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"Peaceful Valley" is the name on the sign dangling amid bullets, a view of main street gives lawmen handcuffed to hitching posts. "A demonstration of Eastern mind over Western matter," the undercover reporter (Franchot Tone) dons specs and strides into a roisterous saloon, becoming chummy after a fashion with the truculent cowpuncher (Broderick Crawford). "You make a habit of burning down hotels and beating up sheriffs?" "Once a month, on payday." Marauding rustlers are the subject of the investigation, "prairie pirates" in cahoots with the leader of the cattle group (Warren William). Vying for the tenderfoot's attention is the rancher's "baby cyclone" of a daughter (Peggy Moran), who lassos him off his mount, kicks him into a water trough, and shares with him a romantic interlude while stuck waist-deep in mud. "Oh my darling, oh my darling, she was only seventeen..." Near to Destry Rides Again and My Little Chickadee yet surpassing both in sheer comedic abandon, the sagebrush jamboree par excellence, one of funniest genre travesties ever submitted to celluloid. The opening title cards on "justice with a rope and torch" are all that remains from the project's original seriousness, from there to Andy Devine mooing while a calf sucks on his thumb is Allan Dwan's magic. Role-playing lies at the root of cinema, thus Mischa Auer's protean bravura in a sendup of character actors in all-purpose ethnic mode, everything from surly Indian to whip-cracking gaucho to trick-riding Cossack to Dixie windbag. "In my county, everything is different. First, we had a revolution. Then my wife ran away with another man. Then I get exiled to Siberia, and everything is beautiful. Here, you always have trouble." Blazing Saddles was still catching up thirty-four years later. With Porter Hall, Samuel S. Hinds, Charles Trowbridge, and Paul Fix. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |