This oh-so-’80s follow-up to the classic ’50s Steve McQueen TV series features Rutger Hauer as the descendant of wild west bounty hunter Josh Randall – and he’s charged with tracking down ruthless terrorist Gene Simmons.
The connection to the original series is nominal. A photograph, a surname, a vague suggestion of lineage. What makes it notable isn’t the adaptation itself, but its timing.
By 1987, turning old television shows into theatrical features was still uncommon. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) had already re-launched a franchise, but it rode in on a wave of post-Star Wars sci-fi fever – and it had a built-in fanbase of Trekkies like myself.
Most other attempts were modest cash-ins. Batman: The Movie (1966) came out while the show was still airing. Munster, Go Home! (1966) landed just after the series ended. You could throw in The Blues Brothers (1980) too.
A few nostalgic love labours followed like Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and Dragnet (1987), but the real wave wouldn’t come until the ’90s with prime-timers like Mission: Impossible, The Flintstones, Sgt. Bilko, McHale’s Navy, Leave It to Beaver, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Addams Family, The Brady Bunch… And that probably had more to do with Batman (1989) – which, technically for the normies, was a lucrative update of an old TV property.
Wanted: Dead or Alive stands out for how little it trades on brand recognition. It doesn’t evoke the tone or characters of the original. It doesn’t play for nostalgia or subversion. It’s not even really a remake. Just a solid state straight-faced ’80s action film wearing an old title like a borrowed jacket.
It didn’t start the trend. But in hindsight, it’s part of the pre-boom landscape – a curiosity that prefigured what studios would eventually learn: you didn’t need fidelity. You just needed a name people recognised.
And by the mid-’90s, judging by Car 54, Where Are You?, The Mod Squad, and The Avengers, that was clearly enough. -Pop
Wanted: Dead or Alive was caught on Home Video this week in 1987, after a January 16th theatrical release on parole.