There aren't any great options to see Val Kilmer's turn as Billy the Kid on Youtube, but it's worth contrasting with the "Young Guns" of the era.





 

I guess no one ever bothered to ask about the second half.....




 

Well, that wasn't very good apart from the music either.  Pretty embarrassing in fact, it's not hard to see why it flopped on Broadway.  The question of why it was resurrected nearly a decade later, in 1975, for an ABC special, is another matter.  I have to assume that it was perhaps in response to the fact that by the beginning of 1975 it was already being reported in the press of the Salkind movie production which had a Mario Puzo script and Brando in talks, so maybe ABC was trying to capitalize on this hype (nevermind it would be over three years to see fruition).

This musical production, originally staged in 1966, is right along the campy spirit of the then-new Batman TV show, although (at least evident from this special) lacking any of that show's visual ingenuity or wit.  Also, it helped that Batman had embraced moddish rock music, but then again, Broadway has always been about, oh, half a century or so behind in musical taste.  It does seem that Salkind hired this play's Benton/Newman team precisely to add some more of this camp flavor into the film, but thankfully not enough to drastically change the tone into something as badly corny as what we see here.
 

I'm not a fan of Macon County Line, but that cast looks pretty irresistible.

And I'm always down for Hal.
 

Harris Yulin's best shot.  You'll know it when you see it.