The Villain (1979)

One of my all time favorites.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

A slow-witted cowboy named Handsome Stranger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is acting as a bodyguard of sorts for a woman named Charming Jones (Ann-Margret). Charming is traveling across the West with fortune in a locked chest. An old outlaw named Cactus Jack (Kirk Douglas) is hired to steal the chest. Cactus Jack comes up with trap after trap to try to get his hands on the loot, but each plan fails epically. I can't tell you how many reviews I've read comparing The Villain to a live action Wile E Coyote cartoon. While I see some comparisons, the difference is that Wile E Coyote's tales are funny and told with wit and charm. The tale of Cactus Jack is filled with failed attempts at comedy and is about as dull as anything I've seen recently. None of it worked on me. I knew I was in trouble five minutes into the movie when Jack has an argument with his horse. Ugh. I could see my 6-year old laughing at some of Jack's hijinks, but none of it brought as much as a smile to my face. I was bored to tears. Without a car in sight, director Hal Needham seems horribly out of his element. As for the acting, I watched The Villain for Schwarzenegger. However, in 1979, he was still a terribly green actor. In most scenes, he's as stiff as a board. The ridiculously gorgeous Ann-Margaret almost makes The Villain worth watching on her own, but after a while, ogling Ann-Margret can get tedious. As for Douglas, what an embarrassment! Let's just say that comedy wasn't his thing. The highlight of the cast for me was easily Strother Martin in a bit part. His five minutes of screen-time were easily the best part of the film.

Cactus Jack has all the ingredients for a cool comedy - Hal Needham at the helm, capable actors (Schwarzenegger can be used very effectively in comedies), gorgeous settings, fun costumes and a nice soundtrack - but after an OK start things get more and more repetitive, predictable and, simply, tedious.The idea of doing a real-life version of a LooneyTunes cartoon is interesting, and Kirk Douglas really tried to breathe some life into his Wile E Coyote, but the dynamic and rhythm are way off - most gags last about five times as long as in the cartoon if not longer - and stretching such a 7 minute cartoon to feature length without adding anything at least resembling a decent story or interesting characters makes Cactus Jack nearly painful to watch.

Continuing my plan to watch every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in order, I come to 1979's Cactus Jack/The Villain.Plot In A Paragraph: Charming Jones (Anne Margaret) has to make it from the Train Station to her ancestral homestead to collect her inheritance. The Handsome Stranger (Arnie) acts as her escort and bodyguard. Cactus Jack (Kirk Douglas) has been hired to stop them bothYou can see why Arnie thought this would be a good career move in 1979. Kirk Douglas and Anne Margaret are Hollywood royalty and director Hal Needham was hot back then too. Smokey & The Bandit was the 2nd highest grossing movie of 1977 (second only to Star Wars) and Hooper (again Starring Burt Reynolds) was the 6th highest grossing of 1978. The problem was both stars were considered past their glory days, and Needham's success as a director was down to his work with Burt Reynolds. Once Reynolds fell from the A List, Needham only directed two more theatrical releases. This movie is littered with nods to Reynolds and Smokey & The Bandit. If you realise it's intended as a spoof of Westerns and Wile E Coyote cartoons, it has its moments and can raise a smile now and again. But Needham isn't a good director, his movies are always full of silly mistakes. Douglas seems to be having fun sending the cowboy image up, and Anne Margaret was still as gorgeous as ever. But Arnie's performance as the dim witted Handsome Stranger is a fun one. A lot of people didn't get the joke, and it failed at the box office. Needham's first failure at the Box Office as a director. Coincidentally it's the first movie he directed that didn't star Reynolds. The movie warrants just a couple of lines in Arnie's autobiography. He admits he took the role simply for more experience in front of the camera, and says "My character was called Handsome Stranger, and the rest of the movie was just as lame." The failure of this movie didn't really hurt anybody involved, Kirk Douglas and Anne Margaret still continued to act regularly, Hal Needham made Smokey & The Bandit 2 and Arnie.... Well his next theatrical release was a movie called Conan The Barbarian.

This is just the kind of movie whose existence (both in terms of the premise and the people involved) make even knowledgeable film buffs do a double-take – I know I did when I chanced upon it first in a VHS catalogue in the mid-1980s! For this reason – a live-action version of a Road Runner/Looney Tunes cartoon with Kirk Douglas(!) evoking the hapless but dogged figure of Wile E. Coyote – I'd always been curious about it…even if I had the good sense to not to expect much of the eventual outcome.That said, while certain gags don't really translate or else fall miserably flat (not only because they're already familiar from countless cartoons but the fact that animation has a much more 'believable flexibility' as it were), parts of it are definitely amusing (with Douglas, one of Hollywood's most durable leading men, willing to spoof his own image by undergoing a series of pratfalls throughout). Having the typical desert setting, the makers opted to make this a Western; therefore, it can also be read as yet another (broad) genre lampoon. Of course, it's not a patch on Mel Brooks' classic BLAZING SADDLES (1974); incidentally, here we also get a handful of wisecracking Indians (led by Paul Lynde, from the "Beach Party" series, in his last film) a' la Texas ACROSS THE RIVER (1966) which, as it happens, I've also just watched.The thin plot involves Douglas being paid by unscrupulous banker Jack Elam (after the former's disastrous attempt to blow up the latter's safe!) to thwart heroine Ann-Margret's journey (who's just withdrawn a large sum of money) back home. She's something of a nymphomaniac herself and is being escorted by the foolishly-named Handsome Stranger (played with all the woodenness he can muster by, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger!) but who seems totally impervious to her charms; by the way, she is called Charmin' and dad Strother Martin goes by the unlikely moniker of Parody! Douglas conceives many a cartoonish ruse in the accomplishment of his mission: every single one of these backfires, however (sometimes with the help of his "treacherous" steed itself) – with the intended victims being completely oblivious of the whole thing; the latter's scenes together are fairly dull but, thankfully, the lion's share of the running-time is devoted to Douglas' ill-timed antics! In fact, the two parties only come face to face twice during the course of the film: first, when Douglas disguises himself as a preacher (his hammy turn here seems to be tapping a typical larger-than-life performance by Jack Palance!) and, then, at the climax where, having finally had enough of Schwarzenegger's cluelessness, Ann-Margret decides to side with the villain (actually the film's original American title). This unforeseen turn-of-events sends Douglas leaping over rooftops in an impromptu fit of uncontainable ecstasy, as often seen in Tex Avery cartoons and which easily gets the film's biggest laugh – though other undeniable chuckles have him slipping high in the air on an empty beer bottle, squashed at the front of a speeding train and knocked about when the platform he's standing on falls apart in the aforementioned preacher sequence! I told you it plays like a cartoon… P.S. Incidentally, as part of my Christmas schedule, I should also be re-acquainting myself with two of the same director's other 'chase' comedies – the "Cannonball Run" films, both of which I haven't watched since the mid-1980s