Wesley Snipes Starred In One Of The Worst Westerns Of All Time

The road to the 2013 straight-to-home-media Wester/horror film "Gallowwalkers" was weirdly circuitous. Way back in 2005, Ain't It Cool News announced that Chow Yun-fat was working on a horror Western wherein he would play a bounty hunting gunslinger that fought zombies. That film was to be called "The Wretched" and would be overseen by the production companies Sheer Films and Patriot Pictures, with Andrew Goth serving as co-writer and director. AICN's scoop was also confirmed in an issue of Fangoria Magazine.

Chow must have dropped out, though, because the next update on the project came in 2008, also in an issue of Fangoria. "The Wretched" had since become a project titled "Gallowwalker." The film was still being co-written and directed by Goth, but Wesley Snipes (who's one of our best actors) was now slated to star alongside David DeCoteau regular Andrew Smith and wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, with shooting to take place in Namibia. That country was alluring in the mid-2000s, as many filmmakers began discovering the gorgeousness of the Namibian landscape (per a report from The Washington Post). No doubt, the makers of "Gallowwalkers" also received some nice tax incentives to shoot there as well.

2006, one might recall, was a time when Snipes was going through a lot of complex legal problems over tax evasion. The actor infamously failed to file his taxes for multiple years while (falsely and knowingly) claiming to be exempt from certain taxes because it was non-resident alien income. (Snipes, it should be stated, was born in Orlando, Florida.) The charges were filed in 2006, Snipes went to trial in 2008, and was sentenced to three years in prison in 2010.

Snipes was released from prison on April 2, 2013, and he completed his imprisonment under house arrest before becoming fully free and clear a few months later on July 19. "Gallowwalkers," in a bout of carefully planned timing, finally premiered on home media a couple of weeks after that on August 6.

It got terrible reviews.

In "Gallowwalkers," Snipes plays Aman, an Old West badass who can, like in a "Mortal Kombat" game, rip out people's spines. (It appears Snipes enjoys playing superhuman badasses in general.) Aman, you see, once revenge-murdered a vicious gang for sexually assaulting his girlfriend, only to get himself killed in the process. His mother then sacrificed herself to a demon in an attempt to resurrect her dead son. But although her gambit worked, it also left Aman cursed. As a result, he returned to the land of the living as a super-strong immortal, doomed to walk the Earth for all eternity.

On top of that, the resurrected Aman soon discovered that everyone he kills comes back to life shortly thereafter. This made his revenge murders useless, as the gang that attacked his girlfriend suddenly found themselves alive and kicking once more. (D'oh!) In addition, the film's central villain is Kansa (Kevin Howarth), a skinless ghoul who steals other people's skin. "Gallowwalkers" also stars Patrick Bergin as a Marshall, model Tanit Phoenix as a damsel in distress, and Diamond Dallas Page as a character named Skullbucket.

There are only four reviews for "Gallowwalkers" on Rotten Tomatoes, and three of them are roundly negative. One critic felt the movie was so bad that it emerged as unintentionally funny. The premise has a lot of schlocky potential, but it takes the right filmmaker to handle good schlock, and it seems Goth wasn't the right kind.

The only positive review was from Anton Bitel, a critic for Sight & Sound. His review is no longer available online, but a blurb on Rotten Tomatoes compares the movie's wild visuals and energetic presentation to Alejandro Jodorowsky's "El Topo," which is a flattering comparison indeed. At the same time, Bitel clarified that "Gallowwalkers" is, despite its visuals, shallow and silly. Even the film's sole positive review is actually kinda negative.

Apart from Bitel's qualified praise, no one seems to like "Gallowwalkers." Heck, few people have even bothered to watch it. On the Internet Movie Database, the film has an average rating of 36%, based on about 8,500 reviews. Keep in mind that the kinds of people who enter scores on IMDb have to be passionate enough to bother logging in. In other words, "Gallowwalkers" seems to have inspired a lot of ire. The same can be said for Rotten Tomatoes, which bears a mere 11% on the Popcornometer (based on 500 entries).

This should come with the caveat that neither IMDb users nor Rotten Tomatoes voters need to have seen a film, necessarily, before giving it a grade. Of course, it seems silly that someone would vote negatively on a tiny movie like "Gallowwalkers."

As mentioned, "Gallowwalkers" was delayed several years, hitting store shelves mere weeks after Snipes fulfilled his prison sentence. There is no record of this, but one may postulate that Lionsgate and the film's other distributors wanted to avoid any potential bad press related to their star's incarceration and delayed their movie accordingly. "Gallowwalkers" was in production right when Snipes was being charged, and it was released when his whole legal rigmarole was over.

Snipes immediately bounded back into his career, however, with appearances in "The Expendables 3" in 2014 and Spike Lee's "Chi-Raq" in 2015. He also gave an award-worthy performance in "Dolemite is My Name" in 2019 and reprised his role as the vampire hunter Blade in "Deadpool & Wolverine," a film that got a few yuks over his off-screen antics. Snipes survived "Gallowwalkers," and he'll persist.