year: 1977
runtime: 97′
director: J. Lee Thompson
cast: Charles Bronson, Will Sampson,
Jack Warden, Clint Walker,
Kim Novak
writer: Richard Sale
cinematography: Paul Lohmann
music: John Barry
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A syphilitic Wild Bill Hickok (Charles Bronson) returns from his showbiz career to the West to fight against destiny. Hickock is plagued by a recurring nightmare about battling a gigantic white buffalo (that looks very much like the mechanical construct it is) on a snowy, disquietingly artificial looking plateau. He usually wakes up from the dream with guns blazing. Hickock believes that his dream enemy really exists and that he has to find and kill it or be doomed in some inexplicable way.
The gunman has too much of a history in the West, and so uses the pseudonym of James Otis, but he can’t help meeting old enemies like Captain Tom Custer (Ed Lauter) or his former love Poker Jenny (Kim Novak), saying goodbye to various parts of his old life in one way or the other.
