My best friend maintained for years he watched a movie called Evil Roy Slade when he was heading out on a two week National Guard simulated deployment in the 70's. He said he was sober but as he described the movie it seemed more likely it was something imagined by someone who was less than sober. MANY years later I came across the title accidentally while researching something else and wondered if there was something to what my friend had described. I secured a video taped version and I was not disappointed. It was everything, and MORE of what I expected; and remains what I fondly refer to as my favorite stupid movie of all time. Sneekin', Lyin, Arrogance, Dirtyness and Evil. How can anyone not love Evil Roy Slade?

While this is a made-for-TV movie, it is nothing less than one of the greatest Western comedies ever produced for any medium, and perhaps one of the funniest movies of any genre. John Astin gives the performance of a lifetime and demonstrates clearly that he is much, much more than Gomez Addams. He is absolutely brilliant in this role and Dick Shawn is superb in a comic gem of a part. The supporting cast of well-known talents are hilarious in their respective roles as well. The script is intelligent yet has its share of slapstick humor that works magnificently. The dialog is laugh-out-loud funny and the sight gags are so well done that you will never forget them. The humor never lets up and there is never a down moment in this high energy take-off on westerns and even television. Evil Roy Slade is an example of what a great creative team is capable of producing for television, the very definition of side-splitting comedy, and an accomplishment that all involved should be proud of. One must return again to the wonderful performance of John Astin, an actor who did stunning dramatic work on the television series Insight and was a comic delight on "I'm Dickens, He's Fenster." He should have been given roles more deserving of his talent on a regular basis, but what he has done over the course of his career is amazing and in each part he's played, his gifts as an actor have shined brightly. Without him, Evil Roy Slade would not be the brilliant comedy film it is.

John Austin looks like "Adams Family" patriarch Gomez Adams decked out from hat to toe in a solid black outfit in director Jerry Paris' made-for-television western farce "Evil Roy Slade" as the eponymous desperado who struggles to go straight after he falls in love with a beautiful woman of virtue. Writers Jerry Belson and "Pretty Woman's" Garry Marshall manage to contrive some amusing situations with shameless gags. Everything in "Evil Roy Slade," however, isn't always shameless. Nevertheless, you suspect these tongue-in-cheek scribes must have been searching something different when they promoted the villain to the status of the hero. Austin is in top-form as the dastardly outlaw. Comedian Dick Shawn cuts a quite figure as Marshal Bing Bell, a singing cowpoke with a guitar that conceals a rifle with which he is an excellent marksman. Bing dangles a tiny bell from his right earlobe. The running gag is that whenever anybody says Bing Bell, the other person mistakenly thinks that they are referring to the chimes of a door bell. No, it's not as hilarious as the old lady's name, Frau Blücher, in "Young Frankenstein," but Belson and Marshall deserve credit for a full-fledged effort. By this time, television had gotten around to acknowledging the presence of gay men, and the characters here make two references to them as "funny boys." Although this goofy, lowbrow western is predictable, "Evil Roy Slade" has its side-splitting seconds.Evil Roy Slade (John Austin of "The Adams Family") and his ruffians are robbing a bank when our anti-heroic hero encounters beautiful Betsy Potter (Pamela Austin of "Rome Adventure") and plants a big wet one on her moist, pretty lips. Suddenly, everything changes for Roy. Roy wants Betsy almost as much as he embraces evil. Roy and his gang set out to rob the stagecoach, and Flossie (Edie Adams of "The Apartment") turns informant when he ditches her to conclude his career as an outlaw. Roy and company discover her treachery when they try to rob a stagecoach jammed with an army of lawmen, including midgets on the roof. One of these tykes, (Billy Curtis of "High Plains Drifter") springs out of a box to tackle Roy. The posse captures Roy, locks him up, and the court sentences him to swing. Beleaguered railroad president Nelson Stool (Mike Rooney of "The Secret Invasion"), who Roy and his gang have been preying on mercilessly for years, leaves his drooling bulldog to guard Roy as well as his incompetent relative, Clifford Stool (Henry Gibson of "The Long Goodbye"). Stool has tied Roy's hands behind his back so that Roy cannot escape. Shrewdly, Roy plays of the hunger of the starving dog, drenches his bonds with gravy, and the dog gnaws through them and Roy escapes. Eventually, Roy succumbs to Betsy's charms and they move to Boston where he visit a shrink Logan Delp (Dom DeLuise of "Blazing Saddles") and can walk around without his hardware. Roy ends up selling shoes for Uncle Harry Fern (Milton Berle of "Whispering Ghosts") and becomes rather adept at it. Temptation overwhelms our protagonist when Harry entrusts Roy with lugging two bulging bags of currency to the Boston Bank. Roy delivers the loot but then purloins the bank guard's revolver and holds up the bank. The front page newspaper story reveals that Roy is heading back east. The elder Stool finally persuades Marshal Bell to intervene.Some of the priceless gags occur when Roy strolls up the street in a western town during an early scene. He triggers shots into the ground at the toes of an invalid (Leonard Barr of "Diamonds Are Forever")whose legs are encased in plaster and relies on crutches to walk. Roy takes an elderly woman's shawl from her shoulders as she is poised to cross a muddy street and lays the shawl on the muddy spot. Instead of waiting for the old woman to lead off, Roy tramps on it as he goes his merry way. A woman sitting on a horse extends her hand so that Roy may help her descend from the steed. Instead, Roy pulls her off the pony and appropriates it for himself. At one point, when he announces his impending retirement from the gang, Roy passes out autographed wanted posters of himself. At another point, Roy terrorizes a sleeping infant when Betsy prohibits him from frightening adults. Happily, "Evil Roy Slade" just makes the grade, especially with its big finale in the church at Betsy's wedding. John Austin radiates evil like the dastard that he plays would and Dick Shawn is funny at Bing Bell.

Orphaned as a baby and raised by buzzards (!) John Astin is the meanest (and quite possibly the dumbest) man in the west and a thorn in the side of railroad man Mickey Rooney. Falling in love for the first time, he vows to go straight and takes a job as a shoe salesman in Milton Berle's store!This made-for-television movie, co-written and produced by Garry Marshall, is probably the funniest ever made, with a seemingly endless barrage of hilarious sight-gags and one-liners, as well as a fun cast of comedic stars like Henry Gibson, Pat Morita, John Ritter, Ed Begley Jr., Penny Marshall, and Dick Shawn as a flamboyant rhinestone covered lawman.A few of the best scenes involve Astin's stagecoach fight with iconic little-person Billy Curtis, who's probably best remembered for High Plains Drifter and The Terror Of Tiny Town, and psychiatrist Dom DeLuise's attempts to cure him of his wickedness. The scene where he teaches Astin how to walk again, this time without guns, is a riot!This really should have been given a theatrical release. It's that good!