“Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take a short nap.”

Drake’s rating: Take a nap or watch this movie? There’s only one acceptable answer here.

Drake’s review: I had never before seen The Legend of the Lone Ranger, although I was certainly aware of its place in cinematic history. This much-lauded and massively expensive attempt to bring the radio, TV and comic book character of the Lone Ranger to the big screen was well covered by the entertainment media outlets in the late ‘70s, but the news wasn’t all good. In fact, much of it was downright bad.

For example, Clayton Moore, the man who had portrayed the Lone Ranger for nearly a decade on television, was legally prohibited, by the producers of the new film, from making public appearances as the character. To say this drew the ire of Moore’s many fans was an understatement, which sent The Legend of the Lone Ranger off to a rocky start.

Then came the casting of Klinton Spilsbury, an actor with two bit parts to his name before being offered the film’s leading role simply because he looked good in the mask. Spilsbury immediately began making odd demands of the production, including that the film be shot in sequence, and for reasons unknown the producers didn’t immediately laugh at him and then terminate his contract. Instead, they agreed, driving up the cost of the production.

Spilsbury’s extracurricular activities only added to the bad press, as he spent his off hours drinking and getting into bar fights, and on at least one occasion an early-morning call was made to actor Michael Horse, who played Tonto, to come and get Spilsbury. Horse replied, “Whoa, that faithful companion stuff is only in the movies.”*

Add to that drama a rather odd and perhaps too-revealing interview that Spilsbury gave to Andy Warhol in 1980, and it simply seemed as if the man playing the Lone Ranger was in over his head and ill-prepared to be a movie star. Which he never really was, since The Legend of the Lone Ranger flopped so hard after its release in 1981 that its name has joined the likes of Heaven’s Gate, Waterworld, and Gigli in the unflattering category of all-time box office bombs. Director William A. Fraker, an accomplished cinematographer, never directed another feature film. Spilsbury never acted again.

But I’m sure you’re all wondering, after my lengthy preamble, if the movie is any good. After all, Hudson Hawk still has a cult following, the Grand Poobah of Mutantkind recently rated Battleship as “watchable,” and I myself am an ardent fan of George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. If all three of those box office bombs can be mined for enjoyable content, then why not The Legend of the Lone Ranger?

Well, honestly, because it’s bad. It’s a bad, bad film, and the film makers should feel bad for making it.

And the problem is, it’s not even bad in a fun way. There’s at least entertainment to be had in mocking such an overstuffed cinematic excursion, but The Legend of the Lone Ranger falls flat because it’s barely even a movie. Instead, it’s a series of Western tropes strung together by the flimsiest of connections and tossed onto the movie screen with an overinflated sense of bombast. The plot is so thin and takes so long to develop that you could fit the entire thing into a movie trailer and come out feeling as though you’d seen the entire story.

And you wouldn’t have squandered nearly 100 minutes of your life doing it.

To say this movie rolls along at a languid pace is an understatement. It takes nearly an hour for the character of John Reid (Spilsbury) to don the mask (and remember that he was hired simply because he looked good in said mask), which leaves about forty minutes to resolve the storyline and save President Grant (a sleepwalking Jason Robards) from his kidnapping at the hands of the evidently notorious bad guy Butch Cavendish (a young-ish Christopher Lloyd, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock).

And that might be fine, if that first hour had had any momentum or spark of life. But it doesn’t. It just glides along at a lethargic pace until John Reid finally becomes the Lone Ranger and then it… just keeps trudging along at the same pace until the credits mercifully roll.

At least if you were watching this in 1981, you had Raiders of the Lost Ark to look forward to. Steven Spielbrg’s smash hit opened three weeks after The Legend of the Lone Ranger and was the final nail in that film’s box office coffin.

Much of the failure of this movie was laid at the feet of Klinton Spilsbury, and he certainly does nothing to elevate it. He’s stiff, wooden and far too inexperienced to be leading what was supposed to be a blockbuster. To make matters worse, his performance was dubbed by actor James Keach (The Long Riders), so the Lone Ranger goes through the entire movie sounding like Jesse James.

But to be fair, Spilsbury was an easy scapegoat, and it’s hard to see how any one actor could have saved this film. Bad decisions made at the script level were compounded right up the ladder through the casting process, pre-production and working production of the film, making this flick snowball into a truly dreadful cinematic experience. Too violent for younger kids, and too dumb for anyone over the age of ten, the only positive legacy The Legend of the Lone Ranger may have left is a very detailed guide of what not to do when adapting an IP to the big screen.

After all, a decade later you didn’t see Warner threatening Adam West with lawsuits.

*From the Santa Fe New Mexican story, “Santa Fe Has Storied Past with ‘Lone Ranger,’” June 17, 2013.

Intermission!

• Oh, great, the whole film is shot in a soft lens style that makes it look like a romance flick from the early ‘70s. Although there’s some nice work here by legendary cinematographer László Kovács, it all gets overshadowed by this one bad decision.
• 26 minutes in. No mask yet.
• The stagecoach stunt almost killed stunt man Terry Leonard. He got stepped on by a horse, tumbled wrong and a wagon wheel ran over his leg. Fortunately, he was on his feet soon after as a stunt double for Indiana Jones.
• 35 minutes in. No mask, and hope is fading quickly.
• By all means, ride single file into the box canyon. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with that plan.
• Dan Reid gives younger brother John his “if anything happens to me” speech. That’s the Western equivalent of, “I’ve just got three days left until retirement.”
• 43 minutes. No mask, but we do get Tonto.
• Speaking of whom, actor Michael Horse does all the heavy lifting here. He deserved to be in a better movie.
• Did I mention the intermittent and irritating narration? No? That’s because I hated it and want to expunge it from my memory.
• 58 minutes in, and there’s a mask! I repeat, we have a mask!
• Sadly, the mask does not improve the movie.
• Slow motion horseback riding is precisely as tedious to watch as it sounds.
• Things are blowing up. That usually brings me some amount of visceral joy, but not this time. These are sad, pitiful explosions. There are some nice stunt bits, but too little and far too late.
• Woof. That was bad. B-A-D. I’m not sure even the Johnny Depp version could be worse. Could it? Do any of you know? If so, give me the heads-up before I do something stupid and claim it on the refrigerator in the Mutant Lounge.