James GarnerSupport Your Local Sheriff [Blu-ray]

I have loved this movie for years, that’s why I rewatch it all the time

If you liked the old Maverick series you'll love this. A cast of Western movie veterans and a script that's hilarious without being smutty or woke (you know, like movies used to be). James Garner is wonderful.

Great movie. Lots of funny quotes to steal for later. Highly recommend watching.

I'm sure some folks will be up in arms over the more conservative views presented in this show, but I found it hilarious! If only folks would stop a fullblown gun fight nowadays simply because someone shouted "stop"! The ridiculously over inflated and out of control prices made me sad, because they were still lower than today's prices. It was great for a laugh and look back at the romanticized ideals of several decades past. Not meant to be taken seriously!

Great movie

Glad Amazon has some old westerns available made my husband happy

Our cousin is Walter Brennon so we decided to watch this. He died 2 years after I was born so I never really got to know him but heard all the stories of his childhood from my mom and grandfather. He was a very good man and enjoyed visiting the family farm in NH as a child. He would play with cars behind the house. Our family was very very proud of him for sure! He really went far in life when most of us got stuck here. Anyhow, back to the movie. I knew he played in a lot of westerns back in the day as mom told me about it and showed me a few of his works. However, I had never seen a comedy with him in it so this was a real treat! I gave it a 5-star rating not because Walter is my family but because the movie is so danged funny I couldn't stop laughing until the very end!! My 13-year-old son left the room laughing and quoting a few lines his cousin said in the movie!! What else I found amazing about this movie is that Walter had a lot of the same stances and movements as my grandfather did. Even his facial features are similar!! On top of that, he said a few words during the movie that were words my grandfather always used like Grub and Much Obliged!! I don't know if those were something he ad-libbed from his childhood at Indian Mortar or if they were in the script but it was really neat to hear him saying those very words!! It truly was an amazing experience for my son and me to share together. It gave us a roaring laugh and brought a piece of our history to life! Way to go cousin Walter!!! This was a masterpiece for sure!!

Christmas gift. Fun movie.

Really fun comedy-western starring James Garner, Joan Hackett and Harry Morgan. Plays well with the conventions of the firmly established westerns of the time. In many ways it's a percursor to Blazing Saddles, although it's never quite as crass and over the top. James Garner is his usual charismatic and endearing self in much the same way he'd be a few years after this in Rockford Files. This new Blu-Ray edition is as bare bones as they come. No extras, no subtitles, a stereo LPCM soundtrack, and a pretty average HD upgrade. Shame, this quality movie deserved a better edition.

This 1969 film is a merry, cheerful comedy western, parodying with taste, talent and some really black humour many of the most beloved clichés of the genre...))) Below, more of my impressions, with some limited SPOILERS.The frontier town of Calendar, Colorado was created because of the gold fever and a handful of lucky diggers became also the first notables. However the city is not really a happy place, as it has to pay tribute to the Danby bandit family - also, the gold fever attracted all kind of scum and rabble and everyday somebody is killed in a gunfight... Things became so bad that nobody wants to become the sheriff as it is considered a suicide... Then, one day a mysterious stranger (James Garner) rides into town and naively (at least everybody thinks it initially) accepts Mayor's offer to be the new sheriff and pacify the town...The story of lawless town and a heroic sheriff who tames the local troublemakers and restablishes peace and order is of course one of the most common and most beloved clichés in the whole western genre and here it is shown almost exactly as in any other serious western - it's just that in fact EVERY SINGLE scene, under a semblance of seriousness, is a PURE PARODY, full of outlandishly funny dialogs...)))There is also some more slapstick, burlesque moments but they are few - just what it takes to spice up a little the whole thing but definitely not enough to spoil it. Those slapstick moments usually include Mayor's daughter Prudence Perkins (Joan Hackett), a still relatively young and not half bad looking spinster who combines bad character, sharp tongue and short temper with an INCREDIBLE clumsiness - she is in fact so accident prone that it is a miracle that she is still alive and has all the limbs in place...)))There is a reall gallery of odd but attaching characters in this film, like Mayor Ollie Perkins (Harry Morgan), cross-eyed butt ugly deputy sheriff Jake (Jack Elam), Joe Danby, the deadliest moron and the stupidest killer in the Wild West (Bruce Dern, grandiose in his first comic role ever), Pa Danby, the wicked patriarch of the local bandit family (Walter Brennan), the solidly pragmatic Bartender (Dick Haynes) and finally, last but not least, the promiscuitous Civic Leaders...)))Now, this film is of course not some kind of masterpiece but in its own category - lighthearted, entertaining, merry, cheerful comedies - it is one of the best things on the market. A guaranteed remedy against depression and other lower-pressure moments, which I liked a lot when I saw it ages ago on TV and which I re-discovered with the greatest pleasure recently. I am SOOOO keeping my DVD for a future viewing! Enjoy!

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

Amiable, slow-talking Jason McCullough (a thoroughly likeable James Garner) attempts to earn some money to support his plan to emigrate to Australia by accepting the rather thankless job as sheriff in a lawless gold rush town. The job tends to have a rather high turnover in incumbents as the town is being terrorized by the criminal Danby family (including father Walter Brennan, and idiot son, Bruce Dern) - but with the mayor's accident-prone daughter (Joan Hackett) and the "town character"(Jack Elam, splendidly subverting his own back catalogue in spaghetti Westerns) on his side, Jason just might survive to see the shores of Australia.This film is an unexpected gem, hiding in the guise of an unassuming comedy Western. There's a great blend of sharp dialogue and slapstick humour, and the role of laid-back Jason is perfect for the self-professedly lazy Garner.Jake: How come nobody ever heard of you? I mean, a man that can shoot like you do and draw as fast as you can... how come you ain't got a reputation?Jason McCullough: What would I want with a reputation? That's a good way to get yourself killed.The DVD is fairly minimal when it comes to extra features (you can tell things are restricted when the case notes boast the presence of interactive menu screens and scene selections!), but the film is cracking good fun and well worth a few pounds.

I used to have this recorded, but the disc no longer plays. In the midst of Covid I needed to be cheered up, and this does it in spades. It is so funny - really clever funny, not silly funny - and everyone is acting their socks off. If you've never seen this and you have a lively funny-bone, you won't regret buying this.The new Sheriff's famous last words "Remember I won't be here long, I'm on my way to Australia."