Lance Henriksen Had A Wild Pitch For A Sequel To Sam Raimi's Underrated Western

Sam Raimi's 1995 Western "The Quick and the Dead" has a Saturday morning cartoon vibe. Like all of Raimi's films, it's wild and energetic, sporting quick, exciting camera movements, snap zooms, and outsize, braggadocious characters. The story surrounds a quick-draw tournament wherein all the best gunfighters in the West have gathered to outshoot one another. The winner gets a huge cash prize, but will also be the last man standing. The contest was orchestrated by the bitter gunslinger-turned-mayor John Herod (Gene Hackman) who has more on his mind than gunslinging. Other key players in the tournament include The Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio) who claims that Herod is his father, and Cort (Russell Crowe), a gunslinger-turned-minister whom Herod forces to compete. The main character of the piece is a mysterious badass known only as The Lady (Sharon Stone), who also has secrets of her own.  

The background is peppered with cartoonishly over-the-top gunslingers and a panoply of storied character actors. Keith David, Pat Hingle, Tobin Bell, Woody Strode, and Gary Sinise all appear. One will see Bruce Campbell's name in the credits, but Campbell's lone scene was (to hear him tell it) only filmed to placate a snippy (unnamed) movie star. Campbell's scene was not included in the film. The venerable and amazing Lance Henriksen plays a black-leather-clad gunfighter/card shark named Ace Hanlon, who likes to wear ace-of-spades patterns on his jacket. Ace is a brash and colorful character who is murdered almost right away in the gunfighting tourney. 

Back in 2011, Henriksen was interviewed by John Kenneth Muir, and he felt that Ace Hanlon's death was no reason why he shouldn't appear in a potential sequel to "The Quick and the Dead." Indeed, he had a pitch all ready to go. He intended to play his own quadruplet brothers.

Henriksen loved working on "The Quick and the Dead," and he trained with a real gun expert, a sharpshooter named Thell Reed. It was Reed who instructed Henriksen to wear his guns high up on his hips, as that was more historically accurate; the low-hanging holsters seen in most films were invented for the movies. Henriksen and the rest of the crew were very fond of Ace Hanlon, and there was even a brief effort to save the character. Sadly, in a gunfighting movie, he had to go. 

Hanlon, as mentioned, wore spades on his outfit. Henriksen figured that Ace Hanlon would, by extension, have three brothers who sported the other three suits in a deck of playing cards. Those brothers, he felt, would be great additions to any potential "The Quick and the Dead 2." He thought the brother wearing the hearts would be the new ringleader. By his description: 

"I really felt like I was that guy ... the crew even signed a petition saying 'Don't kill Ace Hanlon.' I used to say we should do a sequel where Ace Hanlon is killed and his three brothers, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs come looking for him. And Hearts wears white leather with red hearts on it. He's a little gay, but he's the deadliest of them all. It would have been great, and I would have played all the roles; I would have been all the brothers."

Of course Henriksen would conceive of an idea wherein he got to play three characters at once, and got a lot of screentime. As a Henriksen fan, I would not have rejected this idea. 

Henriksen feels that coming back as his own three quadruplet brothers would be a great way to retain some grace for Ace Hanlon. Because the character dies so early on in "The Quick and the Dead," he is not afforded much dignity. Hanlon is dandyish and cool, bragging that he's ambidextrous when it comes to killing off foes. Herod, however, knows that Hanlon is lying about his kills (Herod actually killed the men Hanlon claims to have dispatched), and challenges him to a duel. Herod, a much faster slinger, shoots Hanlon through his right hand, causing him to scream. Then Herod shoots his left hand. He shoots the ground a few times, forcing him to dance, mocking his lies. Then Herod shoots him through the chest. It's a humiliating death. 

Henriksen hated how embarrassing it was, feeling that he and his character deserved more. In his words: 

"That's the only part I didn't like. I had to play it. I had to do it, but going down that way wasn't the way I saw Ace Hanlon getting done in. Putting bullets through both hands and turning me into a dancing idiot. But you know what, there's a lot of things you do as an actor. Who wants to get killed? I didn't want that [movie] to be over. Ever. I really didn't." 

Sadly, "The Quick and the Dead" was only a modest hit, and a sequel was never made. But Stone, Crowe, DiCaprio, David, Bell, and Henriksen are all still working. Why not have the 85-year-old Henriksen play quadruplets?