You have to admit, Bruce Dern cuts an impressive figure in the black frock coat and white beard. You'll usually find him as a supporting player in older Westerns, usually as a villain, but here he's got the lead as a supernatural bounty hunter named Barston, book-ending a trio of tales set in the Old West. His character does a good deal of narration as the tales move forward, offering bits of gritty, sage advice as he roams an area, by his own admission, somewhere between civilization and the Ninth Circle of Hell.
Picking a favorite out of the stories presented is a toss-up to my mind, I liked each one about equally. A casting surprise in the first entry had Helen Hunt as a consumptive whore falling for an itinerant killer portrayed by Dylan McDermott. Her character switches personas in the twist that occurs, reverting to an apparition like figure who might have been right at home in The Band's plaintive song, 'Long Black Veil'.
Mariel Hemingway and Lisa Pelikan are distant neighbors in the second story, at odds with each other over the relationships with their respective men. The story is one in which Dracula would have been right at home, considering all the howling in the night the prowling wolves outside their cabin door emitted.
Dern's Barston achieves his goal in hunting down bad man Red Roundtree (Michael Metzger) in the final story, but runs into some bad old boys who have other things on their mind when he shows up for the bounty. Even though he's done in by the baddies and is set up for the long dirt nap, he winds up heading for Colorado, just around the bend, and dead ahead. Dead ahead just might have been the operative word here. Throughout the bounty hunter's entire ordeal, I couldn't help but admire an unusual and unlikely physical characteristic - the guy had a beautiful set of pearly whites.
Picking a favorite out of the stories presented is a toss-up to my mind, I liked each one about equally. A casting surprise in the first entry had Helen Hunt as a consumptive whore falling for an itinerant killer portrayed by Dylan McDermott. Her character switches personas in the twist that occurs, reverting to an apparition like figure who might have been right at home in The Band's plaintive song, 'Long Black Veil'.
Mariel Hemingway and Lisa Pelikan are distant neighbors in the second story, at odds with each other over the relationships with their respective men. The story is one in which Dracula would have been right at home, considering all the howling in the night the prowling wolves outside their cabin door emitted.
Dern's Barston achieves his goal in hunting down bad man Red Roundtree (Michael Metzger) in the final story, but runs into some bad old boys who have other things on their mind when he shows up for the bounty. Even though he's done in by the baddies and is set up for the long dirt nap, he winds up heading for Colorado, just around the bend, and dead ahead. Dead ahead just might have been the operative word here. Throughout the bounty hunter's entire ordeal, I couldn't help but admire an unusual and unlikely physical characteristic - the guy had a beautiful set of pearly whites.