This 1971 parody Western is a companion to "Support Your Local Sheriff!", made two years before, but with mostly different characters and plot. Two mining corporations are battling to get to the mother lode under a small Colorado boom town when Latigo Smith (Garner), a smooth-talking con man with a fatal weakness for the roulette wheel, rides the train into town. Both sides mistake him for the famed gunfighter Swifty Morgan, and try to hire him to sabotage the other. Smith takes on a sad case named Jug May (Elam) as his partner and pretends to everyone that Jug is Swifty while he plays off the two sides. Patience Barton (Pleshette), the daughter of one of the mine owners, provides extra comic relief and a romantic interest as a fearless, loud harridan known as "the Sidewinder," all too quick to fire a gun in quarrel (but fortunately a terrible aim), and dead set on getting "back East to Miss Hunter's College on the Hudson River in New York for Young Ladies of Good Family." Of course the real Swifty shows up (a mean-eyed Chuck Connors, with the seams of his bald headpiece showing), and Latigo has to do some REAL fast thinkin'. A terribly silly but satisfying hoot. Elam is especially memorable as the comic sidekick.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
