Some might describe "Into the Badlands" as a surreal tale of the Old West. I on the other hand would call the film a sleep inducing waste of talent and time. Sure Bruce Dern looks convincing as a bounty hunter, in his black duster and specs. Even the music is interesting and appropriate. Everything else is not good. It begins and ends with the story, which is disjointed and talky. The first part involves a gunslinger talking and talking with barroom whore Helen Hunt. The second is something about Mariel Hemingway talking and talking to a frontier neighbor before some unexplained wolves show up. Dern reappears in the final sequence killing a wanted baddie and then dragging his rotting body around the desert for the rest of the film. - MERK

Determined and resolute bounty hunter T.L. Barston (marvelously played with spot-on sardonic verve by Bruce Dern) relentlessly tracks outlaw Red Roundtree (mangy Michael J. Metzger) across a desolate and godforsaken dessert. Barston encounters a diverse array of desperate people during his travels. First, most eerie and affecting tale, "The Streets of Laredo" - Rugged roving gunslinger McComas (a fine portrayal by Dylan McDermott) stops off in a dreary mudhole town and falls for sickly and melancholy saloon gal Blossom (a sound and moving performance by Helen Hunt). Meanwhile, the vengeful Sheriff Aaron Starett (the always on the money Andrew Robinson) closes in on McComas. Second and most harrowing story, "The Time of the Wolves" - Tough Alma Heusser (a credible Mariel Hemmingway) and high-strung Sarah Carstairs (a nicely neurotic turn by Lisa Pelikan) find themselves trapped in a cabin during a fierce snow storm that's besieged by a pack of savage wolves. This vignette benefits greatly from the edgy chemistry between the two leads and offers a good deal of nerve-jangling tension. Third and most enjoyable yarn, "The Last Belt" - Barston finally bags Roundtree, but has a difficult time keeping his corpse so he can collect the hefty bounty placed on Red's head. This particular segment adroitly mines a wickedly amusing line in inspired pitch-black gallows humor. Director Sam Pillsbury, working from a crafty script by Dick Beebe, Marjorie David, and Gordon Dawson, handles the macabre material with tremendous gritty style and assurance, maintains a properly dark and grim tone throughout, makes the most out of the bleak and dusty New Mexico locations, presents a believably grimy and downbeat evocation of the 19th century period setting, and delivers several startling moments of shockingly sadistic violence. Dern does a terrific job of holding the whole picture together. Both Johnny E. Jensen's slick, yet grungy cinematography and John Debney's twangy'n'harmonic score are up to par. A real sleeper.

I love finding offbeat half-forgotten gems where I wouldn't think to look for them. And I wouldn't think to look for them in the 90's because it's generally a pretty bad decade for westerns and certainly not in the field of made-for-TV horror western hybrids because most of their kind wield their western part as an exotic backdrop against which are played the same generic horror clichés. And I love offbeat gems even more when they're rough and unpolished and full of flaws. Everyone can love a masterpiece but it takes a little something to love a movie like INTO THE BADLANDS. A lot of the dialogue is awfully stilted, characters seem like they're reading verse from a page, the love story between outlaw on the run and worldweary whore in the first segment is produced on demand, the grey paint slapped on the faces of the saloon patrons on the last segment that makes them look like zombies adds a needless horror hijink too literal and cheesy it almost detracts from the actual menacing situation. And yet through all this rides Bruce Dern in his ghostly cart, the blackclad Bounty Hunter tying together the three segments of this anthology. And with him comes a love for vivid colors, cool blues and hot yellows, and fluid camera-work; a love of stylization as an end in itself; a love for pure western iconography (for eerie ghost towns and strange horsemen riding into town and open prairies and funerals in small weedy graveyards) and Gothic atmosphere galore; an affection for old EC Comics style supernatural twists. All this geared not towards a realistic gritty western but a cinematic Gothic horror fable that takes place in the Old West.

Dern burns up the desert.Dylan McDermott & Helen Hunt are good, but who needs supporting cast when Dern's soliloquies with corpses are so deadly riveting. A character reminiscent of Kane the `preacher-man' in Poltergeist II, and portrayed almost as eerily, though with Dern wit.Good western portrayal with authentic undertones. And a dern-good soundtrack too, if you can find it.