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Reviews
Sugarfoot: Hideout (1958)
Excellent example of the Sugarfoot concept.
This is a fine example of the Sugarfoot series concept. "Sugarfoot" aka Tom Brewster (Will Hutchins) is a correspondence school law student traveling the old west doing odd jobs and periodically catching his mail order law school studies. Tom is silver- tongued (lawyer in the making, remember?) and always tries to talk his way out of trouble, sometimes quite amusingly. But when all else fails, his 6-gun is at the ready.
This was our favorite episode of the first season. Paul Fix turns in a terrific performance as well. The entire cast is excellent and the script too. Don Gordon is menacing as hell, Peter Brown plays a wild gun-crazy teenager. It all works out, as TV westerns always did, but unusually satisfactorily.
Highly recommended.
Rustlers' Rhapsody (1985)
One of Our Favorites
As others have said, this movie is a gentle, loving, homage/send-up of early Westerns. The basic premise is what would happen if a '40s B Western were updated to modern realism. The results are very funny. "Rex O'Herlihan, The Singin' Cowboy", played terrifically by Tom Berringer, pulls a traveling armoire (you gotta get those outfits from somewhere) stacked with white hats, terrific outfits and guitars. He spends time washing and ironing (someone's gotta do it) and is through-and-through a "good guy". There are so many scenes and lines that we love:
Spoilers may follow:
It's the old theme of Sheep Herders vs Cattle Ranchers. Andy Griffith is terrific as the power-mad cattle baron "Colonel Ticonderoga". You hear lots of cows, but you never see one. Blackie is one of his men, in town to give the sheep herders a bad time.
Blackie (black hat) in the saloon: "I smell sheep!" Sheep herders son, standing up and opening his jacket to demonstrate: I'm-a not wearin' a gun, and I'm not going to do ANYTHING that in ANY way ..." "Blam blam blam" Blackie shoots him. Real Estate Guy: "You can kill me too, Blackie, but it's just this kind of violence that drives down property values here in Oakwood Estates" "Blam!" Property values! ha ha ha
Blackie to Rex: "You look like one of those fellers who's attracted to other men" Rex: "How a person dresses is nobody's business but his or her own" Politically correct Rex.
I guess you have to see it to appreciate it. Along with the general send-up of early westerns, I see a sub-text of the difficulty men have in being "good" while navigating this difficult world. That may be a stretch, but I see it. Great movie!!!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Normal Again (2002)
Made me stop watching
The final mental hospital scene at the end of this episode is horrible.. It does not contain the "real" Buffy, if indeed the Buffy we've watched for the previous 5 1/2 seasons is "real". I hated it. I don't see it as ambiguous at all. All the other scenes in the mental hospital cut back and forth between the hospital and the action that we've been watching to date. This final scene is not subjective to Buffy, it is omnipotently objective, "our" Buffy does not appear. Therefore, it seems clear to me that the entire series has taken place inside the head of a catatonic mental patient. At this point I stopped watching the series. All of Season 6 was a depressing drag and this put the capper on. This poor girl has been through so much, there is no joy. I don't need a fictional character to make me feel like s**t. I mean, if you don't get involved with the characters, what's the point in watching? So, the writers may think they're just too, too cute, but I don't.