SimonJack "Support Your Local Sheriff" is a very funny Western comedy with a supporting cast of actors playing roles against their usual character. Jack Elam has a good-guy role as deputy sheriff. Walter Brennan is a befuddled head of a clan who doesn't get his way by threat or force. Bruce Dern turns wimp when outdrawn and outwitted. Harry Morgan is a mixture of roles, but very funny. All of these characters provide much humor off the mostly straight sheriff, Jason McCullough. James Garner plays the new man in town who take the job of sheriff. But, much of the humor comes also from the sheriff's tricky conversations that the rest don't quite understand. Of course, it helps the sheriff's cause that he can outdraw and outshoot anyone. Beneath this, and interspersed in scenes throughout the film, is a romance building. Joan Hackett's Prudy is the daughter of the mayor, Olly Perkins (played by Morgan). She's smitten by Jason on first sight, and has some very funny scenes as she sets out to snare him. Of course, he's wise to her ways, but nothing will deter him from keeping his gaze on Australia. Oh, yes. He breezes into this Western town looking for work as he rambles his way toward Australia. The town has sprung up over night and is just a few years old after a handful of early settlers discovered gold. All of them struck it rich. Since then, the town hasn't been able to keep a sheriff to control the lawlessness. But that will change with the arrival of Jason. This is a wonderful parody of Western movies in which the Wyatt Earps and Bat Mastersons of real life and legend rode into wild Western towns and tamed them. The film has some funny antics and hilariously funny snippets. One is when Brennan's tough Pa Danby stomps into the sheriff's office and pulls a gun on Jason. The sheriff just sticks his finger in the barrel of the revolver and befuddles Danby. There's a very funny play on words in the name of the house of ill repute. It's called "Madam Orr's House" - painted in huge red letters across the top.Everyone should enjoy this film, although youngsters won't catch some of the humor. Parents can explain it as they see fit. Here are some favorite lines. For more funny dialog, see the Quotes section under this IMDb Web page on the movie. Mayor Olly Perkins, "Takes after her dear departed mother." Sheriff, "Her mother died, huh?" Mayor Perkins, "No, she just departed."Sheriff, "But the mayor seemed to think that my qualifications suited the job perfectly." Jake, "Well, he'd have thought that if you were blind in both eyes and crippled in both legs." Sheriff, "l think you've got the situation pegged, Jake."Jake, "I was raised up in Indiana." Sheriff, "Well, that could be either good or bad."Sheriff, "Pretty sloppy shootin,' Jake." Jake, "Well, I was in a hurry to save your life. I wasn't tryin' to group my shots." Sheriff, "If you'd have been standing five feet further away, you'd have missed him entirely."Sheriff, to Joe Danby, "He won't mind you murdering that man. He just doesn't like for you to get caught, huh?"Sheriff, "You meaning, whoever marries her gets the mine?" Mayor Perkins, "Shaft and all."Sheriff, "Well, when you set out to clean up a mess, you don't just sit around while the mess gets bigger and bigger."Mayor Perkins, "I guess you know what you're doing, sheriff." Sheriff, "I don't know what I could have said to give you that idea, mayor."Pa Danby, "I don't want nobody to make no martyr out of this here sheriff." Tom Danby, "What's a martyr?" Pa Danby, "Oh, I'm sorry. They didn't use words like that in the third grade, did they?" Tom Danby, "How would I know? I didn't get that far."Tom Danby, "You remember when I was stuck all those years in the second grade?" Luke Danby, "Oh, shut up."Sheriff, "Did he seem to feel any sorrow over the fact that we might all be killed?" Jake, "No. It's more like he planned to dance and spit all over our graves." Sheriff, "Sounds like Jake."

secondtake Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) Starring James Garner on the rise, and riding the new tide of interest in the revised western (along with the great Spaghetti Westerns), this is surpisingly nimble and good. It's vivid and cheerful, and well written with flunny comebacks and a wry sense of absurdity. That's not to say it's a great movie-it isn't "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" at all-but that it's fun like the best television of the time, and with much higher production values. (It reminded me of the slightly earlier "A Big Hand for the Little Lady.") Director Burt Kennedy was a writer more than a director, at first, but he didn't have a hand in the screennplay here (though it is so sharp at times, you wonder if there were some little adjustments as they went). Garner is clearly the star here, and he's handsome with that pleasant smile that made him famous (and carries him through many scenes). Around him are some veteren character actors (including the great Walter Brennan) and they help overall even if they are sometimes caricatured a bit. In truth, the movie might have tipped into greatness with some more subtle direction, getting the irony and silliness to have some style or weight somehow. There's a lot of talent here, a fun idea for a story, and excellent dialog. See it, yes. Good enough that even the sequel ("Support Your Local Gunfighter" with Kennedy and Garner both back in their slots and without an exclamation point) is worth a casual look.

classicsoncall Still looking good, the old Maverick himself, James Garner, rides into an old West boom town and generally takes over with understated good humor and a lightning gun that doesn't get much of a workout. The genre parody takes off right from the start with a nice view of Madame Orr's House, and if you didn't get the hint this was going to be a spoof right then and there, you probably weren't paying attention. With Jack Elam on board, you never quite know if he's going to be a good guy or a villain, so when he backs up the new sheriff at the saloon, you have the makings of a clever team up. As with almost everything else in the story, Jason McCullough's (Garner) romancing of the mayor's daughter (Joan Hackett) comes slow and easy, and you had to get a kick out of their cowardly/mature conversation right before the shootout with the Danby's. I'd have to say the cannon gimmick with Joe Danby (Bruce Dern) was pretty clever, but did you notice? Right after Prudy shot two of the Danby kin out of the thirteen that arrived to help out Pa (Walter Brennan), there were still thirteen lined up against McCullough and the cannon. Makes you wonder whether thirteen was their lucky number or not.

zardoz-13 "Return of the Seven" director Burt Kennedy struck pay dirt with James Garner in the side-splitting western comedy "Support Your Local Sheriff." This hilarious horse opera concerns a swift-shooting gunslinger on his way to Australia who stops in a gold rush town and takes the job as sheriff. Scenarist William Bowers wrote one of the five funniest sagebrushers ever to spoof westerns. When you get through laughing at all the gags, you will spot the resemblance between this western and the legendary John Wayne oater "Rio Bravo" as well as "High Noon."Basically, Jason McCullough rides into the wide-open, lawless town of Calendar and witnesses Joe Danby as the latter provokes another man in a saloon to pull his gun on him. As it just so happens, Jason is at the bar when Joe drops his witless adversary using a trick called the 'Arizona move.' Everybody agrees with Joe that he killed his opponent in cold blood. Everybody except Jason who points out how Joe fooled the man into drawing. After Jason is appointed sheriff by the mayor, he arrests Joe. Joe's tough-as-nails father,Pa (Walter Brennan) resolves to break his worthless spawn out of jail since Jason refuses to release him. Similarly, the Claude Akins character in "Rio Bravo" gunned a man down in cold blood at point blank range in "Rio Bravo" and the John Wayne character locked him up. When Akins' brother sought his release, Wayne refused to surrender him. Consequently, an army of villains laid siege to Wayne and his deputies in the sheriff's office. The difference here is that "Rio Bravo" was a classic drama, while "Support Your Local Sheriff" is a classic comedy. Unquestionably, "Support Your Local Sheriff" qualifies as Burt Kennedy's best western spoof. It is also James Garner's funniest western and has nothing to do with the subsequent spin-off movie "Support Your Local Gunslinger." The cast is insanely funny, too, especially Jack Elam as Garner's deputy, Walter Brennan as the chief villain, Bruce Dern as his murderous offspring, and Joan Hackett as the heroic heroine who shoots to kill. Western scribe William Bowers, who wrote the straight-faced oaters "The Law and Jake Wade" and "The Gunfighter," was no stranger to cowboy comedies. He penned the script for the Glenn Ford semi-comic western "The Sheepman." Howard Hawks once said you only need five decent scenes to make a good western. "Support Your Local Sheriff" boasts those five and more. The finger in the gun barrel scene in the jail, the delayed front street shoot-out, the tour of the jail scene, the rock throwing gunfighter scene, and jailbreak scene. The jailbreak scene is probably the high point of the action. Pa Danby and his two sons tie ropes to their saddles and attach the other end of their hemp to the cell window. You've seen this scene at least a dozen or so times in other serious westerns. The horsemen spook their horses and the cell bars on the windows pop out like a cork. This time when the villains spur their horses to tear the bars out, the bars remain anchored solidly into the wall. Instead, the villains and their saddles are pulled off their horses as the horses gallop away and leave the villains in the dust on their saddles. Bowers makes reference to "Red River" when Brennan hands over his store-bought teeth to one of his sons before he rides into a gunfight. Indeed, Brennan is playing a variation on his Ole Man Clanton character in "My Darling Clementine."