The Outlaw

In all my many years (80) on this planet, I have never seen a movie that comes close to challenging ones senses as "The Outlaw". With both Doc and Pat vying for the friendship of Billy the kid, this seems curious. Then when Doc shoots a chunk out of both Billy the kids ears, with no apparent pain or bleeding, wonderment begins as if to say, "this is really a cartoon," wherein no one really gets hurt or bleeds. Finally, at the tormented conclusion, when Billy the kid starts to ride off, stops, turns in his saddle to look back at Jane wherein she gives him a stupid look, then smiles and jumps on the back of the Kids horse and they together ride off. The end follows and not a moment too soon. What a goofy movie!

This famous western deals with the most noted gunslinger of the southwest , William Bonney , a juvenile tough, a teenager wanted dead or alive throughout the west . This is a fiction story of the strange teen-age desperado known to legend as Billy the Kid . Billy was said to be sympathetic , attractive and favourite with girls , these characteristics well represented by the protagonist (Jack Buetel) . He'll confront Sheriff Pat Garret (Thomas Mitchell) and Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) and falls in love for a wonderful girl (Jane Russell) . The film isn't based on real events , it's a fiction story by the prestigious screenwriter Jules Furthman with ironic dialogs and a plot with little sense. Thus , here don't appear Tunstall , Chisum , nor others roles , neither deeds (Lincoln county war or getaway from gaol) of the Billy Kid's life that have been treated in other pictures . Exception for historical character Pat Garret who has an important role , while actually Doc Holliday nothing to do with Billy . The picture is produced by RKO (Radio Pictures Inc) and Howard Hughes who at the time was Jane Russell's lover . Howard Hawks began the filming in 1941 and he shot scenes with the cameraman Lucien Ballard but had complications with Hughes and he took the direction hiring the excellent photographer Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) . However , the censorship made him to modify numerous shots takes . At last, after three years delay , public saw a daring production exactly as it was filmed , with no a scene cut . It would become a mythical film as an erotic Western . That's why Jane Russell , as she appears moody , mean, magnificent and terrific , too startling to describe , Russell was an authentic sensation by the time , she keeps her better attributes on the bosom. Today all the fuss seem totally wrongly . The film has real sensations , thrills , pursuits , go riding , primitive love , action , but it results to be a bit boring .

There's something in its very weirdness that makes this almost worth watching - which is a positive, because there really isn't much in the story itself that would make it worth watching. Best known as the film debut of a very bosomy Jane Russell, the movie actually describes a completely fictionalized friendship between Billy the Kid (Jack Beutel) and Doc Holliday (Walter Huston). According to the story, Holliday arrives in the town of Lincoln, NM and meets up with his old buddy Sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell.) Their friendship is strained when Billy shows up on the scene and Holliday becomes more involved with him. That's really where the weirdness comes in. Although Billy and Holliday are supposedly in a romantic competition for Rio (Russell), this really comes across as a 3-cornered homo-erotic relationship, with Holliday jilting Garrett for Billy. In the scenes between any combination of the three of them, that's really the sense you get of the relationship. It's truly bizarre to watch, which is perhaps not surprising for a movie produced and directed by Howard Hughes, who was already in a period of significant mental decline while he was putting this out. Hughes' OCD undoubtedly led to the very realistic and surprisingly detailed sets, but there was a lot that didn't fit well at all - including a dreadful musical score and some ham-fisted attempts at humour. The movie also includes surprisingly little gunplay for a Western. There's really not very much of interest here, but for Russell's sheer beauty as well as the over the top bizarre-ness of the whole thing, it gets a 4/10.

The Outlaw is infamous for it being Howard Hughes' tribute to his discovery, Jane Russell, and her voluptuous breasts. You would think then that the movie would be centered around Russell, but no, Hughes apparently (and unfortunately) attempted a legit Western.

The movie tells the story of Billy the Kid and his numerous encounters with Doc Holliday and Pat Garrett, as well as his romance with Russell. The Outlaw runs a painfully long two hours and I don't remember much of the plot except that it had a lot to do with honor, a horse, and shooting or not shooting each other.

Jack Buetel, as Billy the Kid, was an attractive male counterpart to Jane Russell but both were new actors and could barely do more than smoulder, though smoulder well they did. Walter Huston did such an admirable job as Doc Holliday that it felt like his talents was wasted on this B movie.

There are films that are great, films that are not so great, films that are bad...and then there are films that are so bad, so grandly misconceived, one can only gape in wonder or roar with laughter (or both) at their foolishness. Thus an awful film can sometimes provide more entertainment than many good films. (THE DEVIL BAT, starring Bela Lugosi, comes to mind.) Watched THE OUTLAW on DVD the other night with some friends, and we were falling off the couch. I'd always heard there was a homoerotic subtext to the picture, but this was no subtext -- gay porn must be more subtle than this film! Walter Huston's Doc Holliday (or Halliday -- I've seen it spelled both ways in regard to this picture) is CLEARLY the stud, Billy is a petulant young hustler who piques his interest (despite his having stolen the older man's cherished horse!), and Thomas Mitchell's Pat Garrett (Doc's "oldest

friend") seethes with jealousy throughout until he degenerates into the very apotheosis of a passed over, frantic, shrieking old queen. "You're not going with him! Everything was fine between us till he came along!" It has to be seen to be believed. Hilarious! The film's musical score is the worst -- THE WORST -- I've ever heard. There's less Mickey-Mousing in a Three Stooges short. So I recommend this one highly for parties. I guarantee a laugh riot. The thought of the great cinemotagrapher Gregg Toland (CITIZEN KANE) laboring on such camp trash is depressing, but he did give the film a fine look.