Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Blistering performances.

Released in 1969 and directed by Burt Kennedy, "Support Your Local Sheriff" is a decent, if unspectacular, Western comedy with likable James Garner as a traveler passing through a gold-rush town in the Southwest and taking the job of sheriff, despite the fact that the last three sheriffs were quickly murdered on duty. Jack Elam plays his deputy, Harry Morgan the mayor and Joan Hackett his daughter. Walter Brenan and Bruce Dern are on hand as local ne'er-do-wells. There are several other recognizable people in the cast. The movie's likable and amusing in a low-key way. 'Nuff said.The film runs 92 minutes and was shot at Iverson Ranch, Los Angeles, California.GRADE: B- (6/10 Stars)

For anyone who grew up on 1950s and '60s westerns (both TV shows and movies), this thing is a hoot. I know Roger Ebert in 1969 gave it a two out of four stars, and panned it for being what it quite precisely intended to be: spoof penance for all those old Western character actors...including Elam, Morgan, even star James Garner himself, being punished for Maverick (or reprising his best western role, take your pick). Even the over-the-top western music which critics deplored (a separate character unto itself, very much a part of the spoof and equally hilarious), was clearly intentional. But what this was for me (I just watched it after a few beers and several decades of avoidance), was a nostalgic laugh fest. And something else: This was James Garner at the top of his ironic game, preparing for his best and probably most popular role ever, two or three short years later: Jim Rockford. For Garner this was less a Maverick spoof retrospective, more like: What if Jim Rockford stepped through a time warp and arrived in an 1880s madcap western gold rush town? It's not Peckinpah or Eastwood or Leone, not even Mel Brooks slapstick. But it's good western comedy, nonetheless, and it is GREAT Garner.

In this two-fisted, double-barreled Western spoof from 1969, I'd confidently say that the big, burly James Garner was perfectly cast as the cool-headed, no-nonsense cowboy-turned-sheriff.Set in the good-old-days of the wild, wild West, Garner (with his own special brand of dry wit) played Jason McCullough, a sharp-shooting gambler/cowboy who, one day, drifts into the lawless, gold-rush town of Calendar, and before he knows it, he's been unanimously elected as their "new" town sheriff.Reluctant, at first, to take on this seemingly thankless job where all odds for success seem to be stacked against him, McCullough, surprisingly enough, keeps a cool head and actually manages to clean up dusty, dirty, old Calendar in record time...... Well, he almost cleans it up that fast.As it turns out, McCullough's still got to deal with the ruthless, cut-throat, shoot-em-up Danby Clan, headed by that big, ornery cuss who everyone calls "Pa".All-in-all - Support Your Local Sheriff was an enjoyable parody of a genre that's always ripe for a good-natured ribbing, now and again.

Support Your Local Sheriff! is directed by Burt Kennedy and written by William Bowers. It stars James Garner, Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan, Jack Elam, Harry Morgan and Bruce Dern. Harry Stradling Jr. is the cinematographer and Jeff Alexander scores the music. The film is essentially a parody of a Western splinter that encompasses an iconoclastic new arrival in a troubled town who sets about taming it. Here it's James Garner as Jason McCullough who is on his way to Australia to make his fortune. Stopping over in an Old Western town for some rest, a bite to eat, and maybe earn some cash? McCullough is disgusted to find corruption and murder is rife. Showing a firm backbone and some nifty skills with a gun, McCullough highly impresses the town dignitaries who offer him the position of Sheriff. A job he finally accepts and begins taming the town with his unconventional methods.Support Your Local Sheriff! Very much had time on its side when it was released. Interest in the Western as a genre had waned considerably, with the advent of free television potentially ready to drive the final nails into the coffin. Four years earlier Cat Ballou had shown that a comedy Western in the 60s could be well received. While master craftsman Howard Hawks had parodied his own Rio Bravo a year after Cat Ballou with the well regarded El Dorado. Throw into the pot that James Garner had good comedic Western credentials behind him on account of his run in TV series Maverick (1957-1962); and it's evident that Messrs Kennedy & Bowers knew exactly what they were doing.Roger Ebert famously accused the makers of the film of being thieves, not buying into the parody basis, he hated the film and thought it just stole from other Western movies whilst being made in a TV show style. Well that's kind of the core of a parody movie is it not? Bowers & Kennedy have crafted a top dollar irreverent Oater, embracing the clichés of many standard genre pics that had gone before it-and then turning them upside down. While all the time, with this cast of very knowing genre participants, cloaking the picture with love and affection. It's not so much biting the hand that feeds you, but more a tasteful appreciation of what was sometimes fed.Full of truly memorable scenes such as a jail without bars, the film is immeasurably helped by the on fire cast. Garner deadpans it a treat and is charismatic into the bargain. As he goes about taming the town more by logic and suggestion than rapid gunfire, he's a hero that's very easy to warm too. Hackett, who owes the Western fan nothing after Will Penny, is simply adorable as a bumbling rich girl quickly getting the hots for the new Sheriff. Morgan & Dern play it firmly with a glint in the eye and tongue in cheek, and Brennan, a god-like bastion of Western's, is hilarious as the patriarch of the bullying Danby clan. But best of the bunch is Jack Elam (The Far Country/ Vera Cruz/ Gunfight at the OK Corral), who playing the town character somehow finds himself (in spite of himself) employed as the Sheriff's deputy, turns in a lesson in visual and physical comedy. Fittingly it's Elam who closes the film out with a suitably knowing piece of smart.It lacks some great scenic photography and the score is a bit too much Keystone Coppery, but really this is about the excellent script and the players bringing it to life. A Western comedy gem. 9/10