Cat Ballou (1965)

As far as Western spoofs go, Cat Ballou is neither as goofy as 1953's Red Garters nor is it as raunchy as 1974's Blazing Saddles. In fact, it's surprisingly middle of the road. Which is odd since it's the movie Lee Marvin won an Academy Award for.

In 1894, Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) is on the way back to her father's ranch in Wolf City, Wyoming. On the train she meets a drunken phony preacher named Jed (Dwayne Hickman) and his cattle rustler nephew Clay Boone (Michael Callan). She inadvertently aids them in escaping from the Sheriff, thus beginning her slide into becoming notorious outlaw Cat Ballou.

When she gets back to the ranch, she's shocked to find it falling apart. The Wolf City Development Corporation, led by Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny), wants the water rights to the ranch and are willing to do anything to obtain them.  Percival is planning to build a slaughterhouse, which will create jobs in town theoretically. The WCDC even goes so far as to hire killer Tim Strawn (Marvin with a silly metal nose and even sillier mustache) to terrorize Cat's father. Cat tries turning to the rustlers for help, but neither one of them are gunmen. Cat then tries to hire notorious gunman Kid Shelleen (Marvin again), only to find that he's a drunk who can't even hit a barn. When Strawn kills her father and the town won't do anything about it, Cat swears vengeance, robbing a train and ultimately killing Sir Harry.

That the movie has a good cast is not in doubt. Certainly Marvin is fun enough in the dual role. Oddly, though, this is neither his best western--that would be The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--nor his best movie (The Dirty Dozen). He's somewhat amusing but never quite as funny as you think he should be.

That seems to be the problem with the movie in a nutshell. Fonda, in the days before people hated her for her politics, never looked lovelier and  is sincere as Cat, but only afforded a few really funny moments. Those moments are fairly early in the movie and mostly involve her interactions with the two rustlers. Callan and Hickman are probably the two funniest characters and even they aren't as good as they should be. They're best material is in the train at the beginning.

In fact, the movie only really shines when the Greek chorus of Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye show up to sing about the movie's proceedings. This was Cole's last screen appearance. He was already dying of cancer and passed away a few months before the movie was released. But their lyrics are the most amusing material the movie has to offer.

Part of the real problem is the fact that the movie, unlike Red Garter and Blazing Saddles, never fully embraces the lunacy of the cliches it's spoofing. It almost takes them too matter of fact, missing the obvious joke. Sure, there are way worse Western spoofs out there, but sadly this could and should have been much more than it was, making it a missed opportunity.

The Shootist (1976)

By the late 1960s, the Western as a popular movie genre was on it's way out and the ones that did get made started to reflect that thinking. Movies like The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid dealt with characters who no longer fit into the world, who had to watch the slow but inevitable passing of the Old West. It is perhaps fitting that the most poignant of these movies just happened to be the last movie of what may well be the most legendary Western star of all.

1976's The Shootist opens with a montage of scenes from earlier John Wayne westerns, including Hondo and Rio Bravo. The theoretical purpose of the montage is to tell us the lethal legacy of Wayne's character, J.B. Books. But the montage also serves as a reminder of how dominant an actor Wayne was in the genre.

Books arrives in Carson City on January 22, 1901. He hasn't been feeling like himself so he goes to a doctor (James Stewart) he trusts. He finds out he has Cancer and maybe two months to live. He wants to die in peace, so he rents a room from a widow (Lauren Bacall) and her son (Ron Howard). As people find out not only who he is but that he's dying, the glory seekers and vultures come out. Eventually he decides he'd rather go out in a blaze of glory than screaming in agony.

The Shootist is packed with guest appearances from various friends and costars of Wayne's. Besides Bacall and Stewart, Richard Boone, John Carradine, Harry Morgan, Hugh O'Brian, Scatman Crothers, Melody Thomas Scott, and even Johnathan Goldsmith--the Most Interesting Man in the World himself--all appear. It's a hell of a cast, the type you don't see much anymore. I don't know how many, if any, realized they were going to be in the last movie John Wayne starred in, but they all play up to the part.

Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino seems to have borrowed quite a few things from this. In both films, the protagonist develops a fatherly relationship with a young boy who tries stealing from him. Both films have a man of violence who learns he is dying of cancer. Both heroes decide to go out with a bang instead of a whimper.

But while the film should be a completely sober and depressing piece, Wayne elevates it above the morbid. He's still John Wayne after all. The scene where he turns the tables on greedy Undertaker Carradine and makes him pay for the privilege of burying Wayne is hilarious. But it's his verbal sparring with Bacall that really makes the movie. She loathes him at first, then pities him, then wants and needs to save him. She can't, of course. But watching two old pros like these play off one another is justification enough for the movie. And it's all done without really becoming a love story.

Some may complain that Wayne never really acted, he just played John Wayne over and over. But that can be said of a lot of actors then and now. After all, didn't we like Jimmy Stewart for essentially being Jimmy Stewart over and over? Wayne was a personality performer and like all personality performers, we watched him be him and loved it. He was a forerunner to later action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, only he managed to make some better movies. The Shootist is the last chance we get to see what made him such a great personality and by extension, such a great actor.

Contrary to popular belief, Wayne wasn't dying when he made The Shootist. He had been in remission since 1969. None the less, this does seem to be his way of facing his own mortality. Three years later he would be gone having made no more movies. In that sense, this is his goodbye and it's a beautiful and emotional one.

Serial Saturday: Perils of the Wildernesss (1956)

In 1946, Universal Studios abandoned making cliffhanger serials with a production called The Mysterious Mr. M. The official word was that they were trying to upgrade their image, but it seems just as likely that they realized that the format couldn't go on for much longer. Indeed, shrinking budgets, competition from television and a total refusal to evolve seemed to doom serials and within 10 years, the last serials were released. Republic Studios, the studio that put out the most popular if not the best serials of the sound era, jumped ship in 1955 with the ultra-lackluster King of the Carnival. This left Columbia Pictures, the last of the big three of the sound era, releasing serials and they finally ended in 1956.

Perils of the Wilderness is the next to last of the Columbia serials and it's a complete mess. While it's true that all four of Columbia's final four serials show an appalling lack of effort on the part of the studio, this one may well be the most lackluster of the four. That took some doing on the studio's part, too, considering the existence of The Adventures of Captain Africa.

The serial's first major problem is that there is no discernible storyline to it. The villain (frequent 3 Stooges baddie Kenneth MacDonald) is riling up the local Indians, but we're never actually sure why. It may be because he's smuggling something, but what that something is we're not told. It may be because he wants to stop the railroad, but that's not clear, either. About the only thing we know for certain is that he appears to be a fugitive hiding out in Canada and being hunted by a U.S. Marshal. A Marshal that happens to be way out of his jurisdiction, but that's beside the point. The Marshal is sort of working with the Mounties, but not entirely. The Marshal, for his part, keeps trying to be undercover and joining the gang, but then he openly fights them, so his plans to join them don't work out.

To make matters even more confusing, we have no idea when exactly this is all supposed to be taking place. In one scene we see people flying hydroplanes, an invention of which not only are the Mounties aware of, they have a couple of their own. But then in the next scene, the Indians are attacking covered wagons taking supplies to the railroad camp. Wait, what?!

If all of that isn't convincing enough, then consider the fact that most of every chapter is stock footage from earlier serials, most notably Perils of the Royal Mounted.  How much stock footage is there? Well, let me put it this way: know those 3 Stooges shorts made with Shemp after his death? The ones that have 3 or 4 new shots per short and the rest of the short is stock? That's a pretty close description. Mind you, that can describe most new serials released in the 1950s, but at least most of them almost made sense. Even The Adventures of Captain Africa, bad as it was, almost made a modicum amount of sense. This one, the footage is so haphazard, one just keeps watching hoping to figure it all out in the end. It's like watching an Ed Wood movie without the loony fun. Pretty sad.

Actually, I find the whole end of the serial era to be fairly depressing. Never mind the sheer amount of stock footage cobbled together whether or not it makes any sense. Nobody puts any effort into any of these. The actors look either bored or like they'd really rather be anywhere else but here. Even the ones like this that managed to get a couple of veteran characters actors couldn't muster anything approaching entertainment value. It's not that Kenneth MacDonald or Dennis Moore (this serial's hero) could give Cary Grant a run for the money in the acting department. But these guys were dependable character actors who, in days past, gave the audience their money's worth. They showed enthusiasm and were fun to watch. Neither actor is even remotely fun to watch in this. I'd say they were going through the motions, but they don't even do that.  The only thing that keeps Perils of the Wilderness from being the worst serial ever made is the existence of couple of Independent serials from the 1930s that somehow manage to be even worse. Now that's a scary thought.