The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)

The movie was enjoyable. I am biased, though. I grew up idolizing the Lone Ranger. I can never understand the decision to cast Klinton Spilsbury in the title role. This would not be too hard to understand if we follow the theory that a TV pilot was the original idea. But this theory falls apart when I consider that, for some reason, Spilsbury's voice wasn't deemed good enough, so it had to be dubbed. This causes the unintentionally comical situation of a Hollywood movie looking like a foreign-made spaghetti western because the dialog and the actor's lips are not always in sync. The narrator and the songs are irritating. Despite all this, I liked the movie. It started out with the elements of an epic picture about the story of a legendary hero, a film that should have been 3 hours long. Then, after the set-up of how he came to be the Lone Ranger, the film rushes into what seems like a TV episode. A small amount of screen time elapse from the kidnapping of the President to his rescue, which was reminiscent of a Gunsmoke or Bonanza episode, where the story had to unfold in between commercial breaks, all within 1 hour air time. A lot of people got very lazy in the making of this movie. Still, to me, it's as if it were a 98-minute episode of the Lone Ranger. Heigh-ho, Silver! Away!

Goodness Gracious! After all of its huge build-up, and its $18 million dollar budget, this pathetically mediocre Western (from 1981) has got to be one of the biggest disappointments of all time.This film is an utter disgrace to the wonderful legend of the Lone Ranger (one of my personal favorite cowboy heroes).Yeah. OK. I will admit that The Legend Of The Lone Ranger does feature some fine action, great scenery, and a promising storyline - But, unfortunately, this is all thoroughly sabotaged by noticeably awkward direction and an non-charismatic, no-talent, lead actor named Klinton Spilsbury (where the heck did they find this loser?) who actually had his voiced dubbed by actor James Keach.Enough said.

I guess it wasn't entirely the filmmaker's fault though. The film suffered from the unimaginably stupid decision to tell Clayton Moore (who had done the role in the 1950's and was the Lone Ranger us old folks grew up with) he couldn't wear the mask in public. Now mind you, the poor guy wasn't making all that much money doing so, and it wasn't like he was going to take anything away from this film, but the whole thing seemed... gratuitous.The other thing the film suffered from (besides a leading man whose voice was so awful they had to overdub it) was that fact that Westerns weren't so hip in 1981. John Wayne was dead and we had just been subjected to a decade-long major liberal guilt trip about how the west was built on genocide of the Native Americans. (That and Blazing Saddles sent up the whole genre! The Campfire scene. Enough said!) Hollywood shied away from Westerns, because Science Fiction was COOL then.The one scene that underscored it was when after rescuing the drunken President Grant (and seriously, I'd have let Grant stay with the bad guys. The country would have been better off!) Grant asks Tonto what his reward should be "Honor your treaties with my people". Yeah, right, like THAT was going to happen!

I thought Klinton Splsbury was a good Lone Ranger and Michael Horse was a good Tonto.The magic of this film, for me, is the first half, when we see how John Reid becomes the Lone Ranger.Also, a great scene where he finds a wild white horse, breaks him, and names him Silver. But a later scene just blew my mind away.In that scene,after Reid and Tonto bury his brother and the other ambushed Texas Rangers, he decides to wear a mask so the bad guys won't recognize him. He tells Tonto the mask will be a symbol of justice. At this point, we have not yet seen his alter ego.That changes when we see him from the back kneeling at his brother's grave and vowing to avenge his death. Then he puts his hat on, turns around, and as we see him in his mask for the first time, blaring trumpets sound out the start of the William Tell Overture. Being a Lone Ranger fan, this literally sent shivers down my spine.The scene continues as they both ride away to more of the overture, and, of course, we hear "Hi yo, Silver, away." Breathtaking!