La rubia y el sheriff

Jayne Mansfield plays Kate, boarding house owner, and into town comes Kenneth Moore, a gun salesman from England. Not only are the songs by Jayne dubbed, it sounds like some of the lines are too. Starts out slow, gets better as it goes along. The mayor and the Indian chief steal the movie. There are a few gags and laughs, sort of an early version of Mel Brooks "Blazing Saddles". Nothing real good in "Special Features" on the DVD, but I guess that's due to the fact it was filmed in 1958. No real surprises here... your run of the mill spaghetti western with some laughs thrown in. According to the DVD liner notes included, this was filmed in England and in Spain (?) Too bad they didn't do more with Robert Morley; could have spiced things up more.

Kenneth More, the British Comedian stars in his first Hollywood movie with Jayne Maynesfield, the blonde bombshell in this spoof of westerns where a man who would rather drink tea than pick a gun tames the west. The film is well-directed by the veteran Michael Curtiz, is mildly amusing to extremely funny in parts. Jayne sings some songs, especially a catchy one with echoes. What else to say, good fluff.

Good family film - something particularly wholesome about Kenneth More - and I don't want to 'rain on the parade' (More is one of my favourite actors and 1958 one of my favourite years - see also: A Night to Remember', More et al 1958). But there does seem to be a lack of chemistry between More (Jonathan Tibbs) and Jayne Mansfield (Kate) - notwithstanding that this is primarily a spoof-western comedy rather than a RomCom. Did they actually get on? Some of the scenes with just the two of them are painfully laboured. But, yes, the film (due in no small part to the laconic ease of More) is entirely watchable, and the production values - even for this lightweight film - are as high as you would expect from any mainstream Hollywood film of the day.

In the first place, the cliché of the "fish out of water" might be over-used now, but it was hardly over-used in 1958. There are echoes of Bob Hope's Paleface and Son of Paleface, but those were ten years earlier.

Secondly, just because a movie might have had some scenes filmed in Spain does not make it a Spaghetti Western. Spaghetti Westerns are westerns produced by Italians and directed by Italians. That's where the name "spaghetti" comes from, see?

The Western is not my favorite genre, but I enjoy Kenneth Moore. Jayne Mansfield does an adequate job. My favorite is of course poor William Campbell as Keno.

I just loved this film. Kenneth Moore was inspired as the English gentleman buffoon. When you get that 'innocent abroad' persona - for example with Ali G in America; with 'The Idiot Abroad' etc, it's a brilliant tool for cutting through prevailing cultural norms, even if they are for example, whether it's etiquette to shoot first and speak later, or better to proffer a nice cup of tea. When he 'disarms' the injuns at the start of the film it's beautifully done and dead funny.

Jayne Mansfield is like a cartoon character, full blown - in a not quite 'Marilyn' way - and a reasonable foil for our Ken. Even her '50s starlet soon to be housewife' style of singing, (check out 'The Valley Of Love'), seemingly so inappropriate in a rough, tough saloon owner/ music hall glamour girl, fits in so neatly. The whole thing is a pastiche of the age - the 'civilized' 50s making sense of a wild, wild world, with a boy meets girl bottom line.

Like I said - brilliant! Oh and English classic comedian Syd James has a cameo role, so even better.