The Legend of Frenchie King
The Legend of Frenchie King
R | 11 January 1973 (USA)
The Legend of Frenchie King Trailers

Outlaw sisters in the old West inherit a ranch and try to settle down and develop relationships with neighboring family of lots of brothers.

Reviews
ma-cortes

Goofy and entertaining tongue-in-cheek European Western about bands of female outlaws led by two sexpots : B.B and C.C . Funny but mediocre film with tame action , struggles, and shootouts by the veteran Christian Jaque in frank decadence . The film starts with such a train robbery by Frenchie and his gang who actually are Marie Sarrazin (Claudia Cardinale showing cleavage and singing an enjoyable song ) and her four brothers disguised as men in black . Meantime , Louise (gorgeous Brigitte Bardot who also played a better Western : ¨Viva Maria¨ by Louis Malle) and her four sisters ( various Eurotrash girls as Teresa Gimpera , Emma Cohen and Patty Shepard) inherit from their parents a valuable propriety and decide to go the ranch for a while. There is oil on the lands and the neighboring rancher (Claudia Cardinale) wants to take them out. Later on , there takes places a series of disputes and fights between the two leaders in encounter the propriety . Meanwhile , a botcher sheriff (Michael J. Pollard ) meddles on the issues of the outlaws .This is a muddle and regular Spanish-Italian-French co-production Western in Trinity and Bambino style with an appropriately goofy tone , customary issue in this sub-genre . The film has brief action, fun , brawls , light-weight comedy , cat-fight, shootouts and surprise-filled entertainment . The picture contains funny gun-play along with fist-fight very much in the Trinity's Terence Hill/Bud Spencer territory . The picture displays crazy characters with silly plot and some amusing moments here and there . It does eventually outstay its welcome, and there are a surprising amount of embarrassing fights and laughters . The pictures results to be a crossover between ¨Morris's brothers Dalton¨ , ¨Hill-Spencer¨ movies and ¨Seven brides for seven brothers ¨ , regarding the romantic pairing off of the four sisters and the four brothers . Michael J. Pollard -still recent his successful support role in Bonny and Clyde- steals the show with his gestures , faces and excesses as bungler marshal . It certainly has an enthusiastic cast , as there appears usual Spanish secondary actors as Antonio Casas , Jose Luis Lopez Vazquez , Chris Huerta , ApocalypJose Maria Caffarel , Luis Induni , Maria Vico, Miguel Del Castillo , Manuel Zarzo and several others. A really catching score musical with lively leitmotif by Christian Gaubert . Atmospheric cinematography filmed in Madrid surroundings , Manzanares Del Real and of course Almeria , desert of Tabernas , Spain . Silly screenplay with ridiculous situations written by the usual , also producer Eduardo Manzanos Brochero ( he produced several Western as ¨Apocalypse Joe , Danger Pass , Winchester one among thousand , Arrival Sartana , Djanjo the condemned ¨) . Good ambiance design and acceptable production design by Cubero and Galicia , both of whom created lots of sets in several Western filmed in the 60s and 70s. However , the photography is washed-out and for that reason is necessary an urgent remastering . This is a bewildering story , funny in some moment but falls flat and it will appeal to poor Spaghetti Western fans . It's a below average film , but still better than a lot of the ulterior spaghetti western comedies to come . If you enjoy to laugh at absurd movies , then this one is for you .

... View More
chaos-rampant

LES PETROLEUSES's marquee value was probably enough to have every European theater sold-out when it came out. Let's face it, no one would flock to see this for its plot and characterization and it probably wouldn't have been green-lit in the first place were it not for ravishing beauties Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale. With a story that could've been plucked straight from the pages of the famous European western comic Lucky Luke, Les Petroleuses is an irreverent euro-western cartoonish spectacle from start to finish, a low-brow comedy populated by stock characters and silly slapstick but still fairly entertaining as far as these films go. What really makes it worthwhile however is the screen presence of Bardot and Cardinale, none of which have to stretch their acting muscles to earn their paycheck, except look as gorgeous as possible. Seeing Bardot's bare buttocks and Cardinale doing a song number dressed in a skimpy cabaret outfit probably helped quite a lot.Interesting to note is that Les Petroleuses plays like a male sex fantasy of female supremacy. Bardot plays notorious train robber Frenchie King, leader of four black-clad European babes, while Cardinale is in charge of a ranch and her four idiot brothers. All the men in the movie are stupid and incompetent buffoons, chief among them the sheriff who is a bumbling fool always running after his horse and Cardinale's perennially horny brothers. The women are sassy, bossing the men around and outsmarting them at every turn. Buxom beauty Cardinale has an old Indian housekeeper while Blond vixen Bardot has a black manservant (who calls the Indian his "red brother"). Both Cardinale and Bardot have the goofy sheriff wrapped around their finger. At one point Bardot kidnaps Cardinale's brothers, has them tied and stripped naked before her and rains buckshot on their bare asses! In the end, the sheriff drops his star and gunbelt on the floor and sighs in admission of defeat that "the west ain't no place for a man".You can guess the conclusion from sheer arithmetics alone and the movie is pretty crude from a technical standpoint, but eurowestern fans will have a ball seeing two of the most beautiful women ever to grace the silver screen duking it out for crude petrol.

... View More
deplorable_world

This movie spends a lot of time creating tension between our two buxom leads and engineering situations where one or both of them is called upon to exhibit her feminine charms, often at the expense of the story. It is worth watching for the eventual physical confrontation where, despite a lot of grunt and groan worthy effort, the only damage Bardot and Cardinale manage to do to each other is rip enough of each other's clothing to reveal pert flesh gleaming with perspiration and dishevel their hair a little.For the PG rating (in Australia), you get some nudity, some tame laughs, a song or two and some interesting maxims from a courtesan and of course, that delicious fight scene, all of which makes for a interesting addition to the Spaghetti Western genre.Warning- a badly dubbed version is in wide circulation.

... View More
alexandre michel liberman (tmwest)

This film is a western comedy, spoken in French, the main attraction being Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale, two superstars, which were not at their prime, but still looking great. Besides them, the film is worth seeing because of the elegance that Christian Jacque was able to give it, after all he has to his credit `FanFan La Tulipe' and `Si Tous Les Gars Du Monde'. The ambiance of the western came out so good, that it makes you wish that more would have been made, competing with the spaghetti westerns. What the film lacks is a good story, which would give a chance to the two stars to show more of their talents, both physical and as actresses. Cardinale sings a nice song, they also should have made Bardot sing. Most of the film just shows them riding or fighting, it makes you think at certain moments of `Seven Brides For Seven Brothers', because Bardot has a lot of sisters and Cardinale, brothers. It is a pleasant film to see, so pleasant that it frustrates you that they did not make it better.

... View More