TV Special

 

THE PHIL SILVERS SPECIAL: THE SLOWEST GUN IN THE WEST-1960-A gas station attendant (George Chandler) relates to some tourists how the town they are in, Primrose, Arizona was the toughest town in the west. Billy the Kid Blake (Robert Wilke) Wild Bill Monk (John Diekes), Ike & Jake Dalton (Jack Elam & Karl Lukas), Doc Henley (Mauritz Hugo), Jud McCory (George Keymas), Dick Nolan (Bruce Cabot) and Black Bart (Ted DeCorsia) all hang out in town. Two concerned citizens (Parley Baer & Jack Albertson) try to find a sheriff tough enough to stand up against Nolan. Coming into town, bespectacled and dressed in black, is The Silver Dollar Kid (Phil Silvers). He picks a fight with Black Bart but when it comes to a showdown he faints. It turns out the Kid is "the yellow-est man in the west", a coward who would ruin any famous gunslinger's reputation if they killed him. Kathy (Jean Willes),a saloon worker helps him. Later they make him sheriff because no one wants to kill him. Nolan hires Sam Bass (Lee Van Cleef) to do the killing but the Kid convinces Bass to turn on Nolan and he kills the Clantons (he's killed too). Later they search for Chicken Finsterwall (Jack Benny), a worse coward than the Kid (he shot an 84 year old woman in the back). The kid makes Finsterwall his deputy but they have an argument and decide to have a shootout. Neither of them want to draw first. This is the big gag of the whole show. They stand for years waiting for the other one to draw! Byron Foulger is a hotel clerk. Marion Ross is the kid's almost wife and Kathy (Kathie) Brown is a show girl. This was written by Nat Hiken who also created the TV series “Bilko” in the mid-1950's that Phil Silvers starred in. The prolific Herschel Daugherty directed.

                             

Low Budget Western

GREYEAGLE-1977-Rancher Ben Colter (Ben Johnson), and his Indian companion Standing Bear (Iron Eyes Cody who was actually Italian) go after the legendary Indian warrior Greyeagle (Alex Cord) when he kidnaps Beth (Lana Wood), the rancher's daughter. When Greyeagle has trouble with some other braves who want Beth (they were willing to trade 5 horses) he has to fight an adversary who threatens: “I will hang his scalp in the wigwam of the white woman”. Beth winds up saving Grey's life by killing his attacker. A white mad trapper (triple threat behind the camera Charles Pierce hamming it up) leads a group of marauding Indians and Jack Elam lightens things up as a semi-comic cannon toting trapper who helps the rancher find a chieftain named Running Wolf (Paul Fix) who claims to be Beth's real father. In an unrelated to the main story line sequence (typical for Pierce film) the Indian gang kill Elam's dog then subject him to weird combat where he has to fight several braves while tied to a tree by his neck! 

More low budget boredom from the man who gave us THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (also with Johnson) and THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK.

Pierce

THE WINDS OF AUTUMN-1976-In 1844 Montana, a deranged hillbilly woman (Jeanette Nolan) helps her equally deranged son escape from a chain gang with the help of her brother (Jack Elam) and some other sons (including Andrew Prine). After the break out, they hold up at the home of a Quaker family where sonny boy shows why he should have remained in jail as he kills the couple's  young daughter. Then mom and dad are killed. Only the young son Joel (Chuck Pierce Jr.; son of the director) survives. He gets a mule and a shotgun and follows the demented family. Along the way he meets Rattler (Dub Taylor) who dispenses some advice. Later the brothers rob a whorehouse (a long and useless sub-plot). Although blood thirsty the family is kind of dumb. After nearly freezing to death and being captured by what remains of the family, Joel sort of gets revenge with the help of a family friend. According to the credits the whores were supplied by Playboy Inc. (although one of them is played by TTCSM's Marilyn Burns).

This strange violent western with a kid hero was directed by Charles B. Pierce (he has a small role) who made THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK just a few years before. He directed THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN in 1976 also.

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