Un cow-boy en colère

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I thought it would be pretty stupid but instead it was quite clever. This movie gave me the impression that everyone must have had a good time making it. Lee Marvin, Strother Martin and Englishman Oliver Reed, as half-breed Joe Knox(!), meshed perfectly. The women were lovely and not very dainty and Robert Culp was as usual, Robert Culp (it must be in his contract). Believe it or not, the story, convoluted as it is, makes sense and there is even an elaborate caper pulled near the end. A movie that should offend many people but is so good natured that it charms them instead.

This is American International Pictures mid 70s drive-in movie idea of Blazing Saddles meets Cat Ballou via Paint Your Wagon. Believe it or not, it is actually funny. Renowned for making budget imitation versions of popular genres or other blockbusters, AIP often just made their own remake of whatever was popular. Bonnie And Clyde? AIP make A Bullet For Pretty Boy or BoxCar Bertha or Bloody Mama, etc. Westworld? AIP make Futureworld. on it went. Until after Superman they made Meteor and went broke. Sad really because AIP had a place in pre Video and DVD Hollywood after Republic Pictures and Allied Artists also went out of the biz. GREAT SCOUT is a Lee Marvin western style 'romp' with an excellent cast. It imitates those initial films above (possibly also The Cheyenne Social Club) and adds some phoney animation (cartoon dots supposed to be a beehive attack) rude Native American Indians played by Oliver Reed (!) and Black Bart style gunslingers. It's all slight and silly. Cross reference the films mentioned and it is all no worse than something Ann Margret and Arnie and Kirk Douglas once made. GREAT SCOUT is a sitter for a cult revival on DVD.

Entertaining Western/comedy in which follows the misadventures of a misfit group of rogues and hustlers involving them into multiple antics . This eccentric funny Western set in Colorado of 1908 deals with Sam Longwood (Lee Marvin) , a scout who has liven better days , passing through aware his former gold-mine colleague named Jack Colby (Robert Culp) , now is a politically ambitious magnate , who ran off with all the gold from a mine they were prospecting several years earlier . Sam revives his old feud being helped by his other pals from that time , a wacky half-breed named Joe Knox (an improbable Indian Oliver Reed) and a roguish old man named Billy (Strother Martin) . Very funny Western about some helpless adventurers who hatch a plan and attempt to rob a fortune to a former swindler who now supports Taft presidential election . As they confront Jack Colby asking him the thousand dollars he previously took . After being thwarted in this attempt , they, and a likable young prostitute with rambunctious temperance named Thursday (Kay Lenz) scheme a variety of get-rich , well-concocted plans , as robbery of proceeds from big boxing match for raising funds to President Taft campaign . They also abduct Colby's spouse , Nancy Sue (Elizabeth Ashley) , who is coincidently Sam's old flame , but they learn that she is not the sweet woman that Sam had known .

Delightful Western parody with considerable silliness in which the grifter frontiersman Lee Marvin and the American Indian Oliver Reed steal the show using his wits , breaking all the rules and kicking virtually every cliché in the pants , as they relentlessly rob , run , and make jokes ; furthermore adds sparkle other actors . It is developed up and down with not much plot , some grotesque moments and in other side contains bemusing and funny scenes . Amiable but sometimes lumbering Western satire goes on and on about the same premise . Seemingly endless list of character players includes a good support cast as Elizabeth Ashley as an adulterous wife , Strother Martin as an inept botcher old man whose double-crosses habitually misfire , Kay Lenz as a wanna-be young whore and Sylvia Miles as a stubborn Madame . The film follows in the wake of ¨ Hallelujah trail (65) ¨ by John Sturges ¨ Support your local sheriff ¨ and ¨ Support your local gunfighter ¨ by Burt Kennedy ¨Waterhole¨ by William A Graham and of course ¨ Blazing saddles (74) ¨ by Mel Brooks , all of them are engaging Western satire and pretty amusing . Colorful cinematography by the Mexican Alex Phillips and lively , jolly musical score by John Cameron , full of mirth and amusement .

The film is well produced by AIP's Samuel Z. Arkoff and professionally directed by Don Taylor . None of Don Taylor's later movies have topped this one for sheer belly laughters . Don was an actor and director as TV as cinema , he played one of the leads in the Army-Air Force production of Hart's play, "Winged Victory¨ . Returning to civilian life , Taylor resumed his work in pictures with a top role in the trend-setting crime drama ¨The naked city (1948)¨ and played successful films as ¨Destination Gobi¨ , ¨Battleground¨ and ¨Stalag 17¨. In later years Taylor became a film and TV director , being nominated for an Emmy for his direction of an episode of "Night Gallery" (1969). Don met his wife Hazel Court when he directed her in a 1958 episode of "Alfred Hitchcock presents" (1955). Taylor was an expert filmmaker on adventures genre as ¨Adventures of Tom Sawyer¨ , Terror as ¨Damien : Omen 2¨ , and science fiction as ¨Island of Dr. Moreau¨, ¨Escape from Planet of Apes¨ and ¨The final of countdown¨. Rating : Good , 6,5 . Acceptable and passable Western/broad comedy fare although could have been funnier and better viewed in big screen . The movie will appeal to Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed devotees who will want to check out their excessive and comical performances .

I do not know enough about Director Don Taylor but I can assure you that after watching THE GREAT SCOUT & CATHOUSE THURSDAY I hope I do not have to suffer the torture of watching another mindless piece like this.

Taylor completely misuses an ageing Lee Marvin apparently trying to revive the role of Kid Shelleen in CAT BALLOU - without the booze; a statuesque and lively young Kay Lenz as Thursday, who for no discernible reason seems to be in love with old and frail looking Marvin, by then clearly affected by all the heavy drinking; Sylvia Miles having lesbian designs on Lenz seven years after servicing strapping John Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY; and Robert Culp in tow looking for $60,000 which Marvin does not care for - he wants Lenz, unfit though he seems for the part of making her happy. Throw in a few great looking jallopies competing with horses for space on the road in the late 19th century. Oh progress - why do you spoil everything?

It used to be just gunslingers, innocent souls getting in the crossfire and hookers livening things up but this bad old West has snakes in glass jars, Strothers Martin ready to pull the rug, Ollie Reed running around making faces and bulbous bulging eyes in the best tradition of no known Indian tribe...

Does it make any sense to you? Me neither.

Cinematography is sloppy, script nonsensical throughout, supposedly looking to recapture Marvin's glory day in screwball Western CAT BALLOU (1965) with expletives modernizing it to match 1976 lingo.

Single worst sin: a completely miscast Reed as an Indian with a Harvard background who just runs around with women's scalps in his inside pockets (wow, a novelty - I had never noticed those in Indian clothing before!)

Hysterical throughout. Everyone gets to shout, holler, yell, at various points in the flick... but definitely NOT hysterically funny!

Overlong, too. Despite superior cast, fair warning: best avoided. 5/10.

The American Western had gotten kind of tired by the early 60's and ended up moving overseas during that decade where it begat the Spaghetti Westerns or Euro-Westerns. There is no doubt these films really revitalized the genre, but what was especially interesting is the influence they in turn had on the American genre in the 1970's. This is most obvious perhaps in early American Clint Eastwood Westerns like "Hang 'em High" and "High Plains Drifter" which traded on Eastwood's mercenary "Man with No Name" character. The more left-wing political Eurowesterns, meanwhile, probably had at least some influence on American films like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid" (as well as on overtly political pseudo-Westerns like "Billy Jack"). This rather obscure American film is especially interesting though because it really betrays the influence of the third type of Eurowestern, the slapstick-comedy Westerns typified by the "Trinity" films of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.

This movie is also interesting in that it casts two the scariest screen heavies of all time--Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed--in roles that sre not only sympathetic but funny. Reed plays an Indian(!), which easily could have been a disaster, but he turns out to be quite funny as a resentful half-breed who kidnaps a bunch of prostitutes in order to infect them with a dose of clap he has in order to create an epidemic that he hopes will reach all the way to the White House! He quickly forgets about this hare-brained scheme, however, when Marvin's character enlists his aid in getting revenge on an old partner (Robert Culp) who swindled them both and stole the Marvin character's perpetually unfaithful wife (Elizabeth Ashley). Rounding out the gang is character actor Strother Martin and Kay Lenz as "Cathouse Thursday", one of the prostitutes who decides to stay with her abductors. And this itself becomes a problem because she is the favorite of a lesbian madame (Sylvia Miles), who commands her own gang and owns the only motorcar around. It all comes to a head at a boxing match/political charity for the election of William Howard Taft.

Besides Marvin and Reed, the other main asset of this film is Kay Lenz. Lenz was a very appealing actress but not a traditional Hollywood beauty (she was kind of like Sissy Spacek or Hilary Swank), which often got her cast in "loser" or "outsider" roles like the title role in the ridiculous TV movie "The Initiation of Sara". After her memorable debut in "Breezy", she also kind of got typecast as a younger woman romantically involved with much older male partners ( William Holden in "Breezy", Lee Marvin in this). She was definitely very cute (she was once married to 70's heart-throb David Cassidy) and Hollywood should have done a lot more with her.

This isn't really a classic Western (and it's pretty hard to find right now), but is an interesting and entertaining film.