Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969)

Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) Starring James Garner on the rise, and riding the new tide of interest in the revised western (along with the great Spaghetti Westerns), this is surpisingly nimble and good. It's vivid and cheerful, and well written with flunny comebacks and a wry sense of absurdity. That's not to say it's a great movie-it isn't "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" at all-but that it's fun like the best television of the time, and with much higher production values. (It reminded me of the slightly earlier "A Big Hand for the Little Lady.") Director Burt Kennedy was a writer more than a director, at first, but he didn't have a hand in the screennplay here (though it is so sharp at times, you wonder if there were some little adjustments as they went). Garner is clearly the star here, and he's handsome with that pleasant smile that made him famous (and carries him through many scenes). Around him are some veteren character actors (including the great Walter Brennan) and they help overall even if they are sometimes caricatured a bit. In truth, the movie might have tipped into greatness with some more subtle direction, getting the irony and silliness to have some style or weight somehow. There's a lot of talent here, a fun idea for a story, and excellent dialog. See it, yes. Good enough that even the sequel ("Support Your Local Gunfighter" with Kennedy and Garner both back in their slots and without an exclamation point) is worth a casual look.

After playing Maverick on television, James Garner probably was seen as a great fit in this comedy/western. The film parodies the iconoclastic western hero who rides in lawless frontier town and tames it while he is on his way to Australia.Garner plays the reluctant hero using his wits as well as sharpshooting skills aided by a reluctant sidekick Jack Elam to bring down the bad guys that includes Bruce Dern who we see gun a man down early in the film.The movie is good natured fun with good rapport between the main leads and set ups such as a cell without bars. It establishes a right blend of comedy which does not stray into a Blazing Saddles type swipe at the genre but is a well crafted gentle poke instead.It is still enjoyable today and shows that James Garner was the master of light comedy.

Spoof Western with magnificent starring duo as James Garner as a likable sheriff and Joan Hackett as fem-lib mayor's daughter , both of whom giving great lots of fun . In the old west, a man becomes a sheriff just for the pay, figuring he can decamp if things get tough. The film talks about a gambler just passing through who gets roped into being sheriff (James Garner) who finds his nemesis an old baron land (Walter Brennan) . One trouble-shooting sheriff always puts his finger on it or in it , no wonder they call him : The fastest finger in the west . The sheriff cleans a lawless town in his own highly individual way and is helped by an inept deputy (Jack Elam) . In the end, he uses ingenuity instead and gets to tame a lawless mining town against all odds . This wacky spoof is packed with mayhem , lots of silly laughters and great entertainment and fun . Most of the laughs and sight gags galore work acceptably well ; humor is also bold and intelligent with a myriad of imaginative sketches . Demystified Western was one of a group of much-imitated which changed the concept of this particular genre each bent on disproving a popular myth , yet tinged with humor , spoof and combining with anti-heroes , and the inevitable decadence protagonists . The formula deals to enhance the comics observations of the western originated on the decade 60 with the following filmmakers : Andrew McLagen and Burt Kennedy , fine director of this movie, and a bit later on , Mel Brooks directed the indispensable ¨Blazing saddles¨ , a surrealist , extreme and gross-out spoof with the ordinary bunch of loonies and loopies . Burt Kennedy directed similar Western blending comedy such as : ¨Support your local gunfighter (one of his better spoof Western)¨ , ¨Support your local sheriff¨ (his highpoint) , ¨Dirty Dingus Mcgee¨ , ¨War Wagon¨ and ¨ The Good guys and bad guys¨ . The picture is wonderfully amused and enjoyable with James Garner as a tough but sympathetic sheriff with his Maverick image who uses brains as well as brawny and guns . William Bowers's screenplay besides having more than its fair scraps of funny lines ,throws up rich personages . Thus , Walter Brennan makes a robustly likable characterization as well as Bruce Dern as a snide gunman and Harry Morgan as the Mayor . Special mention to Jack Elam as the old brawler clearly relishing his comic relief . Colorful cinematography rightly shot by excellent cameraman Harry Stradling , Burt Kennedy's usual . Jolly and agreeable musical score by Jeff Alexander .This very funny motion picture was well directed by Burt Kennedy . He initially was screenwriter , his initial effort, ¨Seven men from now¨ (1956), was a superb western, the first of the esteemed collaboration between director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott. Kennedy wrote most of that series, as well as a number of others for Batjac, although it would be nearly 20 years before Wayne actually appeared in the film of a Kennedy script. In 1960 Kennedy got his first work as a filmmaker on a western, ¨The Canadians¨ (1961), but it was a critical failure . He turned to television where he wrote and directed episodes of "Lawman" (1958), "The Virginian " (1962) and most notably ¨Combat!"(1962). He returned to films in 1965 with the successful Te Canadians (1965), later producing and directing the pilot for the TV series of the same name. ¨Support you local sheriff¨ results to be one of his best Western . The film will appeal to absurd, unruly , wacky Western comedy fans . This raucous Western spoof is a James Garner vehicle , if you like his particular performance ,you'll enjoy this one .

"Return of the Seven" director Burt Kennedy struck pay dirt with James Garner in the side-splitting western comedy "Support Your Local Sheriff." This hilarious horse opera concerns a swift-shooting gunslinger on his way to Australia who stops in a gold rush town and takes the job as sheriff. Scenarist William Bowers wrote one of the five funniest sagebrushers ever to spoof westerns. When you get through laughing at all the gags, you will spot the resemblance between this western and the legendary John Wayne oater "Rio Bravo" as well as "High Noon."Basically, Jason McCullough rides into the wide-open, lawless town of Calendar and witnesses Joe Danby as the latter provokes another man in a saloon to pull his gun on him. As it just so happens, Jason is at the bar when Joe drops his witless adversary using a trick called the 'Arizona move.' Everybody agrees with Joe that he killed his opponent in cold blood. Everybody except Jason who points out how Joe fooled the man into drawing. After Jason is appointed sheriff by the mayor, he arrests Joe. Joe's tough-as-nails father,Pa (Walter Brennan) resolves to break his worthless spawn out of jail since Jason refuses to release him. Similarly, the Claude Akins character in "Rio Bravo" gunned a man down in cold blood at point blank range in "Rio Bravo" and the John Wayne character locked him up. When Akins' brother sought his release, Wayne refused to surrender him. Consequently, an army of villains laid siege to Wayne and his deputies in the sheriff's office. The difference here is that "Rio Bravo" was a classic drama, while "Support Your Local Sheriff" is a classic comedy. Unquestionably, "Support Your Local Sheriff" qualifies as Burt Kennedy's best western spoof. It is also James Garner's funniest western and has nothing to do with the subsequent spin-off movie "Support Your Local Gunslinger." The cast is insanely funny, too, especially Jack Elam as Garner's deputy, Walter Brennan as the chief villain, Bruce Dern as his murderous offspring, and Joan Hackett as the heroic heroine who shoots to kill. Western scribe William Bowers, who wrote the straight-faced oaters "The Law and Jake Wade" and "The Gunfighter," was no stranger to cowboy comedies. He penned the script for the Glenn Ford semi-comic western "The Sheepman." Howard Hawks once said you only need five decent scenes to make a good western. "Support Your Local Sheriff" boasts those five and more. The finger in the gun barrel scene in the jail, the delayed front street shoot-out, the tour of the jail scene, the rock throwing gunfighter scene, and jailbreak scene. The jailbreak scene is probably the high point of the action. Pa Danby and his two sons tie ropes to their saddles and attach the other end of their hemp to the cell window. You've seen this scene at least a dozen or so times in other serious westerns. The horsemen spook their horses and the cell bars on the windows pop out like a cork. This time when the villains spur their horses to tear the bars out, the bars remain anchored solidly into the wall. Instead, the villains and their saddles are pulled off their horses as the horses gallop away and leave the villains in the dust on their saddles. Bowers makes reference to "Red River" when Brennan hands over his store-bought teeth to one of his sons before he rides into a gunfight. Indeed, Brennan is playing a variation on his Ole Man Clanton character in "My Darling Clementine."