Young Billy Young

Fans of the movie TOMBSTONE and other Wyatt Earp movies may be interested to know that this movie was very loosely based on Will Henry's WHO RIDES WITH Wyatt, a heavily fictionalized novel about Wyatt Earp's war with the Cowboy gang and his feud with Cowboy-sympathizing sheriff John Behan. In the novel, the "Billy Young" character is actually Johnny Ringo, who--in a completely fictional subplot--is at first protected, befriended and mentored by Wyatt (as Billy is by Kane in this movie), until Ringo gets more and more deeply involved with Curly Bill and the Clantons and Wyatt has to come after him. The novel is grim and dark, with an admirable but not very likable Wyatt. The movie is entertaining fluff, with a storyline that has less and less to do with the novel and the real Wyatt Earp as it goes along. Surprisingly, a good bit of the dialogue of the novel is retained, at least in the early scenes with Kane, and the script even retains the Earp-Behan-Lily triangle. The Behan character is even called "John Behan," and gets a surprising comeuppance from a surprising source. David Carradine is his usual watchable self as a more likable version of Ike Clanton.