Into the Badlands (1991) (TV)

Director:

Sam Pillsbury

Writers:

Heck Allen (short story "The Streets of Laredo") and
Marcia Muller (short story "The Time of the Wolves") ...

Release Date:

24 July 1991 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Western

Plot:

A bounty hunter searches the west for a wanted outlaw named Red Roundtree. |

Plot Keywords:

Outlaw | Bounty Hunter | Anthology

Awards:

Nominated for Primetime Emmy.

Cast

Bruce Dern	...	T.L. Barston
Mariel Hemingway	...	Alma Heusser
Helen Hunt	...	Blossom
Dylan McDermott	...	McComas
Lisa Pelikan	...	Sarah Carstairs
Andrew Robinson	...	Sheriff Aaron Starett
Adan Sanchez	...	Hector
Jerry Gardner	...	Businessman
Glen Burns	...	Businessman
Steve Tyler	...	John Heusser
Oryan Walsky	...	Margaret Heusser
Loren Haynes	...	William Carstairs
Michael J. Metzger	...	Red Roundtree
Reynaldo Cantu	...	Pockmark
Luce Rains	...	Tom (as Steven Schwartz-Hartley)

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Germany:18 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Bonanza Creek Ranch - 15 Bonanza Creek Lane, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Company:

MCA Television Entertainment (MTE)

Quotes:

[first lines]
T.L. Barston, Bounty Man: Back in the days of the old West, there were these stretches of territory that I think God and nature just plain forgot about... dark and parched and empty as the moons of Mars. Places where sensible men never vertured... where only dreams and phantoms walked. Kind of a way station between civilization and the Ninth Circle of Hell - The Badlands.

Nauseating Horror Film Masquerading as a Western

I gave this 3 stars out of a possible 10 - because the stories are open-ended and left unexplained, and because of the nauseating scenes of someone eating in an extremely disgusting way, plus scenes of a decaying corpse.

Neither of the above needed to be shown in such a graphic manner.

The film's plot, such as it is, concerns three loosely interconnecting stories, none of which conclude satisfactorily.

The bounty hunter, played by Bruce Dern, is the character that connects all three vignettes.

First we have Dylan McDermott, looking darn fine, as a wanted criminal who is fleeing to Mexico to escape both the law and the bounty hunter, when he rides through a border town and spots a sad-faced saloon girl played by Helen Hunt.

Then we have one of the Hemingway girls, not sure which one, playing a western wife out on the lonely frontier who goes over to see about a neighbor woman, an attractive redhead, whom we soon realize has been out in the badlands a little too long.

The conclusion of the film returns to the bounty hunter and what happens to him, with the final scene in the film being completely beyond rational comprehension.