Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981)

[AndyDursin]

COMING July 14th on Blu-Ray

Decades before “The Lone Ranger” fizzled out at the box-office, Lord Grade’s ITC Entertainment tried their own big-screen rendition of the masked avenger of yesteryear. The resulting 1981 film, LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER, was as much of a flop as the Johnny Depp-Gore Verbinski misfire, which at least had a few fun sections buried in the rubble of an excessively long and misguided film marred by several violent moments. The irony is that the film didn’t learn anything from “Legend”’s missteps, which likewise included some unpleasant sections that – in trying to be more “realistic” – only ended up isolating its intended audience.

To be blunt, “Legend” hasn’t aged well, either. This is a slow-going and generally downbeat film spends a full hour of its 97 minutes recounting the Ranger’s origin, with a charisma-free Klinton Spillsbury saddling up as the title character and Michael Horse essaying faithful sidekick Tonto. The duo are tasked with avenging the death of the Ranger’s brother at the hands of the vile Butch Cavendish (Christopher Lloyd), whose new plan includes kidnapping President Ulysses S. Grant (Jason Robards, making his second ITC bomb in a row after “Raise the Titanic”).

The script, credited to five different writers, lacks humor and the death of the Texas Rangers by Cavendish’s gang is quite violent for a PG-rated “family picture” in 1981. But then, this is a movie that’s slow to build, compounded by a sometimes leaden John Barry score that’s repetitive at best and ponderous at worst (the sequence where Silver, the Ranger’s steed, “trains” his master in slow-motion is downright interminable). Capping the “fun” are Merle Haggard’s ballad-like vocals – mostly spoken, save for the forgettable title tune “The Man in the Mask” – which were a nice idea in concept but come across as charmless in execution, much like the film itself.

Cinematographer William A. Fraker stepped into the director’s chair for the film, creating a milky, soft look to the picture that has plagued every home video release of the movie. Here restored to its full 2.35 scope in a 1080p Blu-Ray transfer, “Legend of the Lone Ranger” is fresher and more watchable than it’s ever been on the small screen, though the image is still unattractively soft at times and the encoding brings out some technical issues (pixilation, etc.) that are hard to discern from the amount of dirt in the image. A DTS MA 2.0 soundtrack (mono) and the trailer round out Shout's release.