Directed by Burt Kennedy, "Support Your Local Sheriff" (1969) is a likable parody of early Westerns. It stars James Garner as a gunslinger who's passing through Colorado on his way to Australia. Along the way he has various comedic adventures, battles and misunderstandings.Not many spoofs from the 1960s play well today. "Support Your Local Sheriff" holds up thanks to its deadpan tone, some clever one-liners and the charisma of Garner, who essentially plays a charismatic movie star - urbane, unflappable - knowingly trapped in a world of buffoons. Bruce Dern and Walter Brennnan co-star.7.9/10 - See "Two Mules for Sister Sara" and "Hombre" (1967).

For anyone who grew up on 1950s and '60s westerns (both TV shows and movies), this thing is a hoot. I know Roger Ebert in 1969 gave it a two out of four stars, and panned it for being what it quite precisely intended to be: spoof penance for all those old Western character actors...including Elam, Morgan, even star James Garner himself, being punished for Maverick (or reprising his best western role, take your pick). Even the over-the-top western music which critics deplored (a separate character unto itself, very much a part of the spoof and equally hilarious), was clearly intentional. But what this was for me (I just watched it after a few beers and several decades of avoidance), was a nostalgic laugh fest. And something else: This was James Garner at the top of his ironic game, preparing for his best and probably most popular role ever, two or three short years later: Jim Rockford. For Garner this was less a Maverick spoof retrospective, more like: What if Jim Rockford stepped through a time warp and arrived in an 1880s madcap western gold rush town? It's not Peckinpah or Eastwood or Leone, not even Mel Brooks slapstick. But it's good western comedy, nonetheless, and it is GREAT Garner.

"Return of the Seven" director Burt Kennedy struck pay dirt with James Garner in the side-splitting western comedy "Support Your Local Sheriff." This hilarious horse opera concerns a swift-shooting gunslinger on his way to Australia who stops in a gold rush town and takes the job as sheriff. Scenarist William Bowers wrote one of the five funniest sagebrushers ever to spoof westerns. When you get through laughing at all the gags, you will spot the resemblance between this western and the legendary John Wayne oater "Rio Bravo" as well as "High Noon."Basically, Jason McCullough rides into the wide-open, lawless town of Calendar and witnesses Joe Danby as the latter provokes another man in a saloon to pull his gun on him. As it just so happens, Jason is at the bar when Joe drops his witless adversary using a trick called the 'Arizona move.' Everybody agrees with Joe that he killed his opponent in cold blood. Everybody except Jason who points out how Joe fooled the man into drawing. After Jason is appointed sheriff by the mayor, he arrests Joe. Joe's tough-as-nails father,Pa (Walter Brennan) resolves to break his worthless spawn out of jail since Jason refuses to release him. Similarly, the Claude Akins character in "Rio Bravo" gunned a man down in cold blood at point blank range in "Rio Bravo" and the John Wayne character locked him up. When Akins' brother sought his release, Wayne refused to surrender him. Consequently, an army of villains laid siege to Wayne and his deputies in the sheriff's office. The difference here is that "Rio Bravo" was a classic drama, while "Support Your Local Sheriff" is a classic comedy. Unquestionably, "Support Your Local Sheriff" qualifies as Burt Kennedy's best western spoof. It is also James Garner's funniest western and has nothing to do with the subsequent spin-off movie "Support Your Local Gunslinger." The cast is insanely funny, too, especially Jack Elam as Garner's deputy, Walter Brennan as the chief villain, Bruce Dern as his murderous offspring, and Joan Hackett as the heroic heroine who shoots to kill. Western scribe William Bowers, who wrote the straight-faced oaters "The Law and Jake Wade" and "The Gunfighter," was no stranger to cowboy comedies. He penned the script for the Glenn Ford semi-comic western "The Sheepman." Howard Hawks once said you only need five decent scenes to make a good western. "Support Your Local Sheriff" boasts those five and more. The finger in the gun barrel scene in the jail, the delayed front street shoot-out, the tour of the jail scene, the rock throwing gunfighter scene, and jailbreak scene. The jailbreak scene is probably the high point of the action. Pa Danby and his two sons tie ropes to their saddles and attach the other end of their hemp to the cell window. You've seen this scene at least a dozen or so times in other serious westerns. The horsemen spook their horses and the cell bars on the windows pop out like a cork. This time when the villains spur their horses to tear the bars out, the bars remain anchored solidly into the wall. Instead, the villains and their saddles are pulled off their horses as the horses gallop away and leave the villains in the dust on their saddles. Bowers makes reference to "Red River" when Brennan hands over his store-bought teeth to one of his sons before he rides into a gunfight. Indeed, Brennan is playing a variation on his Ole Man Clanton character in "My Darling Clementine."

Support Your Local Sheriff! is directed by Burt Kennedy and written by William Bowers. It stars James Garner, Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan, Jack Elam, Harry Morgan and Bruce Dern. Harry Stradling Jr. is the cinematographer and Jeff Alexander scores the music. The film is essentially a parody of a Western splinter that encompasses an iconoclastic new arrival in a troubled town who sets about taming it. Here it's James Garner as Jason McCullough who is on his way to Australia to make his fortune. Stopping over in an Old Western town for some rest, a bite to eat, and maybe earn some cash? McCullough is disgusted to find corruption and murder is rife. Showing a firm backbone and some nifty skills with a gun, McCullough highly impresses the town dignitaries who offer him the position of Sheriff. A job he finally accepts and begins taming the town with his unconventional methods.Support Your Local Sheriff! Very much had time on its side when it was released. Interest in the Western as a genre had waned considerably, with the advent of free television potentially ready to drive the final nails into the coffin. Four years earlier Cat Ballou had shown that a comedy Western in the 60s could be well received. While master craftsman Howard Hawks had parodied his own Rio Bravo a year after Cat Ballou with the well regarded El Dorado. Throw into the pot that James Garner had good comedic Western credentials behind him on account of his run in TV series Maverick (1957-1962); and it's evident that Messrs Kennedy & Bowers knew exactly what they were doing.Roger Ebert famously accused the makers of the film of being thieves, not buying into the parody basis, he hated the film and thought it just stole from other Western movies whilst being made in a TV show style. Well that's kind of the core of a parody movie is it not? Bowers & Kennedy have crafted a top dollar irreverent Oater, embracing the clichés of many standard genre pics that had gone before it-and then turning them upside down. While all the time, with this cast of very knowing genre participants, cloaking the picture with love and affection. It's not so much biting the hand that feeds you, but more a tasteful appreciation of what was sometimes fed.Full of truly memorable scenes such as a jail without bars, the film is immeasurably helped by the on fire cast. Garner deadpans it a treat and is charismatic into the bargain. As he goes about taming the town more by logic and suggestion than rapid gunfire, he's a hero that's very easy to warm too. Hackett, who owes the Western fan nothing after Will Penny, is simply adorable as a bumbling rich girl quickly getting the hots for the new Sheriff. Morgan & Dern play it firmly with a glint in the eye and tongue in cheek, and Brennan, a god-like bastion of Western's, is hilarious as the patriarch of the bullying Danby clan. But best of the bunch is Jack Elam (The Far Country/ Vera Cruz/ Gunfight at the OK Corral), who playing the town character somehow finds himself (in spite of himself) employed as the Sheriff's deputy, turns in a lesson in visual and physical comedy. Fittingly it's Elam who closes the film out with a suitably knowing piece of smart.It lacks some great scenic photography and the score is a bit too much Keystone Coppery, but really this is about the excellent script and the players bringing it to life. A Western comedy gem. 9/10