The
Villain, and Cowboy on DVD
Columbia goes from the sublime to the ridiculous with this pair of westerns.
"Cowboy" is a gritty and realistic look at "home on the
range" while "The Villain" is a Roadrunner cartoon brought
to live action life.
Glenn Ford stars in Cowboy, a movie based on real life memories of Frank
Harris. Ford is Tom Reece, a colorful and successful cattleman who at
film's opening arrives with his herd and his men at a hotel in Chicago
(well, he doesn't bring the herd to the hotel). He's there to sell the
herd, but he also picks up more than he bargained for when a hotel clerk
(Jack Lemmon) buys into the business and invites himself along on the
next trail ride.
It's a trip to Mexico, to where Lemmon's girlfriend lives, and this idealistic
tenderfoot signs on not knowing what's in store for him. Reece and his
other men try to make Lemmon's life as difficult as possible.
Life's hard enough, however, and between life on the range and an ugly
shock awaiting him in Mexico, Frank Harris (Lemmon) grows from soft and
dreamy to hard-edged and cynical. It isn't a pleasant sight.
This is an interesting look at what life was probably like back then,
when men were men and there wasn't much law around. We're treated to camaraderie
and conflict, fist fights and gunfights, and in the end Reece learns as
much from Harris as Harris learns from him.
Ford and Lemmon are excellent, and the supporting cast (including a very
young Dick York, of Bewitched fame, Richard Jaeckel and Brian Donlevy)
backs them up well indeed.
The
Villain, on the other hand, is simply strange. Some might call it a guilty
pleasure, but we don't think it even reaches that level of enjoyment.
It starts off fine, an obviously broad comedy, but before long it degenerates
into nothing more than (as mentioned above) a Roadrunner cartoon, with
people taking over the parts that would have been drawn by Chuck Jones
and his compatriots.
Kirk Douglas plays Wile E. Coyote, in this case Cactus Jack Slater who's
actually more like Yosemite Sam than the Roadrunner's nemesis (except
that the action is clearly Roadrunner vs. Coyote). Douglas is fine as
an actor in this part, but the fact that he's in this thing must mean
he owed someone a big favor.
The Roadrunner is Ann-Margret, who seems only in this movie to show off
her cleavage. And while that's fine, by this time in her career she'd
moved beyond being merely a sex kitten. Perhaps she also owed a favor.
The third character, who doesn't fit in with the cartoon characters but
who is just as big and dumb as the Merrie Melody bad guys is Handsome
Stranger, played by a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. We can see why he's
here: it was a logical move for his burgeoning career to be in a flick
with Douglas and Ann-Margret, and he has the best line of the film - a
line that wouldn't have worked without his accent.
The action is obviously cartoon, right down to Cactus Jack's painting
a fake tunnel onto a rock wall (and if you've ever seen the Roadrunner
you know exactly what happens). The first couple of times you see this
type of thing it's pretty funny, but where the cartoons were only about
six minutes long, the gags here are stretched over a 90 minute movie,
and that stretched our credulity and our patience.
Still, Ann-Margret looks great, and there are some neat stunts...
Both of these DVD's are disappointing, however, as examples of the digital
disc species. First of all, Columbia Tristar has made the cardinal sin
of releasing them in Pan&Scan only, and that's a shame. It means owners
of widescreen TV's will have to stretch the picture to fill the screen
or run the risk of burning side bars into their sets. This is unforgivable
in this day and age and is guaranteed to tick off more and more people
as they make the move to widescreen. This is despite the pledge on the
boxes that the movies are remastered in "high definition."
The picture quality is otherwise very good on The Villain, though Cowboy
really suffers from a lot of grain in many places.
Audio for both discs is Dolby Digital mono and the sound's okay. Both
discs include a couple of trailers.
Cowboy, from Columbia Tristar Home Video
approx. 90 min. Pan&Scan, Dolby Digital mono
Starring Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon
Produced by Julian Blaustein,
Written by Edmund H. North, Directed by Delmer Daves
The Villain, from Columbia Tristar Home Video
approx. 90 min. Pan&Scan, Dolby Digital mono
Starring Kirk Douglas, Ann-Margret, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Produced by Mort Engelberg
Written by Robert G. Kane, Directed by Hal Needham
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