BAD MOVIE TRIPLE FEATURE

As more foreplay for the upcoming Frontierado holiday (August 3rd) here’s a look at 3 weird westerns. For more bad movie reviews see my Bad Movie page.

BAD KIDS OF THE WEST (1967) – Even for a Spaghetti Western this movie is weird, weird, weird. A pair of outlaws on the run hide out in a town populated only by children who act like adult western townspeople. The little boys all try to act like the steely-eyed killers played by Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Franco Nero, John Garko, etc. The little girls all act like slutty saloon whores, making you wonder if child molesters were this film’s target audience. The charming vibe of Bugsy Malone and Shirley Temple’s Baby Burlesqueshorts is lacking, but there’s creepy ambience to spare!

The “comedic” highlight of the movie comes when the children serve the outlaws their special “warm beer”. Three guesses how they make it.  Yes, not since the short story The Ransom of Red Chief have fetishism and Old West antics meshed so seamlessly. I guess we should all be thankful that little kids’ voices are used for the dubbing, unlike the 1950’s western The Buckskin Kid, which also featured children acting like adult western characters, but with really deep-voiced grown-ups supplying the voices,  making all the kids sound like they were possessed.   

METEOR MONSTER (1958) Also released under the title Teenage Monster, this minor gem features a simple-minded young man in the old west being exposed to radiation from a fallen meteor and becoming a hairy monster. The novelty of the western setting helps to make this formula monster movie worth at least one look, but it’s not fun-bad enough to merit a review on my Bad Movie page.

THE DEVIL AND MISS SARAH (1971) – A veritable ton of familiar western stars appear in this supernatural western that sort of reminds me of Black Noon (previously reviewed in my The Bad, The Weird And The Freaky segments.) Gene “Bat Masterson” Barry plays notorious outlaw Rankin and James “The Virginian” Drury plays Gil Turner (no relation to the head football coach for the Kansas Jayhawks), who is escorting Rankin to prison. Slim Pickens appears in the flick as Stoney and Janice Rule plays the titular Sarah Turner, Gil’s wife, who is endowed with psychic powers. The Native Americans’ view of Rankin as the devil is dismissed as superstition but en route to prison the outlaw begins exerting more and more control over Sarah, who is especially vulnerable to his demonic influence because of her telepathic sensitivity. This is okay, but Black Noon was better. 

FOR MORE WEIRD WESTERNS AND MORE ON FRONTIERADO CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/category/frontierado/