I just can't believe all the nasty comments about this movie. Everybody seems to think this movie actually has to measure up to the classic with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't even claim to. IT'S A TV MOVIE FOLKS!! Indeed for a TV movie it does a good job. It has a great cast. The acting is actually very good. Pernell Roberts, in an extreme departure from his Bonanza role, steals the show. His Marshall Ward is the the quintessential villain that you love to hate. Nasty and cool at the same time. In a slightly smaller role, J.A. Preston does a great job of portraying the conflicted black man who assists Ward in tracking down the good guys. The always reliable David Carradine is quite likable as the one-time outlaw who makes you root for him. Much criticism is directed toward Lee Majors' acting in the other comments. "Stiff?" "One dimensional?" Has Majors ever been accused of being a Shakespearean actor? He is Lee Majors. The guy who plays quiet strong characters and relies on his looks for likability. Within that limited range, he is very good. I can see why he was picked to portray the same strong and quiet Will Kane that Gary Cooper portrayed in the original. I have only two little problems with this picture. First, the original happens at high noon, thus the title. This one establishes neither the climax nor any major part of the plot as occurring in midday. Having failed to do so and still retaining the High Noon title it does open itself up to the unfair criticism of being a rip off of the original. My other issue with this movie is with the ward-robe folks who dressed Majors in almost the same outfit as he wore as Heath Barkley in The Big Valley. That, in my opinion, makes it a bit more difficult for us to accept him as Will Kane. The characters make frequent verbal references to the original High Noon story, so there is a deliberate effort here to make us remember it. Therefore, dressing Majors in a darker outfit reminiscent of Cooper's Will Kane would have served far more effectively to help us make the necessary emotional connection to the original. If you want to watch a deep drama with a lot of character development you will be disappointed. In fact characters mostly start the same and are the same at the end of the story. What little character development there is happens with Preston's Alonzo. Also, the aforementioned references to the original seem to be merely a buildup to re-examining, albeit too briefly, the courage (or lack thereof) of the town folks who left Kane alone in his predicament in the first story. Here, was an opportunity lost when the filmmakers shortchanged us By not expanding enough on that particular point. If you want to watch the simple story of an incident in a western genre that's done well you will not feel robbed of two hours of your life. All in all, this is an entertaining western which I would not mind, if ever on DVD, purchasing and placing right next to my cherished copy of the original.

HIGH NOON PT. 2 (BRING ON THE DISAPPOINTMENT) There really isn't an adequate way to describe how terrible this movie was. I believe in a fair system of evaluating movies: that they have certain goals in mind and try their very hardest to achieve them. The single goal of this movie was to point out events that happened in the plot line of the original High Noon through stale and unbelievable situations, as much as possible, as to conceal its completely lack of meaningful dialog or purpose in general. As a standalone movie, it failed to have any semblance of an interesting plot. As a sequel, it completely rejected the motivations of the characters in the original movie, reducing the cinematic experience to, "suffer through the terrible dialog for 5 minutes until a gunfight occurs". If only a few words or a single phrase could convey how completely vacuous this movie is, then this review would definitely be paragraphs shorter and most likely contain a few expletives.Will Kane (the fake one, Lee Majors) comes back to Hadleyville with his not-as-hot-as-Grace-Kelley bride Amy Kane (Katherine Cannon) with the intent of setting up a small cattle farm, with some horses here, and some cows and bulls there. Lacking any explained or implied purpose or intent, three villains decide to come to town in a fashion that is strangely plagiarized (and far better executed) by the original High Noon. Ben Irons (David Carradine), the main outlaw, is hunted down by the new Marshal of the town (Michael Pataki) and his posse, setting in motion a not-so-epic struggle that could have easily been resolved by never making this film in the first place. In a strange twist of foundational beliefs, Kane decides to wield a gun whenever possible and shoot people to the tunes of the awfully compiled soundtrack. Jerry Jameson, the director, should have taken a second of his time to realize that he should have opted out of butchering the sequel to such a great movie and quit his dead-end job at the prestigious USA Film studios, if not only to spare his future audiences from torture that could possibly be used to extract valuable information from the inmates at Guantanamo bay. "Tell us the truth or you will be forced to watch this movie!" Usually movies rely on nuanced cinematography and great acting to create an interesting story that an audience would actually surrender some of their valuable time to watch. Apparently USA Studios went ahead and skipped this chapter in the book entitled "how not to make a bomb of a movie". The only way High Noon Pt. 2 could produce drama was by putting some poorly written, 80's syn th music on top of the action. You know, the kind of music that makes you want to vomit and throw away that old Casio you have been storing in your closet for decades. Apparently mentioning important events in the previous High Noon was not enough to make this movie interesting, and dramatic "DUN DUN DUNS" and "SHREEK SHREEKS" needed to be added to jar the audience into submission. "Oh no, please don't do this to me," I kept screaming as the fake Kane plunged into dialog about "how he needed to get back at the new marshal." My efforts to somehow use my shrieking voice to alter the soundtrack on the magnetic VHS tape were in vain, and I nearly suffered a few mortal wounds. Fortunately, I was able to return the movie to the Hollywood video drop-off box two hours after viewing it, saying my last "thank you" to the legacy of High Noon sell-out movies that need to be quickly forgotten. If you want more heartaches, try the 80's remake of the original High Noon. I swear, the purple pill isn't going to save you this time.Most of this review has contained ambiguous bad-mouthing that does not confront the terrible reality of the movie itself. I'll fix that in the flick of a wand! Remember the original High Noon, where Will Kane was a reluctant hero who did the right thing and fought Miller to the death? Say goodbye. Kane takes part in a series of events that run contrary to his "no violence unless absolutely necessary" beliefs, shifting the movie from an allegory about political persecution into a poorly executed Western that completely relies on gunfighting to entertain the audience. Kane fights the new Marshal a number of times, shooting back and forth, never getting hit, utilizing almost every bankrupt Western movie convention known to humanity. Instead of leaving you with the message that you need to stand up for yourself when outside pressures become overwhelming, this film lets you know that violence is always the answer, even when it comes to deciding whether someone is innocent or not. Why ask questions if you can just shoot people? High Noon pt. 2 failed to live up to its own standards, and was so incredibly bad and unwatchable that it descended beyond the point of being "so bad that its actually funny" to become "two hours of pain that will not be easily forgotten". The specifics of the plot are not even worthy of discussion, because at best they were completely ripped from the original film, or taken straight from the journal of a screenwriter who has the same ability to tell stories as a veteran who can't get over a war. "One day, back in 'Nam" becomes "One day, back in High Noon the original". Please, do not see this film. If you happen to start a class action lawsuit against USA Studios for releasing it, please notify me so I can sign up my name along with as many fake names as I can possibly think of.

This movie (?) is a disaster, and that's a compliment. It falls from just being very bad to being the worst due to its attempt to play on the greatness of its earlier namesake."Thou shalt have no false gods before me", says God to Moses in "The Ten Commandments". A similar comparison and warning apply here. If you loved "High Noon", you will certainly hate "High Noon, Part II". It is a disgrace to the memory of Gary Cooper.

I searched the several dictionaries I have available to me at my office and came up with at least 40 adjectives that would have "added and reinforced" my one line statement above. But I felt adding, "and that's a gross understatement" would give you a clear and brief picture of my thoughts on this 1980 TV disaster...!I apologize if I have offended any of you who felt the TV rendition was even worse then what I indicated above...!