The Master Gunfighter (1975)

The master gunfighter(the character)is cut from the same glossy cardboard as Billy Jack. Same flat expression condescension, same arrogant and over done slow motion. Laughlin tried to borrow some of the childish, long and drawn out attempts to over dramatize that the spaghetti westerns make viewer suffer through. His versions were not as bad as the Italian directors. The movies only saving grace. He lost almost all the money he made on Billy Jack trying to make a dead horse get up and walk. The only other worse idea he ever had was running for President. The Master Gunfighter belongs on a list of the worst oaters ever made, along with The Outlaw and I Shot Jesse James. Where it should be listed (maybe #1) I'll leave up to someone else. If you have not seen this movie consider yourself blessed.

I don't want to mis-characterize "The Master Gunfighter" as a bad film, but it will take some patience to sit through. With Tom Laughlin's name attached to the project, I wondered if there would be a Billy Jack sensibility to his character, and it didn't take long to find out. Laughlin generally shows his smug impatience with the bad guys by rubbing his face and head, allowing time to contemplate his next move, which usually involves shooting them, or utilizing a more novel touch, skewering them with the Samurai sword that's part of his arsenal. It might have been cooler to see him kick someone in the head. The cinematography takes a gorgeous turn every now and then though, with location shooting along the Monterey Coast, and if you enjoy this kind of natural beauty, Barbara Carrera's also part of the cast. Dedicated fans of Billy Jack will probably find the picture to be entertaining enough, for myself it was a B Western that didn't have to run two hours to get to the final showdown.

This movie apparently takes place in pre-Civil War California and everybody rides horses instead of Harleys, but other than that it's a typical Laughlin film, except even dumber. Laughlin plays a guy who is trying to save local Indians from being sold into slavery. It's difficult to figure out who exactly the bad guys are, because Laughlin kills whites, blacks, Mexicans, Indians, rich, poor . . . in fact, he blows away just about everybody (in the name of justice and equality, of course). Laughlin's idea of conveying anger (the only kind of emotion he shows in the picture) is to grit his teeth, talk slow and appear to be constipated. He carries an odd kind of shotgun/pistol (which didn't exist at that time, but why quibble...) and a samurai-type sword and proceeds to use both on everyone within eyesight. Fred Williamson, usually a reliable actor, also conveys a lot of anger, but it's probably directed at his agent or whoever got him to agree to do this movie. The story bounces around and goes off into every tangent possible, the "acting" is generally atrocious, the photography at times is so dark it's hard to see anything. Laughlin was apparently trying to make an "anti-Western", but in one respect he falls back on a bit that a lot of B westerns did: he manages to fire a limitless number of rounds from a six-shooter without reloading. Then again, maybe it's supposed to be an early version of a machine gun; that would make about as much sense as anything else in this picture . . .

I remember seeing this when it first came out. At the time, considering the year of 1975, it was looked upon as quite an adventurous film, with dash and charm. I haven't been able to find it since, and I have been searching. One dealer advised me that, since this was a made-for-TV movie, it was probably never released to video. A real pity, if true.