TV REVIEWS : ‘Rio Diablo’ a Corny, Old-Fashioned Western

It’s little-theater night at the Grand Ole Opry when country stars Kenny Rogers, Travis Tritt and Naomi Judd team up to emote in the TV movie “Rio Diablo” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS, Channels 2 and 8), a quintessentially old-fashioned Western shoot-’em-up that’s cornier than “Hee Haw.”

This is the kind of frontier saga where the villains are almost all grotesquely twitching character actors . . . the kind of dusty buddy movie where the only women are the saloonkeeper with a heart of gold who still carries a torch for the older fellow and the stunningly beautiful, virginal Mexican maiden who’s in love with the younger Anglo . . . the sort of pre-revisionist Western where some cranky cuss about to lose a shootout will actually say, “I’ll see you in hell” to the hero.

Rogers plays Quinton Leech, a seemingly amoral bounty hunter with very little regard for whether he brings his prey back dead or alive. His job duties run smack up against the personal crusade of Tritt, a young feller whose Mexican bride was kidnaped and presumed killed by bank robbers mere minutes after their nuptials.

“The Searchers” it ain’t. And if you suspect for even a moment that the newlywed gal is really dead, you may be too much of a hayseed even for this telepic’s target audience. It’s a measure of how careless this by-the-numbers film is that when Tritt finally does meet up again with his bride, the filmmakers don’t even bother to give them the obligatory tender moment together before the tracking ‘n’ trigger-happiness resumes. For, just when you figure it’s over, Stacy Keach pops in unexpectedly near the end as an additional villain ex machina .

Having played “The Gambler” for TV four times before this, Rogers is an implacable Western toughie by now but still seems too agreeably laid-back to pass for a bitter old misanthrope. But Tritt--one of the better young country hotshots--is surprisingly OK in his thespian debut, acceptably credible both in his amiable and anguished moments.

Judd is characteristically radiant, but fans may be disappointed that her appearance, billed above the title, is even shorter than Keach’s; she shows up at the beginning of the second hour, briefly, in the Kitty Carlisle role. (Incidentally, although the publicity pegs “Rio Diablo” as Judd’s “acting debut,” it isn’t--unless that was an impostor we caught the other night on the late show, doing a bit part in the 1979 clunker “More American Graffiti.”)