Reviews

And a limping end to a pretty good series that was getting weaker. As has already been mentioned, Jack Klugman is the only regular cast member who appears here and I sometimes wonder if outfits like Universal and its predecessor (remember the last episode of Laramie?) know that these shows aren't going to run anymore so they pick the most quickie, inexpensive endings they possibly can throw together. I would have expected something like this back in the 50s or 60s but TV shows had certainly progressed by 1983...and in just the same year, MASH finished its run with a good, solid finale. And ending a series with a pilot was just...goofy. Sad ending for a show that could be really good at its best.

After all, a character with the same name as a self-defense spray can't be up to much good...right? Anyway, as the previous reviewer points out, the basis of this episode's story is more about the crime of opportunity that follows the initial crime of murder. I couldn't give this one a solid 10 because the title is just too clunky...the so-called "rope" was supposed to be used after a trial for the villain but the townsfolk precede that with a little "Rope of Lead" of their own (not steel) and the story is more about a smarmy little man's sleazy intrigues to impress an equally sleazy saloon poker dealer than it is about vigilante justice. Mari Blanchard's "Get it yourself!" quote is so deliciously nasty that I always get a chuckle but her change of heart at the end doesn't come across as all that convincing. All in all, not a bad episode but not a great one, and a little clumsy in spots.

If I had to list one episode as my favorite on my favorite TV show, this one is it. I first saw this on a local Atlanta Christian station in the 1970s and it haunted me for years.

What was so great about it? All the characters are believable. The story is interesting and unique and different...where else did you ever see a show about a priest seeking to meet a tribal chief? Jess' initial distrust of Father Elliot (played to perfection by James Gregory) is perfectly natural, as is Father Elliot's distrust of Charlie Root later on. Elliot's guilt and his overcoming of same, is convincing, as is the great ending. Fantastic script, acting and dialogue through the whole thing. In my opinion, there isn't one wasted moment in the entire episode and Albert Sendry's background music is haunting and lovely. This wasn't just a TV episode, it was an achievement.

Let me qualify what I'm about to say: Laramie is my all-time favorite TV show. For me, the show starts with the best in TV history theme, Slim and Jess riding through the splashing water, and just gets better from there.

But let's face it. This episode just underperforms. I don't know why that is, but there's just a lack of that great dramatic tension that made Laramie so special. Not only that: no Jess, no Daisy, and no Mike...and almost no Slim. John Smith, for whatever reason, just seemed to be going through the motions and not projecting that strength of conviction that made Slim Sherman so great. This one and Men of Defiance get my vote for the two weakest Laramies ever. A shame that such a terrific show ended with this one.

This one came hard on the heels of the Movie "Magnum Force". I remember it well because I was just a kid when this one came on and I had just seen Magnum Force several months earlier. I agree with the other review that there was a "modern western" look to this episode. I visited L. A. in 1976 and there was genuinely a "modern western" look to parts of it. Even the epic shootout at the end had kind of a Wild West feel to it. Too bad that we didn't get to actually see the big .44 pistol in action, but they were probably hard to find as the Eastwood movies had made them hard to find. An episode that starts with a drunk lady with a gun at a bar and ends up with a shootout with "cowboys" outside of a bar? Yee haw, git along, little dogies!

Richard Gilden (Lance), Paul Richards (Brazo), Deforrest Kelly (Slade Prell) and June Lockhart (Rainy) carry most of the episode here. There are a couple of good lines that Fleming's Favor gets in, one being about who Brazo is (what life has made him...with a little help from himself) and his reply to Brazo when Brazo tells his brother "You talk too much" (Favor: "You don't talk enough").

Except for an opening exchange where Rowdy and Lance face off, there's really not much Eastwood dialogue, which is just as well because Clint looks a little self-conscious in this. That's OK because Kelly is deliciously smarmy as Prell and Lockhart is believable as Dawson. Dawson tells the good guys that she has a 3 year old son sleeping " in the back" of her cafe and I think, "Wow! With all the gunplay going on, that kid must be one heavy sleeper!" Paul Richards got cast a lot back then as drifting, laconic cowpokes, often with an inner tug of war between good and not so good. His Brazo is polite and gentle with Rainy, but determined to even things up with Prell, no matter what.

The story is almost a little rushed, but the gunfight at the end is well played and the brooding Hermann music cues really fit. All in all, a memorable early Rawhide.

I always liked horses and cowboys as a kid, so I thought this show ruled simply because it had a talking cartoon horse in it. Years later, I began to appreciate it even more for the background music and the clever humor in the show. I don't know just who or what person or character Hanna and Barbara patterned Quick Draw after, but I know Baba Looey was envisioned to be some kind of cross between the Cisco Kid's sidekick and Desi Arnaz (that's where Baba gets the 'thin' theeng from!). Like a lot of people I've met here in the Southern United States (and hey, I can say that, I'm FROM here!)Queeks Draw is often long on mouth and short on brains but Baba and the rest of us tend to look over that and enjoy him anyway. The Hoyt Curtin background music in the Quick Draw cartoons is good (a lot of it came from Columbia Pictures music library music off old Columbia cartoons) and the animation is often so quirky and crude that it's cute. "Bad Guys Disguise" is my favorite QD toon of all time, it's the quintessential Quick Draw toon. Daws Butler, Don Messick, and Jean Vanderpyl do great voice work on these early toons, too. The humor's good, fresh, and fun, and Butler really hams it up in a silly was as Quick Draw's voice... I didn't really care for Augie Dogie, even as a kid, because I never was much of a Jimmy Durante fan and it's pretty obvious who they were trying to pattern Doggie Daddy after...but Snooper and Blabber cartoons were fun to watch. I haven't seen one in years and I miss them. I like the 1959 to 1960 toons best of all, before Quick Draw got the Flintstoney music and visuals, but you can't go wrong with a QD toon...and "do-oh-ohn't yew fergiht ITTT!"

There's a sleigh of hand in the very title of this show. Note that the name of the show is "The Deputy". This conveniently allowed Fonda to not have to be a major player in all the episodes. Fonda appears in some episodes throughout the show but more likely than not you'll see him only at the beginning and end (usually this is explained by Fonda's Simon Fry character being "out of town")...and I've even seen a few episodes where Fonda doesn't appear at all! Really, the show's more about Allen Case than Fonda, but the Fonda name was there to draw viewers. Other than Fonda's needing money, I doubt there was any reason he'd do TV...particularly in a stock Western like this one. Don't get me wrong: the show's pleasant in a Revue Studios crank-em-out-cookie-cutter way (guess who produced the show?) and the jazz guitar that's going on in the background (sounds like Barney Kessel! cool!) is nice, but the plots are pretty clichéd and you've been there before. I wouldn't call it on the level of Wagon Train, Laramie, Gunsmoke, or The Rifleman, but it's a pleasant show. Just don't expect to see a lot of Fonda in it.

I first saw this show as a 6-year-old kid and didn't think too much of it at first but once I got a few years older, I really started to appreciate it and now I consider it one of my all-time favorites...not so much as a replication of authentic Western living (I recall Chuck Connors' quote during the show's run: "We offer relaxing entertainment. If you want period realism, go read a book")as it was an interesting show with GREAT background music by Herschel Burke Gilbert, one of my all-time favorite TV composers. I've noticed that people usually have pretty strong opinions about the show....they either really like it or they hate it...usually those who hate the show focus on the violence (they claim Lucas would kill over nothing, which certainly never happened in any episode)...and those who love the show tend to focus on...well, the violence! I've heard comments like, "If there were N number of Rifleman episodes, the body count during the show's run would be >N"...a funny quote, to be sure, but simply not true. In fact, there were episodes where a bad guy would draw on Lucas, he'd sense it, and fire near him to show that "I've got enough firepower to cut you in half"..there'd be other episodes when somebody would draw a gun and Lucas would "sting their hand" to keep from having to shoot them. (hokey, yeah, but that's TV for ya). You have to remember that the TV audience and the ABC network in particular expected action in its Westerns and crime dramas. The ABC network wanted a lot of action in its shows at that time because they were trying hard to get established as a network and compete with NBC and CBS. Some claim "The Rifleman" was something of a gimmick show. It slipped close to becoming one from time to time but the warm interaction between Connors and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark were part of what kept the show from becoming a "Colt .45" or "Hotel de Paree" period parody. Fans of the show often mention the cinematography. Yes, it was good, indeed. In fact, until I started seeing episodes on DVD, I didn't know just how good the film work was. Was it a grim show? No. Those who really don't care for dramatic, near-baroque background music probably get that "grim" idea. Was Micah the sheriff near-useless? Yes, I admit that. Lucas usually ended up being a one-man North Fork SWAT team, to be sure. But man oh man, could a viewer get revved up! They got great character actors like Jack Elam, Martin Landau, James Coburn, and John Anderson to play bad guys...and they'd just work you to this crescendo, just get you where you couldn't wait for Lucas to get out that gun and wail on' em! I'd recommend by-passing most of the last-season (1962-63) episodes of the show. By then, Johnny's Mark was now into puberty, Chuck looks bored and tired of the show (he, in fact, WAS tired of doing it and afraid of being typecast by the Lucas character by then)and although Patricia Blair looks great, the shows are pretty uneventful and stale and they tried too much to play to the Ricky Nelson angle and give Crawford an excuse to sing. "The Rifleman" has really aged well, from the dramatic opening sequence right down to the Four Star Banner logo at the end. It's a TV classic near and dear to my heart, regardless of the body count, heh heh...

I've got 2 episodes of "Shotgun Slade" on DVD. It seems to me that Revue Studios was, indeed, trying to copy "Peter Gunn", right on down to having its blonde "Edie Hart"-type girl singer girlfriend character, played by Monica Lewis. Unlike "The Wild Wild West", which was played half-straight to be something of a "spy show in the West", "Slade" was played totally straight. The show is so bad that it's unintentionally funny. The acting and plots are hammy, phony, and unconvincing. Scott Brady was a former boxer so he knows how to throw a punch but the opening of the show gives you an idea he's not much in the acting dept. (and the rest of the show confirms it)...Its badness makes this show a real find. You'd have to look far and wide to find a tackier "Adult Western" of the time period.