rob-2313

This movie is bad. And not in an Ed Wood way kinda bad. No, No, No. This movie bites so bad that if you left it along it would run off and howl at the moon and eventually deliver a whole flock of mindless look-a-likes to your front door, which is where this cur came from in the first place.

The script, such as it is, moves the plot line along at the break neck speed of a depressed three-toed sloth. The cast was assembled much the same as Frankenstein's Monster was. The set looks like it was all borrowed from a dream sequence of Gilligan's Island, which makes sense being as how Alan Hale Jr. appears as one of the baddies.

Hale chews up the scenery like a crazed beaver, spitting out the most atrocious dialog like so much sawdust and toothpicks. His character meets his much needed end in quite possibly the most unconvincing, unrealistic death scene ever to grace a western.

Best viewed with several friends, an endless bowl of popcorn and the mind altering drug of your choice.

I stumbled on this little gem a few months ago on IFC, and just watched it again today. If there was an Academy Award category for "Best Modernistic Recreation of Classic Hollywood Styles" this film would have won hands down. Gibson Frazier is amazing, channeling the spirit of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd with a script that reads like a Robert Heinlein short story. (Or perhaps Harlan Ellison...) Hang your belief at the door and flow with the fantasy. You are not going to learn any deep truths here. Except perhaps how to make a really snappy film on small change. The plot (what there is of it, and be fair, not many reporter/gangster film from the 20's and 30's did either) moves Frazier from the clean black and white world of New York to its darker underbelly without once getting dirty or losing the starch on his Herbert Hoover collar. Worth you 80 minutes. More so if you love old 'B' movies.