It's usually fair game that homage-driven auteur Quentin Tarantino pays tribute to classics, especially Sergio Leone Westerns, but is TV's post Civil War THE REBEL episode FAIR GAME a complete rip-off or yet another example of the quirky cinematic preacher preaching the virtues of yesteryear for audiences of today?
Enter Quentin Tarantino's post Civil War THE HATEFUL EIGHT about a group of despicable types holed up in a way-station during a formidable snowstorm. Kurt Russell plays a bounty hunter, and his bounty is a grungy-gross female in Jennifer Jason Leigh's Daisy, who winds up doing exactly what a young, classy dame does in this REBEL episode.
The irony is that Patricia Medina's Cynthia Kenyon is so pretty and highbrow it's a shock she's facing the hangman at all... but not for long. Soon enough what ultimately happens to Kurt Russell (poisoned water to poisoned coffee) occurs rather quickly to James Chandler as a silently-stern bounty hunter named Farnum...
Perhaps the differences are almost as great as the similarities since not only are the handcuffed women polar opposites, but the endings are equally varied: Instead of the HATEFUL gang set up to protect the broad (including a bunch of dudes we don't yet see), in THE REBEL it's just one charming and handsome future VIRGINIAN cowboy James Drury who turns out being the...
Well this REBEL episode shouldn't be spoiled, like we just did its inferior imitator that, coincidentally, almost didn't get made when the script was famously leaked/spoiled during pre-production. But the original's twist is far more clever, effective and fulfilling than Quentin's epic that stretches a literally 24-minute story into a tedious three-hours...
What Tarantino deliberately left out was a hero, and THE REBEL was anything but your typical dashing lead or even anti-hero: As one of the Civil War's myriad of grey-clad losers, Nick Adams' Johnny Yuma traipses the Wild West as a logical, lawful yet sturdy-tough would-be author penning his own biography as he goes... as does Michael Madsen in HATEFUL EIGHT.
Overall the two-season REBEL is one of the better low-budget Westerns with creative camera angles that not only provide an intriguing maze to the story, but for the characters and their placement/motivation within what's usually a contained, strategic setting, often seeming more like a film...
Meanwhile, Irvin Kershner, who'd later lead many rebels in STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, directs more than half the episodes, including FAIR GAME, one of the best in a string of some pretty terrific yarns.