The Legend of the Golden Gun

Growing up with a father that was a real cowboy. I grew up watching westerns from a very early age. I grew up watching all of the standards i.e. John Wayne, The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, Big Valley and even older stuff like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. This movie while not great acting was very good to an 8 year old. I recently saw it again on the encore western channel and every time I see it I still enjoy it. This movie is a throw back to the old westerns that when you look a them today are very cheesy. But if you look at the Lone Ranger they are quite similar in their morale compass. They tell a good story where the bad guy gets his and the good guy gets the girl and the horse. While I agree with another poster that this was probably a failed pilot it is good for what it is. I think that some people think that all movies have to be great art in order to be any good. While they are entitled to their opinion I respectfully disagree.

This 'movie' seems to me as being a pilot for a TV series. It sets up the situation and defines the characters with a little Star Wars and a little Lone Ranger mixed together. Hal Holbrook as J.R. Swackhammer (or is it Yoda?) teaches our hero how to shoot bottles in the air while blind folded (John, feel your instincts)! It conveniently kills off Holbrook's character as he is the only actor of any substance. Jeff Osterhage as John Golden (Luke or maybe the Lone Ranger) has a side kick riding a painted horse. Sound familiar? I was waiting for it to turn into a Blazing Saddles style farce but all this was played as a straight story and never did. It apparently wasn't popular enough and was never made it to a series. This is all guess work but that's the way I see it.

I saw this show on Encore Westerns in April 2011, so it's still around.

Robert Davi plays real life baddie William Quantrill who kills the family of John Golden (Jeff Osterhage). Golden himself is left for dead in a river. After this Golden looks to exact revenge upon Quantrill. He comes across J.R. Swackhammer wonderfully played by Hal Holbrook who trains Golden. The film gets good when Holbrook shows up and starts to take on a nice flavour. This is a TV movie so it is not going to play out like Clint Eastwood's 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' with its subject matter, but might work well if you have kids in the 10-14 range who like a western. Also starring Keir Dullea as the over confident General Custer and great veteran R.G. Armstrong as corrupt Judge Harrison Harding. As you might have guessed through out the film Golden meets real life legends from the Old West.

Now this TV movie is far from perfect and a couple of big things for me that didn't work were early on we are shown a scene that oozes cheesiness to me. We watch John Golden in slow motion ride his horse Moonbeam, which he is singing a song about. I thought this was completely unneeded as within a couple minutes Osterhage's acting should be able to bring his love through toward the horse. The other is the music in a couple of scenes does not really have a western feeling. It is more of a 1979 or disco-influenced theme and any seriousness in the scenes are washed away. In turn though well worth a watch. On a side note Harve Bennett was executive producer who went on to produce and co-write Star Trek II through V.

Pretty sure it was not filmed in Kansas. Several Kansas towns are mentioned.

If this is the movie I think it is, it is about a cowboy who is given a golden 7-shooter (vs the standard 6 shooters) by his mentor. He is given the wisdom "always save the 7th shot for evil!".

At once point he is tested by a saloon girl and former acquaintance of his mentor and she throws a playing card in the air (7 of hearts?) and he shoots six of the seven hearts on the card and when he is asked why he didn't shoot the seventh, it's the "always save the 7th shot for evil!". When I was a kid this was a great movie, if I saw it now it might have been uber cheesy.

It's been decades since I've seen this movie, so I'm real fuzzy on it, but I'd love to find a copy of it someplace.