Highly Overrated But Still Good

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

SYNOPSIS: Doc Halliday and Billy the Kid have a running feud over a strawberry roan. NOTES: Howard Hughes fired the original director, Howard Hawks, just over a week into shooting. It would be tempting to ascribe some of the film's more stylish shots to Hawks, but these are undoubtedly the work of Gregg Toland (whose next assignment was Citizen Kane). Some critics suggest that Hawks resigned voluntarily in order to accept an assignment to Sergeant York.Film debut of twenty-year-old Jane Russell. (It was also the debut of Jack Beutel. But who cares about him? Not even we historians are quite sure how to spell his name. Whatever happened to him anyway?)Ben Hecht wrote the original script for the Hawks version. How much remains after Furthman's re-working is open to question.Originally budgeted at $440,000, this sky-rocketed into an unbelievable $3.4 million before the film was completed in November 1940. "Unbelievable" because there is no evidence of this money on the screen. Many of the interior sets are tatty and few exteriors justify the expense of locations near Yuma, Arizona. The line-up of players is not only sparse, but mostly second-rate. The film editing seems choppy and the music score ludicrously inept. On the whole, production values appear very much on a par with contemporary Monogram westerns. Due to Hughes' all-stops-out publicity campaign (headed by ace publicist Russell Birdwell), aided by cleverly engineered run-ins with various censorship bodies, The Outlaw's domestic rental gross amounted to well over $4.5 million just from the 1950 RKO re-issue alone. COMMENT: Despite Miss Russell, The Outlaw is not without appeal. Fortunately, she doesn't enter for twenty minutes, and then promptly disappears for a similar length of time, before finally swamping the proceedings altogether with her inexperienced (and none too flatteringly photographed) presence. Admittedly, Miss Russell possesses an undeniably youthful sultriness, but her harsh voice and amateurish acting do much to undermine this superficial attraction. Although The Outlaw has now been adopted by the university crowd, who see all sorts of significant themes and synergetic (whatever that means) relationships in Furthman's script, for the rest of us the focus of interest is Walter Huston. While he is on screen, his tongue very firmly in his cheek and a mischievous twinkle in both his eyes, the film has a wry fascination, despite the hokey dialogue and wooden stooging contributed by sullen Jack Beutel. Huston is such a master of parody, he manages to carry Beutel, but when Jack finds himself alone or with Jane, the result is sheer, utter boredom (even during the scenes that all the original censors raised Cain about). Also with little to offer, Thomas Mitchell unexpectedly proves that without a good script and good direction, he's a total washout. For some reason, he opts to play his role almost straight and his comedy comes over as forced and heavy-handed.As an actor's director, Hughes is undoubtedly inept. He has failed to gain the confidence of his young stars. All the more credit to Jane that she was able to live down this gauche debut.

If you are not then it probably just seems like a bungling Western best known for its lurid reputation, extraordinarily racy dialogue, Howard Hughes' involvement and his protégé Jane Russell's engineered underwear. I think that in addition to this there is another and perhaps more interesting story.John Huston, the legendary Hollywood director and Walter's son, had a particular style: characters were always thoroughly human in having a mixture of very human feelings as well as very human flaws tempered by patchy decency. His best known films: The African Queen, the Maltese Falcon and his last "The Man Who Would be King" have a warmth coming from central perhaps odd robust friendships which survive, or are made under, testing circumstances where each regard the other with a degree of uncertainty, each measuring how much they can trust the other."The Outlaw" in which his father, Walter Huston starred, is perhaps Hollywood's, even cinema's most extreme example - an intense 4-sided affair between 3 males and one female. In fact it's 5-sided - one of the characters is a horse..... Each, except the horse, must choose who, including the horse, they want to be with - the humour and oddity of the situation is entirely intentional. The last 15 minutes is particularly intense, witty, superbly written and acted with Walter Huston outstanding. Its certainly plausible that the plot was very influential on son John Huston.There is another connection which just might be made. The extremely odd situation of a love triangle in which gender (and even species) is irrelevant and love also at times violently rejected, was already very familiar to the American public but in a different form. In 1913 an oddball comic strip was started which featured an intense triangle between Krazy (a besotted cat), Ignatz (a hateful and hurtful mouse) and Officer Pup (a love-sick sheriff dog) The strip's name was Krazy Kat. Such was its popularity that many film cartoons were made in the 1920s and the strip itself lasted until 1944 and is still venerated by enthusiasts.

Contains major spoilers.People have been totally slamming this movie, and I don't feel that's completely fair, since the photography is pretty good. OK, so the acting (if you can call it that: it's more like reciting lines) is wooden. The screen-writing is hilarious, and not because this is supposed to be a comedy (or was it? I've seen this three times and I'm still not sure). Maybe it's supposed to be British humor, where all absurd situations get treated as if it were normal: Example 1: Doc's girlfriend falls in love with Billy, and Doc appears upset but doesn't display any emotion. Example 2: Doc shoots Garrett's friends, and Garrett says - with a straight face - something akin to "this isn't going to help our friendship". Oh yes - and the music is sometimes vaudevillian comedy style, usually at inappropriate times.I've usually limited my bad movie watching to science fiction or drama...and now I can add a Western to the mix.Highly recommended.

When notorious outlaw Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) arrives in town, he is greeted with open arms by local sheriff and best friend Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell). It's not long before Holliday comes across Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel), who seems to be riding Holliday's horse that he had stolen from him in a previous town. Holliday however, takes a liking to the cocky Kid much to the annoyance of Garrett. When the Kid kills a man that pulls a gun on him first, Garrett shoots the Kid but Holliday escapes with him, taking him to Rio's (Jane Russell) place. Rio is Holliday's lady but as she is tending to his wounds, she finds herself unable to resist the Kid's charms.Multi-millionaire playboy and aviator Howard Hughes only made two films in his life (although he produced many more). I've not seen his first film, Hell's Angels (1930), which is a love-song to aviation, but this, an unconventional cross-genre western, shows his complete inexperience in the role of director. Apart from the blatant historical inaccuracies (which I'll forgive, given the film is clearly not striving for it), Hughes seems unable to decide what genre he wants the film to be. Is it a comedy? A drama? A romance? Who knows? One thing is clear, he is fascinated by Jane Russell's ample bosom. He felt that the film was not doing her breasts justice, and so he designed an early wonderbra that accentuated them. This generated lots of controversy, and led to the film only getting a limited release as it fell foul of the censors.Clearly, Hughes knows that Jane Russell's sexual appeal is all that the film has going for it, judging by the posters. Apart from the terrible script and dodgy pacing, the acting is absolutely woeful. Jack Buetel, clearly hired for his looks alone, has less charisma about him than the horses he rides on. In fact, the horses have more facial expressions. Jane Russell, who would go on to be a massive star, demonstrates none of her acting ability and feistiness that she would become known for. In fairness, she is given nothing to do other than bend over Buetel with her cleavage visible, and pout occasionally when required.The most confusing thing about this film is how Hughes expects us to like these characters. Pat Garrett is supposed to the 'bad' guy, jealous and furious over Holliday choosing to ride off with Billy the Kid. Yet as he pursues the Kid, who is by the way, a known thief and murderer, Doc Holliday shoots and kills many of Garrett's men. But somehow we are supposed to sympathise with Holliday and forget that he is a mass- murderer. It all plays out like some weird, homoerotic love story, with Garrett playing the jealous wife to Holliday's husband who has chosen to run off with Billy the Kid's younger, more exciting toyboy. The only female character of note, Rio, acts like a lost little girl who can't exist without a man's arm to lean on. The Kid treats her like s**t, and even tries to trade her for a horse, yet she remains enamoured with him, running after him when he 'allows' her to come with him. It's just a very strange, confused film. And also a very bad one.