The Gun and the Pulpit

I've seen this movie about 4 times, under various circumstances, including a night in the hospital when I couldn't sleep. I have always liked Marjo Gortner in his limited career, and this movie was a lot of fun. It reminds me of the old TV westerns like "Maverick" in its humour and characterizations. I can't believe it's not had 5 votes yet.

About seven years earlier Robert Mitchum essayed the character of a gunfighter/preacher in Five Card Stud. Although that film was far better than The Gun And The Pulpit, this made for television is a cut above average for television film. It also has the unassailable casting of Marjoe Gortner as a false preacher.

As we know Marjoe who was only using his first name when being a child preacher did a documentary exposing the racket that huckster evangelism is. So it's fitting and proper that he play a phony preacher in The Gun And The Pulpit, a gunfighter on the run who exchanges clothes with a dead preacher on the road to escape a posse.

There's plenty of trouble in the town where he takes up the pulpit, the local Ponderosa owner David Huddleston is leaning on everybody with his gunfighters on the payroll. Marjoe's fast draw wins him a lot of admirers most especially Estelle Parsons and her nubile young daughter Pamela Sue Martin. She's the reason he's staying. And there's also Slim Pickens who knows his secret and his real identity, but knows the town needs a savior. {pun intended}.

This western moves real nice with the kind of plot that was standard fare for the front row matinée kids of the 30s and 40s. Marjor is a good western hero, maybe he should have gone into that line of work.

i saw this funny western only once when it came on TV when i was a mear eleven years old,but i was in love with the vivacious pamela sue martin who i'd seen in 'the posideon adventure' two years before and of course because of her i loved it then very much. as for now i'd say it was kinda corny in an 'alias smith and jones' kind of way,but harmless and fun just the same and of course who can deny a film with marjoe gortner its due. i wish it was on video so i could leer at the gorgeous ms. martin once again,but it is rare to find a 70's TV movie on video,let alone DVD. but for old time sake,i give it five stars. i hope this nostalgic rant helps somebody.

In The Gun And The Pulpit, Marjoe Gortner stars as an outlaw running from a hanging party, who stumbles upon the body of a deceased preacher. Assuming his identity and his assignment, he ends up inciting the townspeople of an oppressed community against villainous big-wig David Huddleston and cleaning up the town of Huddlestons cronies.

The endlessly glib Gortner, who was no doubt cast due to the fact that he was (no joke) a real life fraudulent Pentacostal minister, is charismatic and well cast as the gun-fighting conman and heads a great supporting cast of character actors including Slim Pickens and Pamela Sue Martin.

This has probably the most clever script ever in a seventies TV movie western (by Academy Award nominated screenwriter William Bowers) with excellent tongue-in-cheek humor and wordplay in some fantastic scenes. One of which involves a miracle gunfight and an excellent cameo appearance by Geoffrey Lewis.

Great fun.

Take "Shane", put him in a collar, make the kid a teenage girl instead of a little boy, and you have "The Gun and the Pulpit." Marjoe Gortner is an interesting actor, but the bad guy could have used more of the menace that Jack Palance brought to "Shane". The cheapness of the typical '70's made for TV movie shines through, so it's hard to give this more than a five out of ten.

But I like Marjoe. I hear he's running charitable events involving golf in Hollywood these days. It's too bad his acting career never took off.

I also liked the gunfight where both gunfighters miss. That's something I'd never seen before in a Western. There was some thinking going on here.