Not that Wild Bill Hickok!

This low-budget western programmer tries to draw viewers in by using the name of an icon of the old west but it doesn’t take place in Deadwood, there’s no poker game, no dead man’s hand, and Wild Bill (Tom Brown) is presented as being a corrupt sheriff who works for evil businessman Jim Bailey (Denver Pyle).  Denver Pyle, we all know him best as Uncle Jesse on the Dukes of Hazzard.  He’s a bad guy here, the film’s Boss Hogg.

Our hero and the man who kills Wild Bill Hickok is a horse trader Johnny Rebel, who tells his story in flashback and who is often called “Mr. Rebel.”  Johnny Rebel is played by Johnny Carpenter, no relation to the director.  This Johnny Carpenter was a stunt man who took control of his career and wrote and played lead in a series of forgettable B-westerns, like this one.  Carpenter probably could have been quite the hero in the Poverty Row days, when fast-paced westerns were being released on a weekly basis and directors and actors knew exactly what a matinee audience wanted.  By the time I Killed Wild Bill Hickok came out, westerns had started to grow up.

There’s the usual amount of stock footage.  Director Richard Talmadge was himself a former stunt man so he does get a few good stunts into the last 15 minutes of the movie.  Before the final gun battle, this movie about Wild Bill Hickok is nowhere near wild enough.