CLASSIC WESTERN SPOOF ABOUT A NOTORIOUS FEMALE OUTLAW AND HER DEVOTED GANG OF FOLLOWERS. HIGHLIGHTED BY LEE MARVIN’S OSCARWINNING PERFORMANCE AS THE LEGENDARY GUNSLINGER AND TOWN DRUNK, KID SHELLEEN. SPECIAL FEATURES: TALENT FILES, INTERACTIVE MENUS,PRODUCTION NOTES, SCENE SELECTIONS, AND MUCH MORE.Long before Unforgiven deconstructed the Western, or Blazing Saddles lampooned it, Cat Ballou poked the genre in the eye. An altogether enjoyable comedy, the film is full of small surprises, big laughs, and wonderful character turns. Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) is a schoolteacher until a hired thug kills her daddy. To protect what she loves, she collects two petty criminals, a wisecracking hired hand, and a hired killer, Kid Shelleen (Lee Marvin). Unfortunately, Shelleen is a raging drunk who is so inebriated and unsteady with a gun he literally misses the broad side of a barn. However, Cat, has, as they used to say in those days, a mind of her own, and she masterminds a spectacular train heist that puts them all on the lam. Marvin won an Academy Award for his role as the derelict Shelleen, and his performances (he actually has two) are still topnotch and on target. The framing device, two wandering minstrels, played by Stubby Kaye and Nat “King” Cole, are the maraschino cherries on the top of this Wild West confection. –Keith Simanton
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March 30, 2008
#1
Lee Marvin is awesome in his role as Kid Sheleen… you have to see him! The story is humorous and a good satire on western flicks. The music (Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole) is lively and quite enjoyable. A fun movie about the typical western theme — a crook trying to take over someone else’s land and property for his own nefarious reasons. Why then should this movie be rated at only 2? Without the Hanoi Princess (famous for her picture on the anti-aircraft gun pretending to shoot down American planes and American boys) playing the role as Cat, I’d give it a 5. Her presence is enough to lower any rating by at least 3 points.
March 30, 2008
#2
I enjoyed this in 1965, but 40 years later, it’s painful to watch. Badly directed, the “comedy” is heavy handed and extremely forced, made worse by an inept supporting cast. Jane Fonda is adequate, but has zero chemistry with Michael Callan (who went on to have basically no career at all), thus depriving the film of a center, while Dwayne Hickman has nothing to do but stand around. Lee Marvin eats the scenery and the several laughs in the movie belong to him. But he tries too hard and is often as unfunny as he is funny. Despite his oscar, this is one of his worst performances. The song interludes wear thin very quickly, with the songs simply telling us what we’ve already seen. So even though it’s not a long film, the songs make it seems much, much longer. The Jewish jokes are embarrassing, and the slapstick is poorly done. If you want a comedy western, you’re better off watching “Blazing Saddles” for the 10th time than watching this turkey even once.
March 30, 2008
#3
An innocent schoolteacher (Jane Fonda) returns home only to witness her father’s murder and the theft of his farm by an unscrupulous businessman. Seeking revenge, she assembles her own gang and cheerfully embarks on a life of crime. Lee Marvin, in a dual role as the drunken former gunslinger Kid Shelleen and the cold, noseless assassin Tim Strawn, is the best thing about this film. The rest of it is a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half but just doesn’t have the laughs to make it a first-rate comedy.
March 30, 2008
#4
I understand why this film is so high-starred, but it simply does not deserve the five stars, nor the four. I’ll try to explain. The director, as he admits in the little extra piece, intended to make a comedy in the West. He put together the basic ingredients for it: a beautiful Fonda, two young simpletons that aren’t Western material -more fit for Broadway-, and a funny drunkard. Silverstein didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of film was going to come out of this (as happens to all bad directors) but when he saw Lee Marvin act his role, he had one moment of lucidness, even brilliance, he told Marvin to try to make us cry instead of laugh. Boy, did that make a difference! Lee Marvin steals the show totally.
Lee Marvin was a great, a fantastic actor. But he belonged to a past era, when real Westerns were shot, when classic directors still hung around the movie studios. That day had gone, not for him, obviously, but for the industry. It makes me sad to see this film, and to see bufoons like Silverstein mockering and degrading the great American West. If it wasn’t for Lee Marvin nobody would remember this film. What happens around him in this film I just don’t care, he is the show. The rest belong in Park Avenue.
March 30, 2008
#5
This brand of low camp, which was all the rage in the 60′s, is a hodgepodge of mugging, sight gags, and one-liners that misfire about 75% of the time, or which — in a few blatant instances — are flatly unfunny. Jane gives it a good go, as she usually does, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough substance in the script to nourish her effort. A mis-cast Callan and Hickman in supporting roles don’t help much. The movie’s purpose may have been satire, but it most often plays as overdone burlesque. There are several fun moments, yet the clever device involving a drunken has-been gunfighter has much promise but a severely limited delivery. Marvin, one of the most mannered and long-lived Method actors of all time, gets an Oscar here, apparently for his ability to avoid any and all subtlety whatsoever — he embodies this film’s major failing. It’s all too “posed”, in the way that Method actors always look as if they’re acting, seldom convincing enough to get the viewer completely involved. Could have been much better, but it’s really just heavy-handed eccentricity with no consistent viewpoint about itself. A few years later, “Butch Cassidy” and “True Grit” would get much closer to what “Cat” was trying to do. Meanwhile, many seem to enjoy this takeoff on generic tv westerns; approach it with a reasonable level of lowered expectations, and you’ll get a few chuckles. The DVD transfer is quite good (though edge over-enhancement can clearly be seen from at least a block away), and the audio seems a bit cleaner than I heard in 1965.