealistic elements in most action-oriented movies… is it really that bad?
I thought the trailer looked decent, a shame if its not even worth a passing watch
I don’t mind unrealistic stuff, but when you see for yourself, you’ll know what I mean. Handled very poorly. No suspension of disbelief, just instant disbelief being the result.
Bummer, looks decent from the trailer and couple of good actors (well, one good actor and one that’s enjoyable to watch)
The last Danny Trejo straight to disc release I watched was a similar low budget action film (Bad Ass - 2012), and I didn’t make it the whole way through… was really bad, probably very similar to what you’re saying about this
IMO, if you mess up a sure bet like this, you must be some really bad film makers… seems like the art of making good low budget action films has been largely lost in these days
You hit the nail right on the head. It used to be back in the day that b movies were often great. These days no imagination and bad fx. $5 million would seem more than enough to make this work though. Hell, I’ve seen westerns made for 1% of that budget looking better and with more vision. I figure for the film I want to make for example $50-60k will be sufficient. Regarding DiT, check for yourself. You might like it, who knows.
Yeah, what is considered low budget any more is kind of mind boggling to me…
$5 million should be way more than enough to make a great western. Its a damn shame that these films are wasted on such hack filmmakers that probably just had enough money / social connections to make it happen, but lack any real artistic talent or skill
Finished it yesterday. Doesn’t get better and the fx even turn worse, when explosions and people on fire come into play. Rourke is awful by the way. He merely showed up. Anthony Michael Hall is not bad as a villain though.
Some stuff was just plain off: Frisian horses in front of a stagecoach (and only 2 of them!?).
Also a lot of really pointless shots filmed from above, so frequent that they became annoying as hell.
The dialog is pretty much dreadful. Especially Trejo has problems with the corny and just painstakingly bad lines.
Lighting is shit too. Loads of dark scenes that only seem to be there to disguise bad fx.
Not a completely awful film though. There’s some titties, and a handful of mildly amusing action sequences.
But overall: Crap. 4/10
Best feature length western by a Dutchman is still Giovanni Korporaal’s El Diabolico.
That’s exactly why I prefer watching a good grindhouse stuff to viewing anything contemporary. Shitty special effects mostly nauseate me, but dialogues in new action flicks are frequently awful too, it is as though scripters could write nothing but fucking shitty one-liners. I’d rather watch a smelly, trashy, cheap 70s’ piece of exploitation, thank you very much.
Watched it.
Mostly agree with what Bad Lieutenant has said.
Probably my biggest problem with the film was the editing- constant cutting, shots are not held for more than a couple seconds no matter what is going on. Obviously an attempt to keep the viewer’s attention active, but I guess I need ADD to appreciate it or something. Totally distracting and a real annoyance to watch. This style can work well for action scenes when done properly, but here its just constant and never stops.
I also noticed the lighting being way too dark. At first, I thought I had my TV set too low and when turned up, it didn’t change anything.
Soundtrack is typical hollywood big budget action style, and I really dislike those kinds of scores, especially in westerns.
The end fight was ridiculous, and would have been much better if they just did a standard duel and cut off the last 5-10 min.
Other than that, some good shots and atmosphere, and decent action. Could have been a much better film if it wasn’t such an obvious hack
Wrote a review (in Dutch):
I watched it, plus all the special features including listening to the Director’s Commentary.
I can’t recommend it. I actually fell asleep towards the end the first time I watched it. Didn’t really catch the end until I rewatched with the commentary.
At times I was impressed by all the work put into the movie, and could appreciate that on a low budget level. There were things they could have gone even cheaper on, but at least I could tell that people put some real work in. Like scenes with over 10 extras in a gunfight. Pales in comparison to even mediocre spaghettis that had scores of extras as soldiers fighting scores of extras as bandits of course. Ultimately, a lot of the movie was simply unsatisfying. Would it have looked better with a similar reverse inflation adjusted budget in the 1960s if done by Italians in Spain? I have to wonder.
A lot of bizarre things happen, as mentioned in this thread already. Guy has a gun on Trejo, and then watches Trejo put a gun together, and stands motionless as Trejo shoots him. Then he flys through the air on a wire pull. One other strange bit was riding a horse up a flight of stairs to chase a bad guy, then getting off the horse, and bad guy runs away or whatever. Basically there was no point to the horse up the stairs gag. It didn’t matter, it was so throwaway by the action that followed that it had no reason to exist. Ride horse up stairs, get off horse, do nothing. It’s not like Trejo rode the horse up and then leaped off his horse to tackle a bad guy, or had some crazy horse duel on the second story with the horse leaping down. No, he just rode it up, got off, then went down the stairs or whatever on foot. Big waste of rebuilding a staircase to support the weight of the horse when there was no payoff.
The central conceit of the plot was just kind of, “huh?” So Trejo dies, goes to Hell, and makes a deal with the devil to go kill the other guys so that Satan can have their souls. But all those guys are going to hell eventually anyway once they die, so why would Satan give a damn about having to wait a few human years?
The movie looks … bad at times. It was shot on RED cameras, but sure doesn’t look good. There are some shots that maybe slipped through the grading process or something, because some shots look just like they were pulled from a 1980s vhs camcorder. Real awful video look. Other times … eh. The director went with a harsh sidelight on everything, and badmouthed traditional lighting setups in his commentary, so that explains why it’s all so dark.
Other things gleaned from the commentary:
Filmed in Bucharest, Romania. The studio they were at had a western town backlot built for Cold Mountain. It was in disrepair when scouted, but luckily for Dead in Tombstone, it was renovated for that Kevin Costner Hatfields and McCoys tv show before DiT started filming. Plus the ‘Hell’ set and the goldmine set were leftovers built for Ghost Rider 2 and redressed. Basically other than redressing and a couple of fronts built for the purpose of blowing up buildings, everything was cheaply appropriated from previous movies. A movie Fidani could love.
Universal wanted an original vehicle for Trejo, asked Reine for pitches (he directed Trejo in Death Race 2 and Death Race 3). Reine pitched two westerns, Universal bought this one, and insisted the name be changed to include ‘Tombstone’ in the title. Who knew that Trejo was a such a star that Universal would tailor make projects for him?
The budget was 3.5 million to start, but when Mickey Rourke was added, the budget ended up at 4.5 million. Which seems to me that Reine was saying Rourke was paid a million for however briefly he showed up, but who knows, maybe they added other stuff after Rourke that brought the price up.
Only a few of the guns on set could even fire blanks, so that is why a lot of the gunfire is that awful CGI gunflash stuff. So tons of pistols and rifles are just CGI nonsense. Plus the gatling gun sequence, all CGI smoke and fire. Disappointing.
Reine only mentioned Once Upon a Time in the West as far as spagehttis go in his commentary. It sounded like he was much more influenced by American westerns, and spoke of seeing german-dubbed American westerns on television as a child.
Reine did mention towards the end of the commentary a hope for an entire series staring Trejo’s Guerrero character. So maybe another one will get made.
I didn’t care for the film the first time I saw it. Then I talked to my doctor who said he loved it. I gave it another day in court and came away digging it. I didn’t love it like my sawbones, but it was a decent enough way to kill time.