The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday

Actors I love a lot, Oliver Reed, Lee Marvin, Kay Lenz! Plus Robert Culp and Strother Martin. The story it's not great, the movie is a bit long and boring, just the pleasure of being for 1hour and 42 minutes in the company of those loved actors. So, it's up to you, if you want to see a sweet Kay Lenz, the unique Oliver Reed and Lee Marvin in a role similar to the one in "Cat Ballou", but not as great. I would have liked to give it 10 stars, because I love those 3 actors very much, Lenz, Reed and Marvin, but I can only give it 6.

The American Western had gotten kind of tired by the early 60's and ended up moving overseas during that decade where it begat the Spaghetti Westerns or Euro-Westerns. There is no doubt these films really revitalized the genre, but what was especially interesting is the influence they in turn had on the American genre in the 1970's. This is most obvious perhaps in early American Clint Eastwood Westerns like "Hang 'em High" and "High Plains Drifter" which traded on Eastwood's mercenary "Man with No Name" character. The more left-wing political Eurowesterns, meanwhile, probably had at least some influence on American films like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid" (as well as on overtly political pseudo-Westerns like "Billy Jack"). This rather obscure American film is especially interesting though because it really betrays the influence of the third type of Eurowestern, the slapstick-comedy Westerns typified by the "Trinity" films of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.

This movie is also interesting in that it casts two the scariest screen heavies of all time--Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed--in roles that sre not only sympathetic but funny. Reed plays an Indian(!), which easily could have been a disaster, but he turns out to be quite funny as a resentful half-breed who kidnaps a bunch of prostitutes in order to infect them with a dose of clap he has in order to create an epidemic that he hopes will reach all the way to the White House! He quickly forgets about this hare-brained scheme, however, when Marvin's character enlists his aid in getting revenge on an old partner (Robert Culp) who swindled them both and stole the Marvin character's perpetually unfaithful wife (Elizabeth Ashley). Rounding out the gang is character actor Strother Martin and Kay Lenz as "Cathouse Thursday", one of the prostitutes who decides to stay with her abductors. And this itself becomes a problem because she is the favorite of a lesbian madame (Sylvia Miles), who commands her own gang and owns the only motorcar around. It all comes to a head at a boxing match/political charity for the election of William Howard Taft.

Besides Marvin and Reed, the other main asset of this film is Kay Lenz. Lenz was a very appealing actress but not a traditional Hollywood beauty (she was kind of like Sissy Spacek or Hilary Swank), which often got her cast in "loser" or "outsider" roles like the title role in the ridiculous TV movie "The Initiation of Sara". After her memorable debut in "Breezy", she also kind of got typecast as a younger woman romantically involved with much older male partners ( William Holden in "Breezy", Lee Marvin in this). She was definitely very cute (she was once married to 70's heart-throb David Cassidy) and Hollywood should have done a lot more with her.

This isn't really a classic Western (and it's pretty hard to find right now), but is an interesting and entertaining film.

I saw this film when I was about 13 and remember laughing till I cried. I have never had the opportunity to see it again, because it never seems to be on TV and IMDB says it isn't available on DVD or video. I would love to see this movie again and find out if it has stood the test of time and memory.

An outstanding and irreverent comedy. Lots of belly laughs! Cannot understand why it is not available on DVD yet? Even though that pretty well sums up what I have to say, more is necessary if I want this to appear, so here goes.

Marvin, Reed, Crenna and Lenz all have a gift for comedy that was not always appreciated. Lenz is at her most fetching and can light up the screen and steal scenes, even from such veteran actors. Amazing also the way the old West stuff is still so applicable to modern life. Guess the dynamics of human nature and the relationship between men and women never change much. People a hundred years from now could watch this film and get the same laughs as the same absurdity in human situations will still exist then.

I do not know enough about Director Don Taylor but I can assure you that after watching THE GREAT SCOUT & CATHOUSE THURSDAY I hope I do not have to suffer the torture of watching another mindless piece like this.

Taylor completely misuses an ageing Lee Marvin apparently trying to revive the role of Kid Shelleen in CAT BALLOU - without the booze; a statuesque and lively young Kay Lenz as Thursday, who for no discernible reason seems to be in love with old and frail looking Marvin, by then clearly affected by all the heavy drinking; Sylvia Miles having lesbian designs on Lenz seven years after servicing strapping John Voight in MIDNIGHT COWBOY; and Robert Culp in tow looking for $60,000 which Marvin does not care for - he wants Lenz, unfit though he seems for the part of making her happy. Throw in a few great looking jallopies competing with horses for space on the road in the late 19th century. Oh progress - why do you spoil everything?

It used to be just gunslingers, innocent souls getting in the crossfire and hookers livening things up but this bad old West has snakes in glass jars, Strothers Martin ready to pull the rug, Ollie Reed running around making faces and bulbous bulging eyes in the best tradition of no known Indian tribe...

Does it make any sense to you? Me neither.

Cinematography is sloppy, script nonsensical throughout, supposedly looking to recapture Marvin's glory day in screwball Western CAT BALLOU (1965) with expletives modernizing it to match 1976 lingo.

Single worst sin: a completely miscast Reed as an Indian with a Harvard background who just runs around with women's scalps in his inside pockets (wow, a novelty - I had never noticed those in Indian clothing before!)

Hysterical throughout. Everyone gets to shout, holler, yell, at various points in the flick... but definitely NOT hysterically funny!

Overlong, too. Despite superior cast, fair warning: best avoided. 5/10.