redwhiteandblue1776 There must be a terrific laundry in this town. Every actor's clothes are perfectly cleaned and pressed except for John Saxon. Appears the costume lady just went down the movies studio's "cowboy clothes" department and pulled out something from the 1950's for everyone. Secondly, I take part in shoot competitions and have never seen anyone who could shoot as well as these guys. Totally unbelievable. Thirdly, the depictions of "Indians" is an insult to real native Americans. It's hard to understand why movie studios would put money into this kind of amateurish film. I gave it a 2 only because it had some nice scenery.

crood As a made for TV movie from that time, it's OK. John Saxon is pretty good and it fits that he's the most recognizable of the main three characters.Calling it a remake is stretching things a bit. They changed a lot, including that the titular rifle doesn't get passed around nearly as much and isn't apparently as central to the story as in the original.The biggest change is to the relationship between hero and villain. In the original, it's a twist revealed only at the end and gives the whole thing a much more personal angle. Here, the relationship (cousins) makes the whole thing less personal. Also, they did a weird merge and split with the hero's character. Lin, played by Stewart in the original, has been combined with Wyatt Earp from that film. Some of his character was then split off into the newly created younger brother, who feel superfluous most of the time.There's one scene which just makes the hero look incredibly stupid by walking straight into what can only be an obvious trap. With the original easily available, there's no real reason to watch this one.

keithhire Not unwatchable, but close to it. I agree with malcomgsw, this pales in comparison to the classic from 1950, one of my personal favorites from any genre. The changes to the plot do not improve upon the original but overly complicate it - in this case less is more. John Saxon gives the best performance here, making the most of a thin script. Saxon is good at playing creeps, see him in "The Appaloosa" with Brando. Tom Tryon gives a wooden performance, shortly before giving up acting to become a writer. It was gratifying to see Dan Duryea from the earlier film, but his turn here seems tired, while in the original he was one of the more memorable villains in screen history. John Drew Barrymore's hippie character is unusual, but out of place in a western, kind of like Donald Sutherland in "Kelly's Heroes". All in all, an inferior remake of a superior film. I would, however, take issue with malcolmgsw's comment that some IMDb contributors seem to "want to eulogize the guns that are featured in films rather than dwell on their harmful consequences". We can of course, dwell on anything we want to, but while we're dwelling, what about the people living on the frontier whose lives were saved by having firearms nearby? Just saying.

FightingWesterner This television remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic finds sheriff Tom Tryon and his no-good cousin John Saxon competing for the title weapon, being offered up as a prize in a shooting contest by Saxon's father Dan Duryea. When he loses, the vile Saxon kills Tryon's father and takes off with the gun and both of his cousins in pursuit.This isn't as loosely plotted or episodic as the original film, nor as great. Still, it's a pretty good TV movie with more of a theatrical feel to it than other movies-of-the-week, with some entertaining action scenes.John Drew Barrymore stands out and delivers an interesting, amusing performance as a long-haired member of Saxon's gang, who talks and dresses like a preacher and drives a hearse!A couple of the actors from the 1950 version return, most notably Dan Duryea.The Winchester looks exactly like the one from the original film, with the same etchings and brass plaque on the stock. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Universal dug through it's prop department and dusted off the same gun.