There’s a Comedy Western With 0% on Rotten Tomatoes You Never Knew About
But it has a tragic story in it.
It is now that the Westerns are back into business and are being popular, with perfect casts, great central stories and many unexpected twists. But after the golden time of Westerns in the times of Old Hollywood, like the 50s and the 60s, the late 90s weren’t that full of great releases.
When another genre is mixed with the Western, we usually get a great result, but once there was a comedy Western didn't work out at all. This was the case with Wagons East, which premiered in 1994. The movie featured one of the greatest comedy actors of the time, John Candy, but even that fact didn't help the movie become a decent watch, but instead made it all the more sad.
The movie Wagons East is set in the Wild West of the 1860s and follows a group of misfits who are tired of their current lives and so they hire a rather questionable cowboy to help them get back to the East where they came from. Candy played the role of the mentor cowboy named James Harlow, but it took him a while to agree to be part of the movie.
At the time, Candy was already very popular, and when he was approached by the producers, he hesitated to say yes at once because he was rather skeptical about the movie’s script. However, despite all the love and fame, Candy was so insecure and supposedly a people pleaser that he couldn’t say no and agreed to be in the film.
He was trying to give his all to the role and was in constant fear that if he didn't - he would be out of a job. He was also insecure about his appearance and struggled to lose weight, keeping his trainer on set.
All of this, combined with the fact that he was already struggling with health issues, led to a tragic event: Candy died in his sleep of a heart attack before the movie was finished. It was a shock to everyone, as none of his co-stars knew how much pain he was in.
The crew had no choice but to finish the three remaining scenes without Candy and create a CGI version of him. Needless to say, this was a bad idea, as it turned out to be an uncomfortable experience for the audience, who already had mixed feelings about the movie.
As it turned out, the actor's intuition was right, and the movie ended up being one of the worst reviewed films in history, with a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But some people still found something great to remember it by.
“And even though this movie is a dud there is a final scene between John Candy and his romantic interest in the movie where everything just ends happy and everyone got what they wanted and they're just kind of looking up at the stars and John Candy says he wishes this could last forever and idk it got me a little emotional and it's kind of a nice final moment for him to go out on,” Redditor Bernardbarnaby said.
Wagons East is available to watch on Prime Video.