The last appearance on the silver screen before the current movie was in 1981...
...during a brief flurry of comic-themed big-budget movies including Superman: the Movie, Flash Gordon, and Popeye. as well as the pulp/comic/movie serial-inspired Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back) and Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark) series.
 |
| Michael Horse as Tonto and Klinton Spilsbury as John Reid/Lone Ranger. |
The film followed the long-established origin seen HERE and HERE fairly well, but expanded Tonto's role to make him more of a teacher and equal partner than previous versions, as well as having Tonto speak colloquial English.
Male model Klinton Spilsbury as Reid/Ranger makes his only film appearance here, looking the part,and moving well in action sequences, but totally-unable to act or even speak clearly. (He was dubbed by James Keach.)
Michael Horse, who went on to ongoing roles in Twin Peaks, Roswell, and most recently, Sons of Tuscon, plays Tonto as the more thoughtful of the duo.
To give the film a contemporary action-adventure feel, James Bond composer John Barry did the score (incorporating the William Tell Overture, of course).
Like the previous feature film, Lone Ranger and the City of Gold, this film introduced a narrative song (sung by Merle Haggard, who narrated the movie).
Unfortunately, there's no video of it on YouTube...
Trivia: the narrator of the trailer is Fred Foy who introed and narrated most of the the radio/TV Lone Ranger episodes!
We hope you've enjoyed our look at the movie career of The Lone Ranger and Tonto.as part of the Dynamic Duos of Classic Films Blogathon.
Previous entries are...
the two Lone Ranger movie serials in Hero Histories™
the two Lone Ranger feature films shot during the run of the tv series and starring the tv cast at Secret Sanctum of Captain Video™
See many, many other "Dynamic Duos in Classic Film" at this LINK to the blogathon participants!
