Looking at the box office results

THE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYS, a seriocomic western from writer-director Burt Kennedy, runs 91 minutes and is reasonably amusing until about half of them are used up, then laid-back charm disintegrates into lazy, wasteful foolishness. Great cast, nice locations and $3,800,000 down the chute in a generally genial, scattershot misfire, one of seven westerns that kidded the genre in times-have-changed 1969. *

George does another good job in another half-assed movie

Civilization has taken hold in ‘Progress’, New Mexico, which has new-fangled horseless carriages and indoor privies to prove the wild days are over. Town marshal ‘Jim Flagg’ (Robert Mitchum) is put out to pasture, retired by the blustery mayor (Martin Balsam) who dismisses Flagg’s warning about long-wanted outlaw ‘Big John McKay’ (George Kennedy) and his gang. Flagg captures McKay, but finds that like him, the aging robber is also a relic, with the gang now led by ‘Waco’ (David Carradine), a younger and meaner cuss. Will Jim & Big John shake hands and shoot straight? Do horses like hay?

Welcome back from Mary Ann Atoll, Tina

Written by Ronald M. Cohen (Twilight’s Last Gleaming) and Dennis Shryack (Flashpoint, Pale Rider), it’s got scenery going for it (New Mexico, Colorado and California) and is mildly fun for a while, with the interplay between Mitchum and Kennedy enjoyable, a welcome bit of sexiness from Tina Louise (great giggle, Tina) and added flavor from supporting stalwarts like Douglas Fowley, John Davis Chandler and Marie Windsor. William Lava’s score is decent.

              Fave baddie John Davis Chandler does his wild thang

Then it cartwheels into silly nonsense, culminating in a drawn-out chase scene involving outlaws chasing a train, with a comic firefight on the train, while all the town’s autos are chasing the gang and getting in collisions and stunt falls on the way, the train (a $40,000 model of one) at length plunging off a collapsed trestle, followed by more shooting. Forced, frantic and flat.

Doug Fowley getting bonus smooched by Marie Windsor

89th place and a parched gross of just $2,400,000 made a keister-busting flop against the production cost. With Lois Nettleton, Dick Peabody, John Carradine, Kathleen Freeman, Nick Dennis, Darby Hinton, Dorothy Adams and Thordis Brandt. Buddy Hackett has a lineless, unbilled cameo near the start: was he just visiting someone on the set and Burt Kennedy decided to get him a costume for the heck of it?

Marty asking Buddy what the hell he’s doing there

* How the West Was Funned—while True Grit gallantly held the line and The Wild Bunch blasted across it, 1969 hosted Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, which was was half-jokey, Paint Your Wagon a musical-comedy, Support Your Local Sheriff (also directed by Kennedy), The Great Bank Robbery and Sam Whiskey outright spoofs. TGGATBG is closer in tone to Butch, but after a while turns tone-deaf. Mitchum is supposed to have commented “How in hell did I get into this picture, anyway? I kept reading in the papers that I was going to do it, but when they sent me the script I just tossed it on the heap with the rest of them. But somehow, one Monday morning, here I was. How in hell do these things happen to a man?” He was in a trough of disappointing projects, with this preceded by The Way West, Villa Rides!, 5 Card Stud, Anzio, Secret Ceremony and Young Billy Young.

Promo pix of Tina thoughtfully provided by me. Because caring means sharing.