Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1971
Support Your Local Gunfighter
Buy Support Your Local Gunfighter now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Support Your Local Gunfighter' is a 1971 American comic Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette. The screenplay was written by James Edward Grant. The picture shares many cast and crew members and plot elements with the earlier 'Support Your Local Sheriff!' but is not a sequel. It actually parodies 'Yojimbo' and its remake 'A Fistful of Dollars', using the basic storyline of a stranger who wanders into a feuding town and pretends to work as an enforcer for both sides. The supporting cast features Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, John Dehner, Marie Windsor, Dub Taylor, Joan Blondell and Ellen Corby.
Garner later wrote that the film was, "not as good as 'Support Your Local Sheriff'".
Plot
Latigo Smith, a gambler and confidence man, is traveling by train in frontier-era Colorado with the rich and powerful Goldie. Goldie wants desperately to marry him, a fate he wants to avoid. He hands the train's headwaiter a generous tip to assist him off the train without letting Goldie not realize that he fleeing. He sneaks off the train at Purgatory, a small mining town.
He discovers that two mining companies, run by bitter rivals Taylor Barton and Colonel Ames, are vying to find a "mother lode" of gold buried somewhere nearby. Dynamite blasts periodically rock the town to its foundations.
Latigo consults the town doctor about an embarrassing problem that is not immediately revealed, but turns out to be a Goldie-related tattoo. Latigo's great weakness is a periodic uncontrollable urge to bet on roulette; he soon loses all of his money playing his "lucky" number, 23. Penniless, he starts romancing local saloon keeper Miss Jenny. Being mistaken for infamous gunslinger "Swifty" Morgan gives Latigo an idea. He talks amiable ne'er-do-well Jug May into impersonating Swifty. Latigo attracts the attention of Patience Barton, the hot-tempered daughter of Taylor (the townsfolk call her "The Sidewinder"), who desperately wants to escape her frontier existence, attend "Miss Hunter's College on the Hudson River, New York, for Young Ladies of Good Families", and live a life of refinement in New York City. When Latigo and Jug side with the Bartons in a dispute, Ames sends a telegram to the real Swifty Morgan, informing him of their deception.
Swifty arrives in town and immediately challenges the hapless Jug to a gunfight, but at the appointed time and place, Latigo is there in his place, sitting atop a donkey loaded with crates of dynamite. Swifty calls Latigo's bluff, but he is startled by the next mine explosion and accidentally shoots himself. The blast also panics the donkey, which charges into the Bartons' saloon. The dynamite explodes, blowing up the building, uncovering the mother lode, and removing Latigo's troublesome tattoo but leaving him otherwise uninjured.
Latigo finally wins big at roulette after betting $10,000 of the Bartons' money on number 23. From the back of a train taking Latigo and Patience to Denver to get married, Jug narrates the outcomes: Patience never does go to Miss Hunter's College, but her seven daughters do; and Jug goes on to become a big star in Italian Westerns.
Cast
* James Garner as Latigo Smith
* Suzanne Pleshette as Patience Barton
* Harry Morgan as Taylor Barton
* Jack Elam as Jug May
* John Dehner as Col. Ames
* Marie Windsor as Goldie
* Roy Glenn as Headwaiter
* Dick Curtis as Bud Barton
* Dub Taylor as Doc Shultz
* Joan Blondell as Jenny
* Ellen Corby as Abigail Ames
* Kathleen Freeman as Mrs. Martha Perkins
* Virginia Capers as Effie
* Henry Jones as Ez
* Ben Cooper as Colorado
* Grady Sutton as Storekeeper
* Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez as Ortiz
* Gene Evans as Butcher
* Chuck Connors as "Swifty" Morgan (uncredited)
A. Also appeared in 'Support Your Local Sheriff!'
Reception
'Support Your Local Gunfighter' received mixed critical reviews. It holds a 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on thirteen reviews.
See also
* List of American films of 1971
References
Buy Support Your Local Gunfighter now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1971