(1972 or 3)
(1978 or 9)
If you
believe IMDb, Gone
With the West and
Little Moon and Jud
Mcgraw are the same
1975 movie, with the
latter being simply
a re-naming for the
foreign and video
releases.
Not so.
First of all, there
are two good reasons
why that date cannot
be accurate:
- The characters
in another
movie, Messiah
of Evil, attend
a movie theater.
As they watch
the previews of
coming
attractions,
they see the
trailer for Gone
With The West.
Messiah of Evil
was released in
1973, so Gone
With The West
had to have been
filmed before
that.
- The characters
in the beginning
and end of the
film are seen
driving a 1978
Oldsmobile
Cutlass. I'm
pretty sure that
the budget of
Gone With The
West did not
include enough
petty cash to
develop a
working time
machine, so
those scenes had
to be filmed in
1978 or 1979.
OK, now I see if you
were paying
attention. Did you
realize that I
contradicted myself?
On the one hand,
this film was seen
in another film
which was released
in 1973. On the
other hand, some of
the scenes included
a 1978 automobile.
How can that be?
It's because Gone
With The West and
Little Moon and Jud
McGraw are actually
two different films
cobbled from the
same 1972 footage,
although a little
extra footage was
shot in 1978 or 1979
for the version
called Little Moon
and Jud McGraw.
Here's what
happened. Gone With
The West was created
in 1972, and it
turned out to be
utterly unwatchable.
It's an Old West
yarn which is very
sparse in the
dialogue department
and is edited in
such a way as to
make it difficult,
almost impossible,
to follow. Some of
the scenes were
rushed through
without sufficient
explanation, while
some fight scenes
and the burning of a
town just went on
and on, long after
they had exhausted
their purpose. The
burning scene alone
lingers for 14
minutes of running
time, almost all of
it without dialogue.
(They built a small
Western town and
burned every bit of
it on camera, so I
guess they wanted
their money's
worth.)
Gone With The West
seems to be trying
to be a genre spoof,
but none of the
jokes really work,
so it's not even
obvious that it is a
spoof, except during
the final scene,
which consists of
classically awful
1970s cheese.
Stephanie Powers,
who had been in
character the entire
movie as a
Spanish-speaking
Native American with
only a word or two
of English, breaks
out of character and
says to James Caan,
speaking as
Stephanie Powers
rather than as
Little Moon, "You've
killed everyone else
except the
cameraman." Caan
then draws his gun
and shoots the
cameraman, who falls
to the ground with
the hand-held camera
still running, thus
turning the image we
see 90 degrees
clockwise. Caan and
Powers then walk off
into the sunset.
Sideways.
It wasn't just the
jokes that failed.
Nothing that they
tried in this film
really worked, and
it turned out to be
an unreleasable
mess. It's now in
the public domain,
so
you
can watch it
online or legally
download it for
free if you care
to. (The
Stephanie Powers
nude scene occurs
around 15:40.)
It was a terrible
film, but a lot of
things happened
between 1972 and
1979 to make its
jumbled footage
valuable enough to
try a re-edit. James
Caan went from being
a virtual nobody to
being Sonny
Corleone. Stephanie
Powers got through
the rough patch in
her career and
became a star again
in the TV series
"Hart to Hart." Some
marketing geniuses
figured, "Why not
re-release the film
in 1979 by fixing up
the two main
problems - short
scenes which aren't
clear, and long
scenes which drag
on." And so they
shot a framing story
about a modern
reporter sent out
into the desert by
his editor to
produce a story on
ghost towns of the
Ol' West. The
reporter encounters
a crusty old stock
Western character
who ramps up her
authentic frontier
gibberish to Gabby
Hayes level as she
relates a story
about the old days.
The story told by
the ornery old
sidewinder is the
same story from Gone
With The West, with
16 minutes of fat
trimmed. Because the
colorful old woman
was telling the
story to the city
slicker, the editor
was able to use her
voice-over to
explain the
incomprehensible
goings-on in some of
the scenes. Voila!
New movie: Little
Moon and Judd
McGraw, starring
three pretty big
stars: Caan, Powers,
and Sammy Davis, Jr.
The original version
of the film ran 92
minutes. The
re-release uses 76
minutes of that
footage and adds
another 6-7 minutes
in the framing
story.
The most
entertaining part of
both versions is
probably Sammy Davis
Jr's extraordinarily
eccentric
performance as a
hipster gunslinger.
He dresses entirely
in modern leathers
which are
embellished with a
little fringe to
make the outfit look
Western-y. His
outfit is so garish
and so anachronistic
that he makes
Cleavon Little's
spiffy and
contemporaneous
"Sheriff Bart" (from
Blazing Saddles)
seem in comparison
to be a Dickensian
waif. Sammy does do
some twirling and
fast-draw tricks in
real time, and he's
actually brilliant.
He's so graceful and
quick that he
probably could
really have been a
gunslinger. And
while I'm in the
mood to find some
silver linings in
this cloud, I'll
note that Stephanie
Powers speaks very
good Spanish. Those
are about the only
good things to be
said about these two
"sister movies."
