High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane (1980)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

A Major Disappointment

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Will Kane and wife Amy return to the town of Hadleyville one year after the events of High Noon. Yes, Will returns to a town that turned its back on him and left him to fend for himself against killers after everything he had done for the townsfolk. Why? Because he's going to buy some horses. A stupid contrivance that completely disregards the point of the first movie's story. Anyway, the town has since gotten itself a new marshal and he's not a nice guy. Will, of course, butts heads with him and decides to stick around town for awhile.A made-for-TV sequel to one of the greatest westerns of all time? This doesn't have disaster written all over it at all! I watched this with the same contempt as most people who saw the beloved original, but I did try to separate comparisons and view it as its own entity. That's pretty much the only way it can be enjoyed on any level. If you even think of Gary Cooper while watching this, you'll likely turn it off in disgust. As a sequel to a great film, it's a hot pile of garbage. As a story all its own with characters who just happen to share the names of those from the other film, it's a barely watchable, completely pedestrian affair, lacking any originality or complexity. It's like a pilot for a generic TV western from the '50s or '60s. It's directed by the guy who did Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land, another made-for-TV gem starring Lee Majors. The script is by Elmore Leonard, although I would never have guessed it. As far as the cast goes, Majors is wooden as ever, David Carradine hams it up as a superfluous character wanted for murder, and Pernell Roberts sleepwalks through his role as the villain. Katherine Cannon gets the unfortunate task of being in the Grace Kelly role. Talk about never being able to live up to a high standard.It's not a good movie. Yes, I'm taking it on its own terms and not comparing it to High Noon and, yes, I'm judging it on the level of a made-for-TV effort. It's STILL not a good movie. It takes some lame plot any viewer of old TV westerns has seen before and slaps the name of a classic film on it to try and get people to watch it. I have no idea if they were successful at that in 1980 but I hope not. Since we didn't get High Noon 3: Will Kane Strikes Back, I'll assume the public back then responded with the appropriate amount of scorn this deserves.

It's always been Hollywood's ongoing, unforgivable sin to make an unwanted sequel to a well-established classic. At some point the decision was made to try and make another story to High Noon; it seems almost like an impossible mission to completely mess this up - decent actors, gorgeous location, respectable if not a fantastic script... and... well, as I sit here and watch this film I regret to say this movie simply does not hold a candle. It does not hold a candle as most "forced" sequels do to ingenious films preceding them.All I can see in this movie is an aged Pernell Roberts who left 'Bonanza' for all the right reasons but his taste in scripts probably lead to such a stagnant career. Lee Majors doesn't quite impress and neither does Carradine; it would take until Kill Bill with Quentin Tarrantino to finally put the spotlight on him. Most of the acting falls flat and the story doesn't quite make up it's mind as to whether it should be about one person or several of them. In a two-hour time slot, that's not a good sign: if your characters still aren't quite relatable or memorable for a large chunk of my viewing time, why should I be watching this? This is a movie that tries so hard but it shouldn't have to. Maybe it is a good film compared to what most folks disagree with, myself among them, but I can't quite see what makes this particularly good. It feels more like an extended modern remake of Bonanza, the same show Roberts was trying to avoid. A pity. This movie shouldn't have low scores, but it does. Why? Someone decided to call it 'High Noon II'....had marketing not attached it to something better, maybe, just maybe, we'd all like this a little bit better than we do now.

Right out of the gate, this movie had an almost impossible hurdle to overcome by invoking the name of "High Noon", so it shouldn't come as any surprise that the result was somewhat disappointing. Had the film makers gone for an entirely different premise, you might have had a reasonably interesting Western. However comparisons with the original were virtually assured by touting the 'Return of Will Kane, and when you throw that challenge at the viewer, you've got to expect to take your lumps.Back in 1952, when Gary Cooper threw his marshal's badge into the dirt in Hadleyville, he was a fifty one year old actor, so I wasn't expecting to see Lee Majors show up a full decade younger. At least Katherine Cannon's portrayal of Mrs. Kane didn't give way to the same reverse aging process as her husband. I really have to wonder why the casting gurus went with this strategy, as it bothered me pretty much throughout the picture.About the only scene that captured my imagination was that saloon showdown when Will Kane first met Ben Irons (David Carradine), and he winds up bluffing the villain and his sidekick Emmett (Charles Benton) into backing down. The picture could have used some more creativity like that, but wound up being a pretty standard Western the rest of the way. Pernell Roberts' turn as sheriff J.D. Ward was fairly successful, having his bases covered as an all around bad guy. I did a quick sit up and take notice when he ordered his black deputy (J.A. Preston) to "Fetch your people" to form a posse, thereby adding racist to the list of his other endearing qualities. The idea that Kane would take up with outlaw Irons to protect him from Marshal Ward was generally handled OK, although more than once I wondered why Irons wouldn't have tried to make his own getaway. Of course everything that happened in the story prefaced the final showdown between Kane and Ward, with the point of Ward's mastery of long range sharp shooting about to be tested. The serving of the warrant gimmick was one of the more effective endings to a final gun battle that I've seen, so you can score another plus for the picture there. But once again, without the clock, without the train tracks and with no mounting tension to speak of, this poor man's version of "High Noon" simply failed to satisfy. And if I didn't hear it with my own ears, I wouldn't have believed that the final score would go spaghetti.

I hated this movie when I watched it, and after watching it again now I know why I hate it so much.High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane had virtually nothing to do with the original High Noon. It cashed in in the original to give us a title character and that was about all. Near the beginning we get a gratuitous slaughter of a pen full of horses as the bounty hunter tries to catch a guy he knows could not have committed the crime he's charged with. Since the guy is in with the horses, just shoot the horses to find the guy, right? I wasn't angry with the guy who shot the horses, I was angry that the writer and producer thought that disgusting and unnecessary scene would be worth including in the movie. I don't care that they of course didn't REALLY shoot the horses, it was still gratuitously sick. It didn't make me hate the bad guy (which he earned on his own), it made me hate the movie. And, it never got any better afterward.Lee Majors as Will Kane was horrible. Talk about a stiff, cardboard, unsympathetic portrayal. Pernell Roberts came across as the biggest jerk on the planet. Sure, you're not supposed to like the 'bad guy' but in this case it went beyond 'dislike' to 'I despise this movie because the bad guy is so annoying.' (Actually, Richard Jaeckel, Skip Homeier and Richard Boone played numerous bad guys who I still enjoyed watching even though I wanted them to 'get theirs'.) I don't know how Majors or Roberts has ever been a success in acting; neither of them can play a character I care one iota about. I think though that I could tolerate Majors and Roberts and the storyline a lot better if there wasn't this tenuous attempt to connect this story with High Noon. It could have stood on its own as a story and in my opinion would have been much better had it been a story in its own right than with the attempted High Noon tie-in. Lee Majors compared to Gary Cooper is like Tom Selleck compared to Clark Gable. This movie's biggest annoyance is that they tried to cash in on the name of a classic Western, for no good reason. Now, if we saw a much older Will Kane having to face the sons of the men he had to kill, that would be a relevant story to make a Part II; this however is ruined by trying to make the connection. I'm changing my '1' rating to a '4', but really this was a very misguided effort.