Kurt Russell’s film has the lowest rating on Rotten Tomatoes

In a remarkable career spanning more than 60 years, Kurt Russell has accomplished just about it all. He was a Disney child star, an action hero, a serious dramatic actor, and an unabashedly silly comedy lead, And Elvis Presley. Although Russell has never been a box office giant on par with his contemporaries like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, he is worshiped as a god by genre fans for playing celebrities like Snake Plissken in Escape from Neo. York, RJ McCready in The Thing, and Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. The latter two were theatrical flops, but they went from being cult favorites to bona fide mainstream classics. As a result, they have Russell, 73, is more loved now than ever.

For Russell fanatics, there’s a lively debate to be had about his best performance outside of the aforementioned holy trinity of John Carpenter films. Is he an unethical seller of his Rudy Russo in Robert Zemeckis’ “Used Cars.” US Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks in “Miracle”, or pathetic killer Stuntman Mike in Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof”? There’s an amazing vocal range from ‘Captain Ron’ in there, while some of us are pretty sure he never topped his portrayal of corrupt cop Eldon Perry in Ron Shelton’s ‘Dark Blue’.

For those who can’t help but look to the nadir in each artist’s career, there will likely be debate as to whether Russell actually gave a bad performance. Having seen almost all of his films, I will end this talk by assuring you that the man is as dependable as Cary Grant. Russell has been in bad movies, but he’s never been bad in them. As for a movie that egregiously wasted its greatness, I’m not sure there’s a worse one than Paul W. S. Anderson’s awful The Soldier. But if you check in with the Rotten Tomatoes folks, they’ll tell you it’s a Western. Russell has been in quite a few of theseand I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t think that off the top of your head.

The Western film in question is 1965’s Guns of Diablo. According to Rotten Tomatoes audience scoreit’s Russell’s worst feature with a Popcornmeter rating of 30%. If you haven’t heard of it before, you probably have We are Familiar with the TV show he produced. “The Travels of Jaime McPheeters” marked Russell’s launch into child stardom, although it only lasted one season on ABC. It was also a small-screen showcase for rising star Charles Bronson, who had already appeared in films like “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape” (which later inspired John Carpenter’s screenplay for “Escape from New York.”)

However, Guns of Diablo did not make much of a splash when it hit theaters 60 years ago, and was not appreciated by contemporary critics (Emmanuel Levy described it as a lukewarm Western). It’s a standard-issue white hat/black hat company that will likely leave you wishing you had seen its stars in any of their much better films. But if you’re a perfectionist, it’s available to stream on Tubi. Maybe you’ll find a bit of merit that Rotten Tomatoes users have eluded.