Support Your Local Gunfighter Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Support Your Local Gunfighter Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 2, 2016

Note: This film is available as part of the double feature Support Your Local Sheriff / Support Your Local Gunfighter.

Mention the name Rango to most folks, and they will of course immediately think of the wacky animated tale that link leads to, a film which featured the voice of Johnny Depp as an ambitious little chameleon who ends up as a sheriff in a decidedly whimsical version of the Wild West. It’s probably not mere coincidence that there was “another” Rango featuring an unprepared soul becoming a fairly inept law keeper, in this case a newish Texas Ranger portrayed by typically hilariously fumbling Tim Conway, in a short-lived sitcom series that aired as a midseason replacement for a few months in 1967 after Conway’s long running stint on McHale’s Navy had come to a close. Though Conway’s Rango evidently ultimately made TV Guide’s list of the worst ever sitcoms, it was actually relatively popular during its short run and there was some surprise when the show wasn’t picked up for full second season. Two years after Conway’s Rango had its brief traipse across the broadcast television landscape, Support Your Local Sheriff! appeared, offering a more competent interloper taking over the reins of local law enforcement (not that being more competent than Rango would offer much of a challenge) in a rather whimsical formulation of the Wild West that was both reminiscent of the Conway Rango and prescient about the then far in the future Depp Rango. Support Your Local Sheriff! was such a hit that two years after it was released, director Burt Kennedy reassembled several actors from the first film and delivered Support Your Local Gunfighter, a film which once again posited an unlikely interloper to an old west backwater who in this instance attempts to play a massive con on the local populace which in some ways harkens back to star James Garner’s iconic television series Maverick. Gunfighter also tips its Stetson to the then sensational “Spaghetti Western” genre, though the results are probably not as consistently humorous as the first film. Twilight Time has now brought both of these films together in a generally highly enjoyable double feature.

Some of the sly subterfuges of Maverick inform Support Your Local Gunfighter, with James Garner portraying not a semi- reluctant sheriff but instead an affable con man named Latigo Smith. Smith is first seen receiving rather vigorous kisses from a somewhat older floozy named Goldie (Marie Windsor), a blowsy babe whose lower class proclivities are perhaps slightly ameliorated by the fact that she’s filthy rich. Goldie seems to think she’s about to get married to Latigo, but it’s evident that Latigo may not be of the same mind.

The same quest for gold that informed Support Your Local Sheriff is once again on hand here, albeit in a perhaps slightly more tangential way. When Latigo hightails it off a train to try to get away from Goldie, he finds himself in the appropriately named backwater Purgatory, where he finds that various competing interests to try to mine gold have resulted in little actual gold having been discovered, but the apparent rape of the nearby wilderness, which delivers a series of comic vignettes throughout the film. Latigo wanders into a brawl of sorts which turns out to involve the spunky Patience Barton (Suzanne Pleshette), daughter of Taylor Barton (Harry Morgan), one of the entrepreneurs attempting to find gold in them thar hills.

Latigo’s weakness for the roulette wheel quickly delivers a serious blow to his finances, at which point he comes up with the mad idea to impersonate a notorious villainous sharpshooter named Swifty Morgan in order to recoup his losses and hightail it out of town before the real Swifty (Chuck Connors in an amusing cameo) shows up. The results in this kinda sorta sequel are often manic, and just as frequently loud and boisterous, but the comic dividends are probably less consistent than in the first film. There’s the same colorful ambience to the huge supporting cast, which includes several holdovers from the first film (in addition to Morgan, Jack Elam, Henry Jones and Kathleen Freeman are also on hand). Joan Blondell seems to be repeating much the same role as she had in the western themed television series Here Come the Brides, and John Dehner is fun as the chief competitor to the Barton clan.

While the commentary included with Support Your Local Sheriff mentions 1969’s Paint Your Wagon as a somewhat similar analog, in reality this film’s climax much more closely resembles the musical than the first film ever does. The Gold Rush may have created instant millionaires, but if one takes these two films as an example, it often resulted in the comic destruction of Gold Rush towns.

Support Your Local Gunfighter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Support Your Local Gunfighter is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As I mentioned in our Support Your Local Sheriff Blu-ray review , we've seen some relatively impressive transfers coming out of the MGM-UA library recently, but this film along with its sibling tends to be a step backward into the kind of middling but acceptable quality that is often associated with the former Tiffany of studios. Gunfighter has the same good quality in terms of being damage free, but it suffers from the same fade as Sheriff, with the same slight but noticeable brown tint affecting the palette. Reds aren't quite as convincing as they are in Sheriff, and tend toward the orange side of things at times. Grain is a bit chunkier in this presentation than in Sheriff, and there are occasional resolution problems that tend to give a slightly multicolored aspect to the grain field. Though no fault of the transfer, I had to wonder what was going on with legendary cinematographer Harry Stradling, Jr. on this shoot. While some foibles like a jiggling camera in the aerial shot during the credits are at least relatively understandable, other moments, like at least one crane shot where it looks like the entire rig is about to tip over and then rights itself, seem to argue that the film might have been done on the fly without much chance for retakes. I've given this a 3.0 to differentiate it from Sheriff's 3.5, but I'd probably inch this up to 3.25 territory were I able to.

Support Your Local Gunfighter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Support Your Local Gunfighter features a workmanlike DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix which capably supports the film's raucous blend of dialogue, goofy sound effects and score. There's good if just slightly anemic sounding low frequency effects in abundance here due to several explosions which rock the premises at regular intervals, and other elements like fights or gunfire resonate with clarity. Dialogue is cleanly presented and well prioritized, even in some fairly noisy sequences.

Support Your Local Gunfighter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:45)


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

Support Your Local Gunfighter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Support Your Local Gunfighter is a lot of fun and provides some good laughs along the way, but it just doesn't quite muster up the same comedic energy as its progenitor. The large ensemble cast is a joy to watch, though, and the film delivers in a small scale but enjoyable fashion. Video is a little less consistent than Sheriff's is, but as part of the Twilight Time double feature, Support Your Local Gunfighter comes Recommended.