Released: July 1979
Director: Hal Needham
Rated PG
Run Time: 89 Minutes
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Genre: Western/Comedy
Cast:
Kirk Douglas: Cactus Jack
Ann-Margaret: Charming Jones
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Handsome Stranger
Paul Lynde: Nervous Elk
Jack Elam: Avery Simpson
Strother Martin: Parody Jones
We all have those moments from our childhood that we THINK that we would like to relive. Whether it was a road-trip or vacation, or a restaurant you’ve been to, or a movie that you’ve seen. We’ve got those movies that we see as fun and enjoyable as children. Some of them do end up standing the test of time and are just as good as we remember them. However, the trip down memory lane is often littered with potholes and sections that are under construction. It can be a bumpy ride. Well, recently I decided to watch the western Shane from 1953. I hadn’t seen that movie since I was a child and you know what? It still holds up. It’s an absolute classic film. So, I was in the mood for another movie that I saw when I was a kid, and I remember LOVING it: The Villain from 1979. If I could go back in time, I’d grab myself by the ear and slap me silly for thinking this movie was any good, because it’s not.
The story of The Villain is…what story? There’s a loose plot where this wandering ne’er-do-well, Cactus Jack, gets roped into robbing a mine-owner’s daughter. There literally is no meat on the bones to whatever narrative this movie claims to have. What we have here is a Roadrunner cartoon with a live-action coat of paint, with Kirk Douglas’s Cactus Jack being Wile E. Coyote. He spends the entire movie trying to rob Charming Jones and her hired-gun Handsome Stranger using a book filled with bad guy schemes. I’m not lying. He’s also got a smart-ass horse named Whiskey. He’s chasing these two all over the valley only to fall flat on his face every step of the way, usually literally. There’s literally a scene in this movie where Jack paints a tunnel into the side of a hill…and his victims-to-be ride right on through. It’s ridiculous to the nth degree, and not in a good way.
If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you would know that I’m not a fan of straight comedies. At all. The harder that somebody tries to make me laugh, the less likely I’m going to. For me, comedy has to be mixed with another genre, be it action, horror, or fantasy. What The Villain is, is a parody of the entire Western genre. In the hands of a better film-maker, it might’ve worked. But far too often do shots linger on potentially funny situations like when Jack tries to get a better look at Charming Jones only to pull out the plant that he’s hanging on to. He looks at the audience and then he SLOWLY falls out of frame. In a cartoon, that works because it doesn’t linger on the shot, Coyote falls out of frame IMMEDIATELY and the camera cuts to him falling into the ground below. Timing is EVERYTHING in comedy, but this movie doesn’t have it. This movie tries too hard to be funny and it fails because of shitty writing.
I will give credit where it’s due: The movie’s leads throw themselves into it with total abandon, especially Kirk Douglas. Cactus Jack’s reactions to his failures is pretty funny, as is Charming Jones attempts to woo Handsome Stranger, who is totally clueless. Seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed up in that goofy powder blue cowboy get-up does get some laughs. Also, Whiskey the horse was great. Where I really started getting irritated with the movie was with its portrayal of Native Americans. Granted, this was 1978-79 when the movie was made, so the humor was…different. But Paul Lynde as the chief Nervous Elk was incredibly offensive, even to someone who ISN’T of Native American descent. I literally had to fast-forward through those parts, because the character and actor were incredibly cringy.
What I will also give The Villain credit for is it’s cinematography. It’s beautifully shot. The movie was shot on location in Monument Valley, here in Utah, as well as various places in Arizona including Tucson. There’s a lot of really great wide shots of the surrounding environments. A lot of the stunt-work is also pretty impressive. Unfortunately, a handful of laughs from the leads and the horse, some decent visual shots, and some impressive stunts don’t make up for an incredibly half-baked western and bad comic timing. Don’t even get me started on the movie’s ending.
I’m very picky when it comes to comedies, especially parodies. There are only a few that I really like that haven’t been done by Mel Brooks, and they are Airplane and Airplane II: The Sequel. I’m sorry, The Villain has NOTHING on Blazing Saddles. Comedy is a very hard to get right, especially for someone who really doesn’t like the genre. Westerns are also hard to do, because it’s difficult to come up with something that hasn’t been done before. But when you have a movie that sucks at being both, it makes you wonder who gave the movie the greenlight. The Villain got shredded by a critics when it was released and for good reason. It’s a bad movie. I’m not going to say that it’s entirely disposable, but it will be a long time before it graces my DVD player again. 1979 was an incredible year for movies. This wasn’t one of them. God, it sucks to come down so hard on a movie that I really enjoyed as a kid, but I can’t let nostalgia get in the way of being honest about a bad movie. This one is definitely a stinker, but I so desperately wanted it to live up to my childhood memory. It didn’t.