The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) – Review

“A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-Yo Silver! The Lone Ranger!” and it was with these thrilling words that millions of children became riveted to their television sets each and every week to follow the adventures of The Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick Tonto.  Needless to say, Hollywood decided to give this popular property the big screen treatment, and is often the case, it didn’t go well.

It should be noted that it takes director William A. Fraker a long time to get around to introducing us to his version of the “Lone Ranger” as we must suffer through a prologue dealing with a young John Reid (Klinton Spilsbury) becoming a poor orphaned boy and living with a tribe of Native Americans, where he hangs out with a young Tonto (Michael Horse) until his older brother Dan (John Bennett Perry) eventually shows up and ships him back East to be educated and where he’ll eventually earn a law degree. The film then jumps ahead a few years where we have grown-up Reid returning to help bring law to the lawlessness, unfortunately, this leads to a skirmish with notorious bad guy Butch Cavendish (Christopher Lloyd) and results in all the Texas Rangers being killed and Reid left for dead. Cue the return of Tonto, who nurses our hero back to life and helps set him on his path of bringing justice to the West as a masked avenger.

Note: Making us wait 58 minutes for the Lone Ranger to finally put on his mask was not a good idea, especially when you consider the fact that the film was only 98 minutes long.

One major issue is Klinton Spilsbury’s performance as the Lone Ranger, which is wooden and lacks the charisma and charm that this character was known for, was the actor’s inability to convey even the most basic emotion and this bland performance was painful to watch as Spilsbury completely failed to capture the essence of the character, which shouldn’t be a big surprise considering the fact that he was dubbed over in post-production due to his inexperience with acting. The movie also introduces a love interest in the form of the daughter of a local newsman, named Amy Striker (Juanin Clay), but the fact that the two have zero chemistry should not concern anyone as her character barely functions as a plot device. But what is the plot you ask? It seems that Butch Cavendish wants to kidnap President Ulysses S. Grant (Jason Robards) so he can force the government to allow Texas to secede from the Union and become its own independent country, with him as ruler.

“Mister President, maybe we should just let Texas secede.”

Stray Observations:

• The movie opens with our heroes as kids which left me thinking they probably should have leaned into that concept and made The Young Adventures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto instead of this mess.
• Merle Haggard singing the movie’s title song “The Man in the Mask” sounds like someone trying to drown a drunken raccoon.
• The overdubbing of Spilsbury by actor James Keach is terrible but as the bulk of the actors in this film provide terrible performances it’s hard to single out that one particular turd element as a movie killer.
• John Reid gets the name “Lone Ranger” because he was the lone survivor of the massacre, but Cavendish left the Ranger who betrayed our heroes alive, just giving him a flesh wound to allay suspicion.  So technically, Reid wasn’t the “lone ranger” of that situation.
• Tonto provides Reid with silver bullets claiming they are more accurate, which is not true, silver bullets are not only less accurate than lead bullets but also slightly slower.
• Actors Christopher Lloyd and Matt Clark, who plays a crooked sheriff in this film, would later appear together in the Western-themed Back to the Future Part III nine years later.

This train will need to reach 88 miles per hour.

The film boasts an impressive supporting cast, with the likes of Christopher Lloyd and Jason Robards trying their best to make the material they are given to sound at least a little bit convincing, but what they manage to bring to the production barely moves the metre away from the overall drudgery of the film.  Even the rousing strains of “William Tell Overture” or the well-executed cinematography of László Kovács, with its sweeping landscapes, weren’t enough to make the proceedings here anything other than a complete bore to watch. I will say this, the scenery is nice to look at and fans can have some fun spotting classic locations such as Monument Valley, Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks.

It’s a shame that the Lone Ranger didn’t get a chance to fight the Gorn.

The film also suffers from a lack of character development, particularly with regards to Tonto who is reduced to a one-dimensional sidekick rather than being fully realized, instead of noble partner to our hero he is nothing more that a caricature of Native Americans that Hollywood has being perpetrating for ages. Additionally, the plot is very predictable with a script that is chock full of poorly written dialogue that fails to engage the audience and a story that feels both rushed and plodding at the same time, with scenes that seem to be thrown together haphazardly making the whole thing seem rather disjointed and nonsensical – when the Lone Ranger leans that President Grant is arriving in town he immediately deduces that Cavendish will be after him, despite there being no evidence to support this conclusion – so it’s no surprise that there were five men listed as having worked on the screenplay.

“Kemosabe, let’s forget this mess and ride off into the sunset.”

William A. Fraker’s The Legend of the Lone Ranger was a misfire of epic proportions as not only did it fail to kick off an expected franchise for the studio but there wasn’t enough on screen for fans of the characters or of Westerns in general to get behind. While the action scenes were well-choreographed and the stunts decently executed the film never quite captured the spirit of the original radio and television series that inspired it, in fact, the only real positive thing I can say about this movie is it’s not as offensively bad as the Disney version starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer.