The Villain

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Thousands of years from now, archeologists will be trying to figure out what we were like in the early days of our supposed "civilized" period. They will attempt to piece together the truth of our existence by looking at books we wrote, art we created, buildings we put up, and the ways we documented life.

One can only hope that they will not watch the movie Derek and Larry watched this time around and assume that it was a documentary, because it would cause all kinds of uproar and new, unanswerable questions.

F'rinstance, what is going on behind that cactus?

This week, the guys sat down to watch former stuntman Hal Needham's underappreciated 1979 classic Loony Tunes/Western hybrid, The Villain (also know as Cactus Jack in the UK and Australia), starring Kirk Douglas, Ann-Margret, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Strother Martin, Foster Brooks, Mel Tillis, Jack Elam, Ruth Buzzi, Paul Lynde, and Robert Tessier.

Douglas is Cactus Jack, a not-especially-talented outlaw whose horse, Whiskey, is smarter than he is. When Jack tries to rob a train and misses, he rides into the nearby town to rob the bank, which is run by a drunken clerk (Foster Brooks). When the clerk tells Jack that he doesn't have the combination to the bank's safe, Jack decides to blow it open with dynamite. Unfortunately, all he manages to accomplish is blowing up the bank, but not the safe. And when he tries to escape, he is caught by the local law and put in jail, where he is visited by the owner of the bank, Avery Simpson (Elam).

Finding Jack proves difficult, as Simpson's vision is based on movement,
like the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Simpson offers Jack a deal: He will get Jack out of jail if Jack agrees to find Charming Jones (Ann-Margret) and steal the money her father (Martin) sent with her before she gets to town, or be hanged for trying to rob the bank.

Jack agrees, and sets off with Whiskey to find Charming, who has met up with the powder blue-encased Handsome Stranger (Schwarzenegger), a not-so-bright pile of Austrian muscles that Charming's father saved from being beaten up by a group of firemen, for reasons that are too ridiculous to go into, some time ago. Handsome was sent to protect Charming as she made her way to town with the money.

Put those things away, ma'am, before I prematurely discharge my...firearm.

In his attempts to stop Charming and Handsome from reaching their destination, Jack begins setting traps; starting with a rope across the road meant to trip up the horses pulling the cart in which the two are riding. It doesn't get the horses, but it does get caught on the back of the wagon, dragging Jack and destroying his pants.

After a few more failures, including having a boulder dropped on him, running head-first into a rock wall he painted to look like a tunnel, having yet another boulder roll over him, and falling down a mountain while trying to see Charming stripping down to bathe in a river, Jack approaches the local Indian chief, Nervous Elk (Lynde), for help.

Yes. You read that right.

Nervous Elk agrees, completely failing to mention that he and his tribe have already been contacted by Simpson to keep an eye on Jack, making sure he doesn't steal the money for himself.

A plan is hatched for Nervous Elk and his men to join Jack in a raid of Charming and Handsome's camp at dawn. Unfortunately, this completely fails to happen, as it turns out that most of Nervous Elk's tribe do not know how to ride horses. They all fall off as soon as they start the raid, and all but two of the braves are injured and unable to continue riding. So Jack, Nervous Elk, Mashing Finger (Tessier), and the two braves who were not injured, ride after Charming and Handsome.

The entire time this is going on, Charming is doing everything within her power to get Handsome to give up his good stuff, but he is either too virtuous or too stupid to do so, causing Charming a lot of consternation.

How can she go after that lunkhead when she has the option of this
prime cut of beef?

After a few more failed traps, Jack gets ahead of Charming and Handsome and prepares to ambush them at Charming's family's property, stacking barrels of gunpowder in the main house to blow it up once they get inside. But will it work?

Will Jack finally manage to steal the money and deliver it to Simpson? Or will Charming and Handsome continue to unwittingly foil Jack's plans? And will Whiskey finally realize he is the brains of the operation and leave Jack for a more competent outlaw? You'll have to tune in to find out! (Or pick up the flick at Amazon for about $10, which is totally worth it.)

Larry is fascinated with Ann-Margret as Charming, and who wouldn't be? He is also endlessly amused by the different traps Jack sets up, only to have them fail, especially the ones involving boulders. He finds Handsome Stranger's cowboy outfit incredibly disturbing, however.

Derek is impressed with the way Kirk Douglas goes all-in with the over-the-top goofiness of Cactus Jack. He, too, is infatuated with Charming, as well as Whiskey the horse, who is clearly the smartest character in this entire movie. He is also terribly, terribly sorry to any Native Americans who had to sit through Paul Lynde as Chief Nervous Elk.

So shine up your spurs, watch out for falling boulders, and tune in to this latest episode!