Winchester et jupons courts

Amanda Plummer and Diane Lane have the title roles as Cattle Annie And Little Britches in this really outstanding film that seems to have disappeared. As it was it was given limited release and held up for two years being shot in 1979. Usually that means bad news for a film. But not in this case.

According to a recent biography of Burt Lancaster the collapse of the elephantine budgeted Heaven's Gate made the studios gun shy about westerns. It was the main reason the film was held up. Probably Lancaster Oscar nominated performance in Atlantic City made the studio change its mind.

A pair of Hollywood legends Burt Lancaster and Rod Steiger make their only joint film appearance in Cattle Annie And Little Britches. Lancaster plays legendary outlaw Bill Doolin who operated in the Oklahoma Territory primarily and who the girls who've had their heads filled with dime novel fantasies become camp followers and are christened with those names by Lancaster. Steiger is legendary lawman Bill Tilghman who is on the trail of the Doolin gang. Worth seeing this film just to see them together in one scene.

According to the Lancaster biography Amanda Plummer regarding Lancaster as an acting mentor. She was impressed with his sheer physicality even in middle age. Burt certainly was no longer playing roles like The Crimson Pirate, but still he used his whole body and not just that clear speaking voice to get you to notice him. Steiger too has one memorable voice for the screen.

Cattle Annie And Little Britches is a sleeper western ready to be discovered by film fans. Make sure to see this if broadcast.

An adorable Diane Lane ("Unfaithful") and a wonderfully spunky Amanda Plummer ("Pulp Fiction"), the latter making her film debut, play the title roles in this highly engaging Western. Cattle Annie (Plummer) and Jenny a.k.a. Little Britches (Lane) are two young orphan girls who hook up with the remnants of the Doolin (Burt Lancaster, "Gunfight at the O. K. Corral") / Dalton (Scott Glenn, "The Silence of the Lambs") gang. Bill Doolin decides that the old gang still has some life left in it, and the girls inspire them to pull a few more jobs.

Overall, the film is good enough to make you think that it in no way deserved its fate. (It was "thrown away" by Universal, who distributed it in 1980.). Only in more recent years did it get released to Blu-ray & DVD, so people can now take pleasure in a slightly adult (there is some profanity, and some male nudity, albeit shot from behind) but still largely harmless bit of entertainment. Just like the Cattle Annie of the title, it has a lot of spirit, and a charismatic Lancaster and a low-key Glenn are just two top players in a cast that also includes Rod Steiger ("In the Heat of the Night") as lawman Bill Tilghman, John Savage ("The Deer Hunter"), William Russ ('Boy Meets World'), Redmond Gleeson ("Dreamscape"), Buck Taylor ("Tombstone"), Michael Conrad ('Hill Street Blues'), John Quade ("Every Which Way But Loose"), and Perry Lang ("Alligator").

The story, based on a novel and screen story by Robert Ward, has a great theme about idolization of outlaw characters and the need to see the reality behind the legend. It's a solid, entertaining tale with some choice bits of dialogue, and a rousing finale guaranteed to have viewers cheering.

The fact that this got such a limited release 44 years ago is in no way indicative of quality (or lack thereof), so give this one a look whenever you can.

Seven out of 10.

Good old-fashioned Western movie with a good shot of comedy. A great production and fine working cast (Diana Lane and Amanda Plummer are all too gorgeous as drifters) make this one a gem for everyone who like Western movies a la True Grit, Cat Ballou, Waterhole and so on.

"Cattle Annie and Little Britches" is, believe it or not, based on real characters. Yes, two weird women, Cattle Annie and her friend, Little Britches, were actually members of the famous Doolin Gang and were responsible for a short reign of terror in the latter days of the old west.

Apart from casting the way too elderly Burt Lancaster as the gang leader, Bill Doolin, the movie is good...though also not especially memorable. The biggest problem is that in the film, these criminals don't do a whole lot and they also aren't very sympathetic. I don't know about most viewers, but I just found I didn't care about anyone in this movie. It's competently made but curiously uninvolving as well.

Two teen girls (Amanda Plummer & Diane Lane) hook up with the Doolin-Dalton Gang in 1890's Oklahoma Territory, but Bill Doolin (Burt Lancaster) is tired and the gang's heyday is behind them. Meanwhile Marshal Tilghman (Rod Steiger) is intent on putting the kibosh on the wild bunch. Scott Glenn and John Savage are on hand as members of the gang.

"Cattle Annie and Little Britches" (1981) is similar in tone to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and, like that film, was based on the real-life account, albeit loosely. "Young Guns" (1988) and "Young Guns II" (1990) did the same with the Billy the Kid story. The film starts off like "Bad Company" (1972) mixed with the fun spirit of "Butch Cassidy," but becomes weightier as it moves along with some pretty moving moments.

Plummer was 23 during filming while Lane was only 15. The former is utterly convincing as the sassy Annie and Savage is notable as her taciturn quasi-beau. The superb folk songs by Sahn Berti & Tom Slocum are stirring and sometimes profound. It's an inexplicably obscure Western, hardly promoted and barely released. I guess studios were gun shy after the devastating failure of "Heaven's Gate" (1980).

The film runs 1 hours, 37 minutes, and was shot in Durango, Mexico, about 1200 miles southwest of the real-life events.

GRADE: B