Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Cat Ballou Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 23, 2016

One of the interesting if tangential tidbits meted out by Jane Fonda in her appealing commentary included on Twilight Time’s recent release of Julia is the fact that in a career generously populated by several modern classics (and even perhaps a masterpiece or two), one of the films she’s most asked about by the public at large is Cat Ballou. This seems perhaps just a little odd, at least on its surface, for as even the commentators on this release mention, the film kind of plays like a gussied up television entry, a swift and often undeniably entertaining send up of the Western genre, but one which few would probably think of as an exemplar of filmmaking brilliance. But something about Cat Ballou caught whatever zeitgeist was hanging around back in the “Dark Ages” of 1965, and the film became a huge success, ultimately propelling Lee Marvin to an Academy Award for Best Actor, a triumph which in itself was rather remarkable for at least a couple of reasons. First of all, as any student of awards season shenanigans knows, it’s often difficult for comedy performances to break through into the vaunted quintet of Oscar nominees, let alone to go “all the way” to the actual award. But 1965 was no slouch for some other nominated performances, including some by what were then three of the acting world’s most renowned and revered performers. Marvin’s competition that year included Richard Burton for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Laurence Olivier for Othello (still sadly missing on domestic Blu-ray), Rod Steiger for The Pawnbroker (a lot of the so-called “smart money” was on Steiger to win that year, though he’d have to wait until 1967 and In the Heat of the Night to take home the prize), and Oskar Werner for Ship of Fools (available on Blu-ray as a part of the double feature Ship of Fools / Lilith).

Marvin has a field day in Cat Ballou as boozy “sharpshooter” Kid Shelleen, a guy who literally can’t hit the side of a barn with a shot unless he’s liquored up. Marvin also appears as the metal-nosed bad guy Tim Strawn, the kind of villain who would be twirling his mustache if that part of his face weren’t already covered with a large metal proboscis. With such a pair of over the top performances at the core of Cat Ballou, the film could have easily tipped over into chaos, but what’s so refreshing about the film is how breezy the rest of the performances are. Fonda portrays the initially prim and proper Catherine Ballou who has hopes of helping her father Frankie (John Marley) homestead while pursuing a teaching career, but who quickly gets wrapped up with a couple of none too promising low level thieves.

That aggregation includes sweet Clay Boone (Michael Callan) and his hard drinking Uncle Jed (Dwayne Hickman), who is first seen impersonating a man of the cloth. Also on hand is Frankie’s farmhand Jackson Two-Bears (Tom Nardini), a Native American who unfortunately is the subject of at least one manifestly politically incorrect sight gag in the film (it was 1965, after all). Cat Ballou has a bevy of sight gags, in fact, many tied to the farcical efforts of Kid Shelleen. There’s a justifiably famous scene (which won’t be entirely spoiled here, for the few who may not have ever seen the film) where the Kid stumbles into what should be a tragic situation, misidentifying what’s going on and proceeding to make an unintentional mockery of everything. The film’s verbal sparring never quite attains the same heights of lunacy, but there are enough gags cropping up with such regularity that it really doesn’t matter in the long run.

The film’s format is rather interesting. From the moment the Columbia logo bursts into animated form, morphing into Cat herself (see screenshot 21), it’s obvious that this is a film that’s going to toy with preconceived notions. With the wonderful duo of Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole (who sadly died before the film’s release) on hand as a singing Greek Chorus, there’s a “meta” aspect to Cat Ballou that presages all sorts of films which were to follow. In fact it’s hard to imagine everything from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Blazing Saddles happening without Cat Ballou having already blazed the trail of the comedy western with such charming ebullience.

Cat Ballou Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cat Ballou is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Culled from the Sony-Columbia catalog, this is a beautiful looking transfer, one that may occasionally seem just a trifle on the brown side with regard to flesh tones, but which reproduces some of the stunning location photography with gorgeous looking blues and greens. Detail is routinely excellent, with everything from the crags on skin to fabrics in costumes rendered with extreme precision. Fine detail on elements like the straw hat Cat wears in the early scenes is also excellent, encountering no resolution issues. Densities are consistent, as are contrast and black levels. Grain is natural looking (there is one brief sequence beginning with Kaye and Cole singing at sunset where grain spikes just a bit unnaturally) and encounters no compression issues.

Cat Ballou Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cat Ballou features DTS-HD Master Audio mixes in 5.1 and 2.0. The 5.1 mix opens up the appealing score and interstitial song elements while also providing occasional discrete placement of effects like gunshots or galloping hooves. The low end on the surround track is quite fulsome, if perhaps not at the level younger viewers have come to expect from newer films. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly and there are no prioritization problems of any kind. The new commentary mentions how revelatory the 2.0 mix is, though my hunch is most ardent audiophiles will find it perfectly competent but probably not mind blowing.

Cat Ballou Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentaries:

  Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman

  Eddy Friedfeld, Lee Pfeiffer, and Paul Scrabo

• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.


• Lee and Pamela: A Romance (1080i; 34:08) is an original piece documenting the relationship between Lee Marvin and his wife Pamela.


• The Legend of Cat Ballou (480i; 12:36) is an archival piece with some fairly ragged looking video anomalies.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 3:30) is interesting in that it emphasizes the "new hit" The Ballad of Cat Ballou, though the typically authoritative Joel Whitburn's Billboard books don't show a single was ever released. Along this same track, it doesn't even look like an official soundtrack album ever came out, though a posthumous Nat King Cole album was released featuring tunes from the film as well as other movie themes Nat helped to popularize.

Cat Ballou Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cat Ballou is frequently laugh out loud hilarious and it benefits from both the hyperbolism of Marvin as well as the (relatively) more restrained Fonda and the rest of the supporting cast. While the film's verbal humor is kind of hit or miss, some of the sight gags are inspired. This release boasts great technical merits and a very winning supplemental package. Highly recommended.