'Doc', from 1971, is an odd take on the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in 1881. It is more ambiguous than usual, and you really don't think that Doc Holliday was that willing to go along with his Earp friends in this version. It's vague and subdued and has some low-key acting, but I thought it was better than average and not a bad find.Faye Dunaway's added as a trollop domestic love interest of Doc Holliday.One thing to point out is that Wyatt Earp is portrayed by the characteristically unhandsome, "bug eyed" actor Harris Yulin ( Scarface (1983), Night Moves (1975), Clear and Present Danger (1994)). He's a bit odd and doesn't have the necessary power or gravitas to give him that punch that the character so richly deserves. Stacy Keach is fine as Doc Holliday, a bit of a rambler here.The "Cowboys", the Earps' enemies, are the weak link, as they are just basically rude and not very interesting.Still, it's worth a look.Also recommended: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) Hour of the Gun (1967) Wyatt Earp (1994) Tombstone (1993)

I saw Doc when originally released and did not like it, I thought it was demythifying the West and I was against those films. The other day I saw it on cable TV and my opinion changed completely. First, instead of demythifying it was just showing the story from another angle, more favorable to the Clantons. And second, it rang true even though it might not have been true, who knows? There is a certain beauty in truth even though truth might be ugly. And it is certainly ugly in this film. And if we think of all the westerns where we admire the gunfighters and where killing seems necessary and in self defense, Doc shows the dark side of killing . Just for that it is worth seeing.

The way director Frank Perry and screenwriter Pete Hamill must have figured it, if George Custer could go from a hero to a villain after the impact of one movie - Arthur Penn's Little Big Man - then they could similarly destroy the lofty reputation of Wyatt Earp with a degrading film portrait. Here's their problem: Little Big Man, however fair or unfair it is to Custer, is terrific film-making from beginning to end. Not so this utter disaster of an attempt to make a revisionist western of the type so popular in the early seventies, when the youth movement and hippie era allowed for nasty portraits of the military and the police on screen, just so long as they were set back in a period of history so that no one around today would get too offended. Harris Yulin is a lackluster Earp, who with Doc Holliday (Stacy Keach) and Kate Fisher/Elder (Fay Dunaway) head for Tombstone. In this version, they don't go there to provide true law in the best sense but to use the law to make money. There certainly is a certain amount of truth in that, but the film errs by trying to offer a corrective to the mythic Earp and Company and so, to alleviate all the whitewashing, paints them dirty colors instead. The people who like this movie are the ones who believe that anything 'negative' is also 'realistic,' which doesn't happen to be the case. In this anti-Earp diatribe, history is rewritten even more ludicrously than it was in the pro-Earp films that preceded and followed this one. "Hello, Bones" Kate says to Doc; "Hello, bitch," he replies. Think that's clever? If you do, this film's for you. On the other hand, if you want to see an absolutely brilliant revisionist film about law and order in the west, check out Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, made about the same time, and a truly great film that achieves what Doc tries and fails to do. The O.K. Corral gunfight has never bee so totally misrepresented as it is here, even though the attitude of the filmmakers is that "we're telling you the truth for the first time." They simply replace positive lies with negative ones. Another historical gaff: The Tombstone Epitaph is portrayed (along with its editor John Clum) as being anti-Earp, when they were pro-Earp; the Nugget, another paper, was the anti-Earp one.

"Doc" is similar to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," in that it is a revisionist Western attempting to explode some mythology of the American West, which earlier Hollywood Westerns would glamourize. Here, Doc Holliday and Marshall Wyatt Earp are shown as not quite the good guys Hollywood has long portrayed them to be. The story of "Doc" follows the legendary outlaw Dr. John Henry "Doc" Holliday and his lover "Big Nose Kate" Elder on their way to the storied Gunfight at the OK Corral. Doc Holliday is played by Stacy Keach, as a soft-spoken gent who is deadly with a six-shooter. The film is gritty and dirty, but the profane dialogue seems like it was added just because the screenwriter could. My biggest problem is that the scenes look like they cut away too soon, and should go on at least a few seconds longer. "Doc" may not tell the true story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, but at least tries to keep an enduring Western legend alive.