Doc (1971)

Truly Dreadful Film

The Worst Film Ever

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

'Doc', from 1971, is an odd take on the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in 1881. It is more ambiguous than usual, and you really don't think that Doc Holliday was that willing to go along with his Earp friends in this version. It's vague and subdued and has some low-key acting, but I thought it was better than average and not a bad find.Faye Dunaway's added as a trollop domestic love interest of Doc Holliday.One thing to point out is that Wyatt Earp is portrayed by the characteristically unhandsome, "bug eyed" actor Harris Yulin ( Scarface (1983), Night Moves (1975), Clear and Present Danger (1994)). He's a bit odd and doesn't have the necessary power or gravitas to give him that punch that the character so richly deserves. Stacy Keach is fine as Doc Holliday, a bit of a rambler here.The "Cowboys", the Earps' enemies, are the weak link, as they are just basically rude and not very interesting.Still, it's worth a look.Also recommended: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) Hour of the Gun (1967) Wyatt Earp (1994) Tombstone (1993)

Dentist, gambler, and gun man this is the story of Doc Holiday and the gunfight in Tombstone, AZ. Stacy Keach does a good job in brining the historical character to life, and the movie does show him suffering from consumption (which is what he eventually died from). Faye Dunaway does an good job in bringing Kate Elder to life as Doc's lover. The movie does take some liberties though in the Kate knew and was a companion of John Holiday long before they arrived in Tombstone.The main downfall of the movie is its some what slow pace, and glaring inaccuracies of the actual gunfight. For this reason I have down graded the movie.Grade C

As a movie it is a semi-interesting curiosity. What I find amusing is the comments of some people have made here, to the effect that unlike the romantic fantasies of previous Wyatt Earp movies, this movie finally reveals the ugly truth behind the legends. I have been studying frontier history for about forty years and to anyone who thinks the events in DOC (even allowing for dramatic license) have any connection to historic fact, I say: Only on the Bizarro Planet, Cheech. As someone else wrote, all it does it replace positive lies with negative lies. I remember when the movie came out, the producer-director was plugging it on TV boasting of how much research had gone into this movie; likewise, in a preface to a paperback edition of his screenplay (which, as I recall, was even stupider than the actual movie), Pete Hamill wrote solemnly about how he--crackerjack journalist that he is--had seemingly unearthed the long-hidden truth about the Wild West in general and Wyatt Earp in particular. What twaddle. Hamill seems to have read one book about the Earps--Frank Waters' discredited Earp BROTHERS OF TOMBSTONE--and then pretty much relied on the time-honored journalistic tradition of Making Stuff Up. He didn't even really follow Waters very closely.

"Doc" is similar to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," in that it is a revisionist Western attempting to explode some mythology of the American West, which earlier Hollywood Westerns would glamourize. Here, Doc Holliday and Marshall Wyatt Earp are shown as not quite the good guys Hollywood has long portrayed them to be. The story of "Doc" follows the legendary outlaw Dr. John Henry "Doc" Holliday and his lover "Big Nose Kate" Elder on their way to the storied Gunfight at the OK Corral. Doc Holliday is played by Stacy Keach, as a soft-spoken gent who is deadly with a six-shooter. The film is gritty and dirty, but the profane dialogue seems like it was added just because the screenwriter could. My biggest problem is that the scenes look like they cut away too soon, and should go on at least a few seconds longer. "Doc" may not tell the true story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, but at least tries to keep an enduring Western legend alive.