Steve McQueen Played A Complicated Historical Figure In This '80s Western Streaming On Tubi

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Few might remember William Wiard's 1980 Western "Tom Horn" starring Steve McQueen. For one, it was the only feature film that Wiard ever directed, usually sticking to directing hit TV shows like "Get Smart," "Bonanza," "M*A*S*H," and many others. It also proved to be star Steve McQueen's penultimate film before his death in 1980. McQueen married his third wife, Barbara Minty, in January. "Tom Horn" was released in March. McQueen's final film, "The Hunter," was released in August, and McQueen died of cancer in November. He was 50 years old. 

McQueen was already ill when he shot "Tom Horn," now on Tubi, and it didn't really get much noticed by critics or audiences. It may have hurt the production that the title character was based on a real-life Old West gunslinger who may or may not have murdered a teenager in his heyday. The movie followed Tom Horn in the early years of the 20th century after his careers as a cowboy, a soldier, and a detective (!) all came to an end. Although released in 1980, "Tom Horn" was a broody drama in the 1970s mold about the dying days of a Western folk hero. The movie begins with Tom Horn getting the snot beaten out of him by a local prizefighter, forcing him to pass out in a barn. Not the most auspicious beginning for a hero, and a sign that the Old West itself — and, by extension, the Western genre — was dying.

Not covered in the film was the fact that the real-life Tom Horn, in 1901, probably killed the young Willie Nickell. The story goes that the 14-year-old Nickell was killed during a family rivalry between his family and the neighboring Miller family. Later, while drunk, Horn confessed to killing Willie himself. 

Willie Nickell kind of appears in "Tom Horn," but instead, it's about how the aging Horn is hired by a rancher named John Coble (Richard Farnsworth) to fend off a recent spate of cattle rustling in his area. He gets the support of the local authorities, and even sees the beginning of a romance with Glendonlene (Linda Evans), the neighborhood schoolmarm. Tom Horn is shockingly effective at his job, as he hastily murders anyone who is caught rustling. 

Of course, once the townsfolk see that Tom Horn is a violent lout, their trust in him sours, and he becomes terrifically unpopular. The local marshal, Joe Bell (Billy Green Bush), hatches a plot to frame Tom Horn for murder, shooting a young boy who was just tending sheep, using the type of gun that Tom Horn was known to use. Although accused of the murder, Tom doesn't leave town, giving the locals an excuse to apprehend him. When he is finally taken in, McQueen gets to say the line, "If I'd have killed that kid, it would have been the best shot I ever made and the dirtiest trick I ever done." 

The second part of that statement is part of the real-life Tom Horn's so-called confession to killing Willie Nickell. The movie added the "If I'd have killed that kid" part. In the movie, the statement is merely misinterpreted as a confession, and Tom Horn is put in prison. The statement is also later "misinterpreted" by a local journalist as a confession. He was hanged in real life, and the real-world John Coble paid for his coffin. Larry Ball's book "Tom Horn in Life and Legend" contains the pertinent details. 

It's clear that the "Tom Horn" movie sought to exonerate the real-life Tom Horn. Of course, even if Tom Horn didn't kill Willie Nickell, he definitely murdered many other people in his time as a freelance detective. Indeed, in the "Tom Horn" movie, he is seen extrajudicially killing cattle rustlers. The only difference seemed to be that if Horn did kill Nickell, he did it from afar, and his victim was only 14. 

There aren't a lot of reviews of "Tom Horn" from back in the day, but Jim Harwood's review in Variety was plenty negative. Evidently it wasn't just bad, but it was incompetently made. "Imagine a film that opens up with dialog that can't be heard at all," Harwood wrote, "then proceeds to build up to a fistfight that's never seen, that cuts away to sunsets to fill in other scenes that have no dramatic point, and you have just the beginning of what's wrong with Tom Horn." The film, it seems, only has one decent action sequence, and it's the shootout near the end. The reviewer also addressed the rumor that Steve McQueen didn't want to act in "Tom Horn," but was under contractual obligation. This might have been reflected in his uncommitted performance. 

Thanks to the wonderland of Tubi, "Tom Horn" remains available. It's also available on Hoopla. Surely there are Steve McQueen completists out there who would be interested in this quiet, violent biopic about a potentially amoral Old West legend. We didn't list "Tom Horn" as one of McQueen's best movies, but we did like "The Hunter."